Heavy Metal

A common kind of event in this country is a "Taste Of" whatever. Restaurants in a particular area put up booths and sell samples of their cuisine. There was a kind of dinky Taste of Downtown St. Louis over the weekend in Kiener Plaza. First time for this that I'm aware of. There weren't a lot of restaurants participating and the crowd was light on a very hot day.

I spent a lot of my time doing the street photographer practice of sitting on a bench and waiting for interesting people to come to me. The results were mixed. There was entertainment, though. One of the acts was a heavy metal band called Mental Fixation. Maybe not the best name ever but they represented the genre well.        

Primal Scream

Entertainment at the Cinco de Mayo festival, if you find this entertaining. A heavy metal band, not at all Hispanic, with a crazed bass player. I have to admit to listening to some of this stuff when I was young, Led Zeppelin turned up to 10 and so forth. Then I got bored with it and learned that there are other ways to howl.      

Renaissance Man

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The start of a new series, a visit to the St. Louis Renaissance Faire. Readers of this blog may remember that I was personally invited by Etiene, the Queen of the Faeries. More about them soon.

Meet Jim. He looks scary but he was just as nice as can be. Jim plays guitar in a heavy metal band. We started talking about music (he was impressed that I was at Woodstock) and then photography. He explained why and how I should get a networking page on MySpace to promote my work. Jim asked for my card, saying some other bands might like me to do some publicity shots. Like almost everyone, he was delighted that someone wanted to take his picture just because he was interesting.