Hammerfest 2008 in Chicago

When I interviewed the Lovehammers back in early 2006, I remember being impressed by the way they talked about their fans and the huge shows they put on in their hometown of Chicago. And I sort of decided then that if I ever got the chance to shoot one of those big shows, I'd take it! I've always wanted to go to Chicago...

The opportunity came last weekend - two years after that interview - some things are worth waiting for! Hammerfest is a big deal and this year it was at the House of Blues in downtown Chicago. Great venue! All brick, two balconies that circle around the floor, and it feels small and intimate yet holds a LOT of people. I went with five friends - two who live in Chicago, and three others that flew in for the weekend. We spent the whole weekend together, but they were good sports when I abandoned them during the show.

Shooting any show is always intense - but the Lovehammers multiply that intensity by ten. Their shows are incredibly passionate and vital, and there's movement and color and action everywhere. It's an amazing thing to see live - and capturing some of that magic in a still photograph is one of the most satisfying things I can think of to do. They create magic onstage, and I tired to tap into that vein, and mine some of their magic in my images. It was a blast!








This image is one of my favorites because of the orange and violet lighting - the colors of RockBandLounge - and to see Marty Casey, our RBL Ultimate Rock Star bathed in those colors was great fun!





































To see more images from the show, go to:
http://rockbandlounge.com/news/2008-03-lovehammers.asp

RBL Rock Star: All-Stars

Back in July of 2006 I was lucky enough to get to go to the party MSN threw for Rock Star at the Roxy. Tommy Lee, Jason Newsted and Gilby Clarke were all there - and all the singers in the cast. That was the night that Dilana told me she loved ROCKBAND.COM and had been reading the posts before she left for the show, and she mentioned specifics that made me know she really had read it all!

The entertainment for the night was Dave Navarro's band, The Panic Channel and my favorite band, the Lovehammers.

So the Lovehammers are finally up on stage, and it had been almost five months since I'd last seen them live, so I'm really looking forward to it. And then lead singer and season one contestant, Marty Casey, makes a comment about how he might have been better suited to the current season - which makes sense on the surface since his music is harder than INXS. So maybe he would have been a better fit on the year with the harder rocking band? And the crowd cheered and Tommy Lee nodded in agreement and the singers all clapped enthusiastically. Yeah, I can buy that.

But later I kept thinking about it, and Marty was the top vote-getter in season one. INXS chose JD Fortune to be their new lead singer, but the public made Marty the top vote-getter. You can't really do better than that! So it got me thinking - what if they did a show with no band, and the winner truly was the popular vote-getter? It's was an interesting premise. And guess what? The exact same thing happened in season two. Toby Rand was the top vote-getter, but Supernova wanted Lukas Rossi. I am ALL for the band choosing who they like best - no disagreements from me on that process! But it is still interesting to consider what would happen if there was no band.

In 2007 CBS failed to renew Rock Star, so at RBL we started the Big Letter Writing Campaign - and I believe we sent in a pile of mail. But still no more Rock Star. Then at the end of the year with the writer's strike looming, it seemed like there was perhaps an opening to get Rock Star back into production. Plus I was looking for a little fun... So we cooked up RBL Rock Star: All-Stars! The premise was to pit the nineteen favorite singers from both seasons against each other in a competition that would last fourteen weeks, and with no band and no judges, it would be the people voting who would select the Ultimate Rock Star.

We've been watching videos and voting like crazy for fourteen weeks, and we're now down to the finale week. And it's been a blast! Our finalists are...


JD Fortune from Canada, winner of season one and lead singer of INXS.


Australia's Toby Rand, the top vote-getter in season two, and lead singer for Juke Kartel.


And finally, the top vote-getter in season one, and lead singer of the Lovehammers, Marty Casey, from Chicago, Illinois.

If you have time on Sunday and Tuesday, stop by and vote! And write a letter to CBS - I want Rock Star back on my TV!

Marty Casey & Lovehammers

These have never before been seen in public - but they're fun, so why not share them?! I was going through some old work last night, and found these, and decided to share them in the discussion thread for our RockBandLounge.com Rock Star: All-Stars - more on that later! But for now, just enjoy the Lovehammers, circa 2006...

And if you're wondering where the inspiration came for these shots, take a look at http://www.harrybenson.com. Harry Benson's shot of the Beatles in the middle of a pillow fight is one of the most iconic images in rock photography - and a personal favorite!

One Million Posts!

It's official! ROCKBANDLOUNGE.COM just hit one million posts.

We have 7000 members - with 4700 participating and the rest only reading. And we've been going strong for a little over two years now, so that's an average of about 1350 posts a day. It's a lot! Last summer we were getting 100,000 unique visitors a day - all coming to read about Rock Star: Supernova. It was a heady time!

But reaching our one-millionth post is also a big milestone. Over 400,000 of those posts still exist.

Lukas Rossi at the Viper Room

I got the opportunity to shoot Lukas Rossi at the Viper Room last night for ROCKBANDLOUNGE.COM, and it was such a great show!

Lukas is sounding better than ever. His voice has always been extremely expressive, but I think some of that got lost on TV. But live, on his own, with just a guitar and one other musician onstage, you really get the best of Lukas. It was a very memorable night!



















Discuss this Photo Essay at ROCKBANDLOUNGE.COM

INXS in Canada!

Note: The first three photos in this post were shot with my iPhone - when you don't have a real camera with you, it's cool to have something, anything to shoot with - and the iPhone actually does a pretty good job! The last image was shot with a "real" camera.

