Here’s to Voodoo
Another year, another Voodoo Music Experience. Thanks to Hurricane Katrina, this year’s VMX was scaled down to say the least. It went from 5 stages and an estimated attendance of 80,000 last year to 3 stages with no more than 20,000 people in attendance this year. To control the crowd, TCB Events, the Memphis promoter/organizer, decided to sell two types of tickets. One ticket would let you get up close and personal (ie. pit ticket) and the other ticket limited fans to the stadium’s general admission seating. As fans trapped in the stands soon realized, a baseball stadium is not build to be acoustically pleasing. It is built to bounce noise around (like screaming fans). Most of the sets that I watched from the stands down right sucked. The audio was bad and you could not see a thing from that vantage point. There were a few advantages to being trapped in the stands, however. You got a chair to sit down on, non Port-A-Potty restrooms, and close proximity to food. Unlike Voodoos past, there were no Creole cuisine booths set up near the stage. Red Beans and Rice were replaced with nachos and hot dogs.
Here we go!
Hey gang! I’m in Memphis getting ready for Voodoo ‘05. Only one hour until the gates open and I’m ready to get in there and see what Rehage has conjured up this year! Yesterday I hung out on Beale Street, which has the feel of the tame block of Bourbon Street. It only took about 30 minutes to see everything there was to see on Beale Street and I moved on to other attractions in the entertainment district of Memphis. I did manage to sneak halfway into Autozone Park last night and get a tiny preview. The stages are set up in the outfield and I did manage to see a Mardi Gras colored Voodoo banner draping the stage. Be sure to check out all of the pictures that I shot in Memphis yesterday. Click here to see them. Check back later today for the Audblogs!! Here we go!
Here’s to Voodoo!
T minus two days and counting! If you’ve been keeping up with me, you’ll know that I’m all set to attend the Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans this weekend. I attended the festival last year for the first year as a credentialed member of the media. This year I will be back and give even more coverage than last year!
My coverage website is now online and can be accessed at http://www.brendanonline.com/voodoo/.
There have been some changes to the Voodoo 04 lineup and this is affecting my coverage for this year. That being said, here is the most accurate list of bands that I will cover this year:
Saturday
The Killers - interview, stage and candid photos
Green Day - interview, stage and candid photos
Beastie Boys - interview, stage and candid photos
*The Polyphonic Spree - stage photos
*Snow Patrol - stage photos
Pixies - stage photos
Sunday
*Supagroup - stage photos
Shinedown - stage photos
*Cowboy Mouth - stage photos
Alter Bridge - interview, stage and candid photos
BT - stage photos
Velvet Revolver - stage photos
Kid Rock - stage photos
At this time, I still haven’t gotten an interview schedule for the weekend and probably will not until I get on-site. This may affect my coverage as well. Artists that are starred indicate that this artist is subject to less coverage if there is a conflict.
I’ll be leaving for New Orleans Friday morning. Friday afternoon I will be touring the festival site and will post some pictures on my moblog of that. Friday night I’ll be at the VIP kickoff party (moblog pics). Then Saturday my coverage will begin at 11am CST. The stage is set, the details have been ironed out, and I’m ready to go! It may take me a week or so to go through the nearly 3GB of pictures I expect to take over the weekend so don’t expect a wrap-up until at least the 24th.
The stage is set!
With less than 2 weeks until the 6th Annual Voodoo Music Experience, I’m getting everything ready for another exciting year of Voodoo coverage. Even though this year’s festival has been shortened from 3 days down to 2, it is bigger than ever. There are 4 stages this year (1 more than last, including the Playstation tent). Due to this, I’m not able to cover EVER artist performing at this year’s Voodoo Music Experience. One thing you can count on is up-to-the-minute audblogging like last year. New this year is the moblog. I will be mobloging throughout both days of the festival. Give me about a week after I return to get the pictures online. I plan on taking at least 1000 pictures over 2 days so I will have a lot to sift through. And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for....these are the bands that I will cover this year. I will also go after these artists for interviews:
Saturday:
Dropping Daylight
Ambulance LTD
The Polyphonic Spree
Snow Patrol
The Killers
New Found Glory
Pixies
Beastie Boys
Green Day
Sunday:
Supagroup
Metric
Shinedown
Cowboy Mouth
BT
Alter Bridge
Velvet Revolver
Tommy Lee feat. DJ Aero
Kid Rock
See ya at the show!
Better Than Ezra
Ok now I’m only two days behind on the blog. You know, it’s funny. After I get caught up, nothing will happen all month and this blog will go back to being boring. I’m working on Day 3 pictures of Voodoo right now. All I have left to sort through are A Perfect Circle and The White Stripes. It’s going to be difficult picking favorites there. I may have to expand the set to 20 pics each instead of my 10 pic limit. At work today I decided I was going to say a few things about each performance on that artist’s section of the VMX coverage page. HOPEFULLY this will all be done Monday. I’m going to bust my ass on this project at work so that I can send a thank you letter off to 360 Media and give them the link. But enough about that. On with the Better Than Ezra concert wrap-up:
Better Than Ezra @ Deja Vu 11-07-03
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The band was making the trek back to Monroe from Athens Georgia Friday night for a concert presented by FM 102. It was a cold and rainy night in Monroe. The band was about 20 minutes late taking the stage. The place was packed despite lagging ticket sales early on. BTE took the stage and began to rock. After the 2nd song, lead singer Kevin told the crowd that he had a brand new song that he wanted them to hear. He then broke into Good which had me laughing out loud. Good was their first hit single from their first album, Deluxe. They dedicated Special to a group of girls that drove from Athens to see them play in Monroe. Talk about devoted fans! Kevin is from Monroe and you could tell he had a lot of fun at the show. They played all of their hits including Extraordinary, King of New Orleans, Rosealia, and Desperately Wanting. At one point Kevin started singing I’m sorry Miss Jackson...he did the same exact thing at Voodoo so it didn’t surprise me that much. When he asked the “fellas” what was cooler than being cool, I yelled out “ICE COLD!” and laughed histarically. Somehow hearing BTE cover Outkast just hit me in the funny bone. Even funnier was Kevin saying “You should see Tom (Bass) shake it like a Polaroid picture!” They played a lot of new material that they are tossing around. Kevin said that they had recorded two performances at the House of Blues for a DVD that is set to be released soon and an album was in the works for the beginning of next year. During one song, Kevin pointed out that many of the songs that he writes are about people he knew growing up and since he was playing in his hometown those same people were probably in attendance. After they had played for about an hour and a half, Kevin said they would usually go “backstage” and come out to do an encore but since there was no backstage, it would mean they would have to go out in the cold. So they just kept on playing as if all the encore crap had happened, we just had to pretend. He asked the audience for requests but didn’t play anything too interesting. All in all it was a great show. Kevin asked who attended Voodoo and got a few cheers. At the end, he invited everyone to a secret show in Jackson Mississippi the following night. Having enough of a smokey bar for 2 hours, I promptly left after the show and didn’t stick around to meet the band or get autographs.
