Adventures in Journalism

Well, I had a new experience last night. One that I hope not to repeat, but it was kind of interesting (and a little funny) now that I'm roughly 24 hours away from it. Let me explain:

Last night I was covering the Kings of Leon show. Openers were The Whigs and We Are Scientists (WAS were the ones I was most excited to see, I missed seeing them two years ago and was psyched to finally see them live.) I had a photo pass and ticket. I got to the State (er, Fillmore) Theater with no trouble, found parking right away and even was able to skip the long line of people waiting in the cold because my ticket was printed by Live Nation and not Ticketmaster (beats me why that matters, but, whatever). So, I mosey my way to the front of the theater and meet up with a security guard that almost always works at the State/Fillmore and actually remembered me. He was very nice, friendly and, to be honest, gives me some preferential treatment (he's the guy that managed to get me to the front of the crazy crowd at the 89x Christmas show two years ago and let me photograph Fall Out Boy from basically the photo pit even though I didn't have a photo pass that night). No problems photographing The Whigs.

Then come WAS. I'd gotten talking to one of the other photographers and we discovered a problem. According to this Big Scary Bald Australian or British guy that worked there, his photo pass was only good for Kings of Leon and he was not to photograph We Are Scientists. Now, I've run into this sort of thing before but usually you get permission to shoot one of the openers and not the headliner, so this seemed a bit weird. I looked at my pass and it seemed to be good only for We Are Scientists, but I didn't advertise this to anyone and didn't think anyone would ask. No problems shooting WAS and they played a fun set. My security guard friend even let me stay up in the photo pit (to the side) to take notes during the rest of the set (I didn't have my camera out).

Then came time to get ready to shoot Kings of Leon. I'm standing in the pit and Big Scary Bald Australian/Brit comes up and looks at my pass. He says I shouldn't be up there, my pass was no good. I feel that I HAVE to get some photos of the headliner and figured I'd just stay to the side (cameras were allowed in the show which is a bit unusual) and get some pictures that way. Security guard (SG) guy pulls me up to the front.

Ok, let me take a moment here and say that what I SHOULD have done was fess up and tell SG that Big Scary Bald Australian/Brit said my pass wasn't good for the headliner and sucked it up. I didn't. Ok, that's totally my fault but I guess I thought that if I stayed to the side and only got a few photos, and kept out of peoples way no one would care. Er, wrong.

So, Big Scary Bald Australian/Brit somehow saw me (I thought he was backstage) and I am physically removed from the pit. At first I thought they were going to kick me out of the show entirely. Nope, hauled up to the production office where Big Scary Bald Australian/Brit made me delete the card in my camera. Luckily not all of my photos from the night were on there and I'd swapped cards so I may have lost a few photos of WAS and all of the Kings of Leon pictures, but I still had photos of The Whigs and WAS on a separate card. He then told me to put my camera in my car.

I was able to finish watching the show but, needless to say, the fun of the night was gone. At first I thought that he'd gotten ALL my We Are Scientists photos but then remembered as I was driving home that I'd swapped cards before Kings of Leon went on. I was really worried that Sherri (my editor) would be super pissed, I'd be blacklisted from shows, etc. etc. and maybe that blacklisting thing will still happen, who knows. Sherri, however, was pissed that he made me delete my photos and thinks it's idiotic that they give passes for everyone but the headliner. I mean, come on, unless you're the Rolling Stones or something, get over yourselves! I mean really!

Yeah, so, it was quite a night. I'd prefer not to repeat it. Maybe this makes me a "real" journalist/photographer now that I've pissed someone off. I guess in the old days he'd have taken the film, eh? I accept my responsiblity for the whole thing, but he was a bit of a douche too. (But some of the WAS photos are really cool, I'm glad I didn't lose them all, AND the WAS bassist gave me a big smile right as they were starting, so that was kind of cool).