Day 328

328/365, originally uploaded by Aaron LaRue.

Today I shot UCSB's annual music festival, Extravaganza. This is Rusko, and he easily stole the show. 


The day started with a local band, Sprout, who won the opening spot at the Battle of the Bands a while back. 





After that the Expendables took the stage. They were the act that I was most excited for and they had a great set. 




It was a nice day out, all the girls had their dresses on which was a nice change of pace, and a little reggae/punk made things perfect. Plus with a mustache like that, you can't go wrong. Next, Talib Kweli took the stage.




I don't normally like seeing rappers live, but I actually enjoyed his set. As a photographer though, it was pretty boring. There's only so many shots you can take of one guy running around on stage, so it got really repetitive. I felt like I came back with 100 of the same picture. 

After Kweli, Rusko took the stage. His set was heavy. Really heavy. In the front of the stage, where I was shooting from, they had a huge stack of subs. Whenever a song would drop I'd almost get the wind knocked out of me, it was intense. Rusko worked the crowd like a conductor and everyone was in to it, and his song selection was great. Every so often I'd turn around and look at the crowd, all I could do was laugh at how crazy it was. The only thing that I couldn't take was Rusko's teeth. I know he's English, but my god, let's not try and reinforce stereotypes:




Take the money you made today and go get those things fixed dude. 


Cee Lo Green rounded out the day. A lot of people left after Rusko. While Cee Lo was good, he couldn't compete. 

 


Plus, he opened his set with two covers. Sure, hearing Cee Lo do War Pigs by Ozzy was awesome, and his band killed it, but it just made it seem like he didn't have enough of his own material to put together a good set. His band almost made up for it though. They ripped, and they were all girls, which was rad.




Overall it was a good day. A long day, but a good one. When all was said and done, I took 1,016 pictures, so I was wiped, and I had a gnarly sunburn, but it was definitely worth it.