Last week, the Strokes finally got around to playing their New Year’s Eve show at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Mac DeMarco and Hinds opened.
My last couple of live shoots have sucked. Arriving at a venue to be told you have to shoot from the crowd. Or from the soundboard. Or at a fucking 45-degree angle. Can’t shoot here, can’t shoot there, must shoot three songs and fuck off out of the building and store your sensitive camera in a locker outside of the venue in the freezing cold. In an age where everyone has a camera in their hand or pocket, inexplicably people are more uptight about professional photography at gigs than ever before. Argh. Yeah, I know, poor baby.
Anyways, this gig, like the others, was sucking from a photo standpoint. Then the Strokes started playing, and my rage subsided. But then, basically, they never turned on any lights, leaving me wondering what the hell I was doing there. Can’t remember ever shooting from the pit but still having to bump up the ISO to 10000 or 12500.
So here are heavily Photoshopped images from the Strokes playing their first three songs (“Bad Decisions,” “Juicebox” and “Eternal Summer”) in what felt like almost total darkness. Of course, as soon as we photographers got the boot, the screen behind the band lit up in the most glorious colors.
Fuckers.
—words and photos by Wes Orshoski
Mac DeMarco 
Hinds
View Original Source Here
