Photos: Flogging Molly, Jon Snodgrass, Scott H Biram @ The Observatory, March 14, 2018

I always mean to post photos the day after a show, but stuff comes up and then I feel like nobody really cares anymore anyway, but real people go out of their way to make it possible for me to be able to shoot, so eventually I acknowledge the photos deserve to see the light of day, even if they're spotty and hazy from my dirty camera. That said, I hadn't intended to go to the Flogging Molly show, and then I realized Jon Snodgrass was opening and though I knew it was sold out, I had to ask anyway, and so I got to be one of the lucky ones in the photo pit. I've been missing the openers at the Observatory a lot lately because they tend to come on at 8 and I always feel bad heading out before Nova's bedtime, but I made an exception for this one.

Scott H Biram opened the show and he's always great to see. He plays the Casbah a few times a year, so I feel like I see him often and I'm fully onboard with the scruffy punk guys doing the twangy outlaw country-tinged singer-songwriter thing. He'll be back at the Casbah on April 7th with JD Wilkes and The Legendary Shack Shakers, where he and Low Volts can have a duel of the best one man band.

Hopefully Jon Snodgrass comes back soon, too He was next onstage and I love his voice so much and he played a few of my favorite Drag The River tunes among his set and made some relatable dad-rock comments throughout the show, too. I've also included an embed (shot with my phone) when O came out to play with him. He has a long history in San Diego and with Cargo Records and gave a nice shout out to Larry Munroe and O and others.

Finally, Flogging Molly hit the stage. It's hard to say anyone is energetic after Gogol Bordello just the week before, but Flogging Molly is certainly up there when it comes to onstage energy. The last time I saw them was at Street Scene what seems like forever ago. I was on the 9th floor of the Clarion watching the street below and a thousand bros in a massive circle pit, and at no fault of the band, having that feeling that Street Scene was over, it had grown too big while downtown open spaces were diminishing. I wasn't wrong, but that's why seeing the band in the contained space of the Observatory felt both nostalgic and hopeful, that all good things come back around. I took hundreds of pictures but have trimmed it down after the jump.

FM 94/9 Independence Jam: The Final Post

It's pretty pathetic that I never got around to posting the last of my pics from Independence Jam, but things came up. I don't have much more to say about the show, except that it was awesome. I really appreciated the bands a lot, even Flogging Molly, despite them falling just outside of the boundary of what I normally like. In fact, it was pretty fun in that photo pit with bodies flying over me, and one of the guards asking me if I could take a picture with his camera phone since he wasn't allowed to turn around and watch the band at all. The VIP section was cool, the beer gardens were nice, the field was perfect, and the bands kicked ass. I was not only happy to live where I do, but it made me proud to be a San Diegan.

The Silent Comedy



The Hold Steady



Transfer



Flogging Molly








After the show, I caught a ride with Jake to the Casbah where it was loud and crowded. I watched The Sess, but by the time Firewater was playing, I ran into Abraham and heard from a guy I met when MgmT played the Casbah, so we decided to go meet the band at their hotel with the instructions "Bring whiskey and smokes." Done and done. Abraham and I went to their hotel, security drove us on their golf cart to their room, but when we got there, there were just a couple guys they brought on the road. A few minutes later, they showed up with Erika (U-31) and a couple girls so we chilled out and had a couple beers. Really though, everyone was so tired, so we left as Andrew crawled into bed. Super nice guys. When they were on TV the next night...Craig Ferguson, I think, all I could think was, "I've seen him in his chones." Funny.

Warped Tour 2007 Coors Amphitheatre Photos & Recap

I'll get to wrtiting about SCMX, but first, proper attention must be paid to Friday, which was itself a cool day.

I mentioned before that I had no intention of going to Warped Tour. I arrived shortly after 11, going the back route via the 905 and thus parking on the south side of the venue. I loaded up my flyers and walked all the way around the perimeter of the main Coors lot and stood near the entrance passing the small city of tour buses.