As soon as my seminar in Atlantic City ended, I hopped on a plane for Ottawa. One of the members of RockBandLounge.com had arranged a BIG party at the Ottawa Bluesfest, the night INXS was headlining. She'd convinced them to give us a corporate box, complete with our own private bartenders, plus catering. I just couldn't miss that!

I wanted to see INXS, but the real draw for me was meeting the Canadian members of the forum. Over the last two years I've become really close to some of them, and it was starting to seem really odd that we'd never met in person. It was just time to make that happen! And I wasn't the only American who felt that way - we ended up with two of us from California, one from Seattle, one from Texas, and half-a-dozen from the East Coast of the United States - plus a lot of Canadians!

It was a magical night. The venue was really beautiful, and the sky though filled with storm clouds in the distance was completely clear over the concert. No rain at all! And so many people! The crowd was really huge, and soooo enthusiastic. It was my first INXS concert in over a year, so I really enjoyed it. Plus it was kind of fun to sing along to those songs with people that I shared Rock Star with - and who agonized over who INXS should choose, and would their "guy" win. They're a passionate crowd - my kind of people!



And the tickets? They were printed with RockBandLounge.com on them! How fun is that? The girls above are two of my favorite Canadians!

The audience was invited to submit text messages that scrolled by on a big billboard on one side of the stage - and there were a lot of messages about our group. It was obvious we were having a lot of fun, and people noticed! There were messages asking if any of us were single, if we wanted company, and the messages got progressively saucier as the night wore on. Anyone with a General Admission ticket couldn't get up to where we were, but people in the other corporate boxes could, and some of them left their own groups to come dance with us. It was that much fun!

Ottawa was great! We even went to high tea at the Fairmont Hotel - very, very classy!

And since I was going all the way to Canada, it made sense to go to more than one concert - there were three all within driving distance, so several of us planned to hit all three. But as the planning progressed, and the dates got closer, the thought of that much driving seemed like a bit much to some of the group, so we decided to fly instead. I was sort of looking forward to seeing more of the country, so flying wasn't my first choice, but it turned out to be a smart decision, since we then had more time in each place to explore.

It was my first time on a tiny little plane - you know the kind you have to walk out onto the runway, and then climb stairs to get to? And there are only ten rows of seats? And they go bump, bump, bump, and knock, knock, knock? At first it was a little scary, but after I got used to it, I actually enjoyed it. Especially flying over the lakes - so much water you'd swear it was an ocean.

I had a front row ticket for Barrie, Ontario, and second row for Sault Saint Marie - so I definitely got my INXS fix! All of the shows were a lot of fun, but I think the highlight of the trip (after the socializing) might be discovering Sault Saint Marie.

If it didn't get cold in Sault Saint Marie, I'd be seriously considering moving. Such a beautiful little town with a great concert venue, and a real downtown area with little shops, and lots and lots and lots of old houses that are in perfect condition, and wild flowers everywhere you look. I just have to keep telling myself that snow and ice and cold are coming, and it's not always a perfect summer day there. In San Diego, it is pretty perfect all the time, so I'm definitely spoiled! But if it was summer year-round in Sault Saint Marie, I'd be very tempted...

I finished out my trip with a couple of days in Toronto - a very nice city - but Ottawa and Sault Saint Marie are so special, it's hard for Toronto to compete in my mind!

Big News! I sold ROCKBAND.COM

A little over a decade ago, I bought a domain name to help promote some unsigned and indie bands I was working with. At the time it felt like a totally frivolous thing to do. And it was expensive - seventy dollars to reserve the name for just two years! And since it was the mid-nineties, most people had no clue what I'd just bought.

I actually wanted URB.com – since the site was known as Unsigned Rock Bands at the time. But URB.com was taken. So I tried Rock.com – obviously taken. So I sighed, and thought okay, I’ll go with RockBands.com – even though it’s ridiculously long. Conventional thought in the circles I ran in, was that the good domains were three letters long, okay domains were four letters long, and you should never buy a domain with more than five letters. Well guess what? Even RockBands.com was taken. At that point I was convinced ALL the good domains were already taken. So I settled on RockBand.com and figured it was better than UnsignedRockBand.com – at least I had that! But a few weeks later, as I started to talk up the site, I realized RockBand.com was actually a much better name than RockBands.com – it just sounded better. And less than a year later I knew just how smart a purchase it had actually been.

Lots and lots of bands registered, and many sent me their demo CDs. I interviewed the best of them and shot bands in LA and San Diego, and New York. In 2000 some of the bands I shot in NYC put together a tour of the East Coast, and promoted it as the ROCKBAND.COM Tour.

In 2005 CBS launched the TV show, Rock Star, and I launched a new and improved forum on the site to talk about music and bands, and this brand new show. And wow, it really took off! By the end of the season we were known as the best place on the web to get info about the show. In 2006 it got even bigger and better. Good times! And really great people! We threw a big bash in Las Vegas at a major hotel even – so our members could all meet up and party in real life. I got to shoot a photo essay backstage at a taping of Rock Star. Several of the singers on the show started posting on the board after the show ended. It was a total blast! Every single part of it.

And then I got an offer…

Harmonix, the creator of Guitar Hero was developing a new game with MTV and Electronic Arts - set to debut this Christmas – and they were calling it Rock Band. They weren’t interested in the site or the community, they only wanted the name. So I sold it to them!

In 1996 I was convinced that all the good domain names were taken, but guess what? I just registered RockBandLounge.com - it’s longer, but that doesn't bother me anymore, and it’s very descriptive and VERY memorable.

I think I just got lucky again...

If you’d like to read about the reaction at the new RockBandLounge, go here. I announced the deal there last month - but waited to announce it here until after the sale was final.