Live Baby Live

I thought I’d switch things up a little here, and instead of featuring a band, I’m going to feature the people who keep those bands in business–the fans. I will probably do a few posts on fans in the next few months, but today I thought I’d feature a special breed of them…Warped Tour fans!

I’ve shot the Vans Warped Tour for the past three years and the fans never disappoint. You end up with this mixed bag of (mostly) kids, ranging from punks to emo girls to skaters to your average run of the mill teens, all pressed up against the barrier together. While each year seems to bring out less and less mohawks, there’s still a lot of great fashion (and passion) to catch with the lens. It’s fair to say that Warped fans are my favourite to photograph, and it’s something I look forward to each year.

Full gallery here.

One of my first gigs for Exclaim!…it was part of Black History Month. They’re a pretty amazing band to watch.

Abyssinians Gallery here.

Sadly, the Deadly Snakes are no more…this was from their “last show” (not really…there was an unannounced last last show the next night), and it was the first time I caught them live. Figures. Andre Ethier has now gone solo, and I have no idea what the rest of the band is doing.

Speaking of Andre, I happened to lose a 1gb memory card at their show and thought for sure I’d never see it again. A few days later, I got a call from him saying he found it on the stage. That same night, a girl lost her wallet at the venue and I returned it to her. Karma!

Deadly Snakes gallery here

Shot this way back last August at Lee’s Palace for Tangible Sounds. It was right after Rockstar Supernova ended, and as a non-Marty fan, I was a bit reluctant about the whole thing, thinking it would be a garbage show. He actually surprised me and was quite entertaining, though. Good thing I had a telephoto lens on me, because the screaming territorial girls (and by girls, I mean 30+ years old) wouldn’t let me anywhere near the stage. I couldn’t even get on the lower floor at all and had to resort to using flash, which luckily worked out for the most part.

Marty Casey gallery here

Last summer, when I first got to the Warped Tour site, it was dusty and hot and I was incredibly pissed off after having to deal with a bunch of rowdy kids on the GO bus for 2hrs from Toronto to Barrie. I was wanting to call it quits within half an hour. Luckily, the day progressively got better and I was able to catch a lot of interesting perspectives of a number of bands. Say what you want about 30STM, but visually, it was a great show (for a photog, anyway)…Leto walking on the crowd in his white clothes against the blue sky really popped, and so did his makeup.

This shot was used as this year’s Exclaim! Music Festival Guide…which turned out much, much better than the one I gave them for the cover last year.

Full 30STM gallery