I've never really had experience "flyering" but I stood there with a smile, listening to my iPod while I tried to convince kids to take my flyers. There were some interesting things I noticed about the crowd going in. First, the youngest of the kids get to shows like that early. Later in the day, the older people came through, but the little kids, I mean even like 8 and 9 year olds, were glowing with enthusiasm and happily took my flyers, thanking me and whatnot. The older tween and teen kids have more attitude so there's a little more finessing that needs to happen when trying to get them to take something. They also have no idea how, though they probably try really hard to be unique, they're all very much the same. I know, I was there one day, too. I started noticing how prone to groupthink they were. If a group of 10 or 15 people passed me by, if the first person passing me took a flyer, everyone took a flyer, even stopping so that I could make sure each one got one. On the other hand, if that first person doesn't take the flyer, not one person behind them would, and by the trail end of the group, people would look away, acting like they couldn't see me or just couldn't be bothered. Anyway, I passed out flyers for an hour and a half or so, but when the ground became littered with them, I decided to call it quits. At that point the groupthink was working where people saw the flyers on the ground so the guilt is removed from them dumping on the ground.



I walked the walk back to my car and passed Tim Pyles. By the time I was at my car, he called and had a ticket for me, so I dropped off the flyers and made my way back around to meet him. We hung out in the "beer garden" for a little bit, which was actually the only activity that utilized any of portion of Coors Amphitheater. We wandered a bit, then made our way to watch Meg and Dia. I have read a lot of buzz about them, every one with some comparison to Tegan and Sara, and I guess I can see that comparison. Meg and Dia are a couple cute chicks from SLC and their crowd loved them. We weren't sure what kind of access our wristbands gave us, but it didn't take long to discover we were allowed in backstage areas, so we made our way and watched the band's set from onstage. When the girls busted out a cover of Blind Melon's "No Rain", they kinda won me over.



After their set, we caught a little bit of the Whiskey Dicks who had won a Battle of the Bands the night before that got them their spot.

After we went to the Marquee Club, which was a bar area that had $5 beers. It's called a "VIP" area, but we found out it was for LiveNation VIP wristbands, not the backstage ones we had, but thankfully some of our HOB guys were working it and gave us the proper credentials. This kinda ended up being the way our day went. Check out a band from backstage or sidestage, head back for a beer. Since I'd not planned on being there, I hadn't had any food before the show, so I was careful with the beer and kept loading up with the pretzels from the vip area.

We made our way to catch Buck-O-Nine and it was clear that they should've been on a larger stage for their home town crowd. They played a great mix of their older tracks, the ones that I grew up on back in the day, as well as some from their new album. Afterward we hung out on their bus for a while, getting a nice break from the sun. Shows like this are fun because so many of the bands are fans of the other bands. In this case, the guys were stoked that their bus was next to Adrian Young of No Doubt, though I still don't know why he was there.








Buck-O-Nine Setlist

After leaving the bus, we made our way to see Fishbone. We managed to get onstage for their performance, too, and they were as good as I always remembered. The crowds throughout the festival never stopped being crazily enthusiastic- crowdsurfing, slamming, moshing, screaming, dancing, what have you.



It was fun being in the backstage area, and were I 15, I probably would've been going nuts, but everyone has that hair, the tats, the band t-shirts, and everyone starts to look alike. Tim introduced me to Tim from As I Lay Dying while Flogging Molly hit the adjacent stage.





It was a day loaded with sun and fun and absolute mayhem. We caught about half the set of As I lay Dying, then wandered some more while Pepper played but by that point I was zonked. Eventually Tim ran into some more friends and headed back on their bus and I called it a day. I was bummed that I didn't stay for Pennywise and Bad Religion, but this old lady needed to get her ass home and some rest for the rest of the night, so I was on my way and home by 7:30. The rest of the night is for another post.