rocknroll.net

Saw Bob Weir a few times, including when I shot Rat Dog back in the day. Also saw him with the Grateful Dead when Jerry was still around. From all I hear he was a great dude on top of it all. RIP.

In honor of the 30th anniversary of rocknroll.net I've added about 100 galleries from my archive. Including a large collection of galleries from my time as house photographer at Metro Chicago. We're talking Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Garbage, System of a Down and a ton of other bands. But of all of them this is my favorite shot from my catalog of The Hives. Enjoy, everyone!

https://rocknroll.net/galleries/metro

Odd to think of Beyoncé as a country star. But my photos of her were among my most widely liscensed. There’s one in particular I usually share but I thought I’d post the whole gallery. Enjoy as part of 30 in 30 for 30 years of rocknroll.net!

https://www.rocknroll.net/galleries/chicago-concerts/beyonce/

Beyonce Beyonce performs live at the WGCI Big Jam at Chicago's United Center, December 2003.

30 years ago this week I started a Lou Reedand The Velvet Underground fan site on the Web. There were just a couple thousand sites at the time. But I wanted to spread the word about Lou. Long story short, all of that got me into music journalism and the Lou site became my portfolio. So in honor of 30 years, I've updated the site with 100 or so galleries of my favorite shoots. I'm going to post one for the next 30 days. But of course, I'm starting with the reason this all happened: Lou Reed.

Lou Reed Lou Reed is really the reason this entire site exists. So of course I had to include his photos. I only got to shoot him once, sadly. Shown here at Navy Pier's Skyline stage.

RIP Wayne Kramer. Was lucky to see/shoot the MC5 at Metro Chicago back in 2004.

Legendary photographer Mick Rock died. He took a lot of iconic pictures of a lot of my favorite musicians. Here he is, perhaps taking a picture of me. RIP. Lollapalooza, 2005.

Have you checked out the redesign? And some new (old) David Byrne live shots?

David Byrne 1997 David Byrne performs live at the Riviera Theater in Chicago, 1997

My first ever celebrity interview was with his guy, Jon Hendricks, who passed away this week, age 96. I was in college and was told to meet him at his hotel downtown before his performance at Northwestern. I got there and was told to call his room phone from the lobby but the line was busy and stayed that way. Eventually, nervous that I was now late for my interview, I talked the hotel into having a security guy es**rt me up to his room. By this time I'm really late and flustered. And then Hendricks greets me at the door in brightly colored polka-dot pajamas, with a huge smile on his face and I relaxed. His wife Judith made me cocoa before she and their daughter Aria went to the hotel gym. They all performed together. Anyway, my tape ran out after 90 minutes but we talked for hours. Or rather I listened and he told story after story about the grand times of jazz and first-hand accounts of working with the masters. Judith and Aria were amused, but maybe not surprised I was still there when they got back. Eventually, he said it was the best interview he'd ever done because "I just let him talk." There was a lesson there that I still try to practice. He signed a CD for my dad with his famous "Short jazz poem: Listen." If you haven't, you should give him a listen. Maybe start with the Freddie Freeloader disc... or the Evolution of the Blues. RIP.

Scott Lucas/Local H in this cool roundup of Chicago Alt-Rock in the AV Club.

“A great time to be alive and own a guitar”: Chicago’s 1990s alt-rock explosion Nirvana’s Nevermind came out in 1991 and became a veritable sensation, selling millions of albums and signifying to labels, music fans, and the world, that there was much success to be found in alternative rock—music that until that time was not heard much on the radio. In an effort to find Nirvana’...

Looks like I had a nice clip of Liz Phair in the LA Times in 2012: https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/193457130/

There's a Primus shot in here. Making it into the hometown paper (sorta)

Top 15 for '15: Concerts you won't want to miss this summer Pop music writer Adam Graham picks the top live concerts scheduled for our area this summer. 1. Taylor Swift, May 30, Ford Field: The planet's biggest pop star in the city's biggest venue. Get ready to party like it's 1989.

Warped Tour was a trip (slide 3)

Yellowcard Through the Years: 13 Throwback Photos Yellowcard's final record drops September 30th. Walk down memory lane with the Jacksonville pop punk band