Photos: Black Lips @ The Firebird | 04.29.14

After almost 2 years away the Atlanta garage punk foursome known as The Black Lips returned to The Firebird in St. Louis, Missouri on April 29th, 2014 with Nashville’s own Natural Child to show the Show Me State how it’s done.

I’ve found this to be a hard show to describe. The first time I photographed The Black Lips, it left quite an impression. That was at the beginning of my time as The Firebird’s house photographer and looking back, the show has always been one of my favorite nights at the venue. Simply put, it was a wild and strange show that also happened to be an insanely good time. There was vomit, crowd surfing on a pool raft shaped like a jukebox and a somewhat unexpected moment involving male genitalia rubbed against the fretboard of a Fender guitar.

Since then the boys have cut down on their notorious behavior. They’re more about putting on a more straight-forward, but still entertaining performance. It’s not a bad thing but it does take out some of the danger long associated with the band’s live show. While the antics have died down, the crowds are just as intense. I knew that bringing a camera bag would be too cumbersome and a liability, so I arrived with only my Fujifilm X100S, slightly hidden under a zip-up hoodie with a Black Rapid strap.

By the end of the first 3 songs I had beer down the back of my shirt and quietly wondered if I were bleeding from being repeatedly pushed against the stage.

It was evident that I had made the right choice by going with the X100S. The auto-focus struggled when being bounced against the front of the stage more than expected, but once I had my shots from with crowd it wasn’t much of an issue. The stage lighting was rough, even with the bright momentary stage lights that band brought with them, so I chose to edit in black & white in order to keep a sense of detail that often gets lost in some of the more extreme color washes. Since I was unsatisfied with my photos of The Black Lips from Burgerama (more on that when I write about the festival) I also edited wide, which resulted in a lot of photos of Jared but whatever.

This being my 5th time photographing the band, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from The Black Lips. Earlier in the afternoon I had photographed The Black Lips’ in-studio performance at KDHX, St. Louis’ community radio station. While that went rather well, the conversation at the studio often gravitated towards food and checking into the hotel. Talking with drummer Joe Bradley I understood that they had driven non-stop from Omaha to St. Louis and after the show, at an upscale bowling alley, bassist Jared Swilley told me that they had not really slept in the last 5 days. While there were a few slight goofs or missed notes during their performance that could be attributed to such an existence and guitarist Cole Alexander seemed completely bewildered at times, it didn’t make the set any less enjoyable or entertaining.

See the rest of the photos from the Black Lips’ gnarly set at The Firebird here.