Dave Raphael

An uneventful Friday night was interrupted by an old friend who called out of the blue and asked if I could hop in his auto in 20 minutes to take some pictures of a gig he was playing.

Sure, what is it?

This burlesque thing, sort of.  It’s fun, you’ll see.

With enough time to spool up a few rolls of film, I was out into the rain and off to see a show.

Fun night indeed.  A great band fronted by some fab choreography, flaming hula hoops and acrobatics.  Always make time for girls who can fly through the air.  More info here!

Nothing quite beats the early morning experience up at dawn, abbreviating whatever one calls a brief period of sleep after a night of heavy, holiday, family reunited drinking.  Speeding through the Florida mist, pedal to the floor, stephen stills led the charge and it was everybody I love you  that made the lifting the clutch in second at 50 miles per unsafe hour to make a 90 degree left across the two lane state road into this mess just that more exciting.

might have even left a tidy black mark from the new goodyears on the freshly cured cement.

know you got to run…

a swamp at dawn is something to behold.

Its nice to watch the mist burn off the pacific over late morning coffee in the summer from a balcony in Santa Monica, but there is something pretty magical about watching the mist dissipate over hundreds of acres of two foot deep water whose source is solely precipitation.

This of course, is the only part of Florida thats worth a damn (excluding *maybe* the carnival storage lots and accompanying freak show land locked trailer parks), but its nice to enjoy it while we still can.

I came out here with my brother who wanted to record some birds, dinosaurs or Southern Florida remote criminal activity for his blog.  Hear it!

The highlight of the morning for me, if such a thing is possible, was hanging out with this hawk for a while.  Growing up on several hundred feet of bedrock, it was nice to see a raptor that I could somewhat relate to.  Twenty eight mil’s doesnt do so much to project the size of this bird, but it was surely a man sized meal of a hawk.  Not quite barn owl madness, but real big for a killer bird.

That was the coolest predator I saw out here.  Would have been a whole lot cooler if I saw The Predator, I have always figured that the medical kit he keeps in his left arm is probably pretty rad to check out up close, but no such luck.  Predator vs. South Florida has some potential to be a real good script…

know you got to hide.

I hit Manhattan in afternoon traffic today, its been a while since Ive massaged my love affair with my audi’s second gear and its clutch pushing my left foot closer to freedom.  At a top speed of thirteen miles per hour at six thousand rpm, electric windows low on the first warm spring day, I sat stopped mid span on the bridge of george washington swaying in the undulating suspension stress, blasting the journey of the weedian to nazareth as loud and as in time as my auto allows.  Met with the kind of inquisitive looks of boredom that only sitting stopped in traffic can produce, this record set the perfect tone for the evening ahead.

After the sun set, I briskly limped down to what will likely be my high moment of April 2010 cranking that A side again and, attempting to skip home two hours later, it was clear that no celebration would be complete without letting the hifi work it out for itself.

On the heels of deep discussion of origins, fate would have it that Paranoid lurked directly below Jerusalem.  Out of all the art direction meetings people have had, Im betting  nobody has probably ever had a better one than Black Sabbath.

so he just comes out of the woods?

yeah, but there’s like, THREE of him.

three?

Yeah, he’s coming out of the woods to face it full on, three times, but the third time he gets there he’s just like, melt down freak out face.

but why does he have a sword?

It goes with the shield and pink tights.

You want to put a sash AND a cotton cape on a guy with pink tights?

No, on all three of him.  Well nine, really.

Hey guys, sorry Im late, I brought my helmet, why the bloody hell you need this?

yes!

Im not getting this at all, whats the helmet for?

Look, he’s got that nappy dready thing happening, right, with the beard too, the helmet is to protect his doo.  Plus, when he has that freak out face the helmet is gonna make it look real cool.

No its not, it has my Dad’s scooter club logo on the front of it, dirty bunch of geezers.

Fuck you bill.

Stop you two.  Its gonna be blurred cause there’s three of him and its at night.

I bet that Chip Monck probably knows someone to do the illustration.

NO!  Check it, this is the best part:  we’ll just cut it out of some craft paper, throw it up on the stand and shoot it.  It’ll be awesome.

you want to cut the lettering out of construction paper?

Well, no, IM not going to do it, but I have a nephew that can do it for us.

what kind of art director cuts a band name out of heavy cotton paper?

Wait, Im still confused about the three guys on the cover.

Its all the same guy.

and he has three swords?

well, just one, but its like three.

He showed up to battle who again?

Six or seven of himself, we’ll put those on the back cover.

And thats why he has the freakout face on the front cover?

Yeah, cause he’s like, if Im gonna battle myself, Im gonna outsmart myself and show up with THREE of me to fight myself.  But myself pwns him and shows up to battle with like six myselfs and when he sees that myself outshined him, he melts down.

heavy.

yeah.

a battle against duality man, fucking paranoid.

mate, you know that warner just completely censored the lyrics to walpurgis and made us write the whole thing over and re record it, even rename the motherfucker; you think they are gonna let you put three versions of one guy fighting a battle in pink tights with eight versions of himself on the cover?

Its six versions, but they are on the back cover and the battle is really implied anyway.  But Fuck warner.

yeah, fuck warner.

yeah, and los angeles too.

yeah, fuck los angeles.

maybe he should be battling los angeles.

Tony, does your cousin still have his world wrestling championship belt?  Do you think he might let us borrow it for the inside cover photo?  That would be smarty smart, and we can put Oz on the other panel alone, to you know, balance it.

Why the hell cant I just stand in the middle of the stage like every other singer?

Because I have less fingers than you.  So Im standing in the middle.

Fair enough, but why do I have to be off all alone on the cover too?

Its not on the cover, the guy in the pink tights with the shield is on the cover.

When did he get a shield?

When you were getting your dad’s scooter helmet.

Oz, you are on that panel alone to balance the wrestling championship belt fingers is wearing.

why cant I wear the belt.

Because you got the shirt with the stars on it.

Fuck you man.

Fuck YOU ! !! ! , all I got was a magic potion satchel to hang off of my belt, I wore this shirt at the Manchester gig last week.

Well fuck all you guys, if I have to be on a whole panel by myself, Im taking this fucking cross.

Ok fine, take the cross, but now we are going to have to shoot it on a grassy knoll.

Great, so now I have to sit, in grass, all because I took the starry shirt?

Fuck off Bill, you only got the shirt because your dad had the helmet.

I don’t know man, it looks like the myself on the back cover has the freakout face too.

Thats exhaustion.

Exhaustion?

Yeah, they are all attacking.  It’s tiring.

The guy behind the tree doesn’t stop them?

No, look, the guy behind the tree, he’s the whole cover, and you cant even like, see him at all.  Thats the first thing everyone is gonna ask when they see the cover, “what about the guy behind the tree”, but thats the beauty of it, the guy behind the tree that you cant see, he IS the guy.

And there’s only one of him?

yeah.

and its like, his imagination?

no.  his paranoia.

whoah.

heavy.

paranoid.

yeah.  people will write about this someday, we are changing the world, you’ll see.

I always freak out on this bridge.

Is there anything worse than going up an incline on a suspension bridge?

No thanks.

at night.

night flight.

I’d be living a different adventure for sure without it.

When I was kid, I wanted to play guitar like the Reverend Billy G, wished to run an Eclair like Mike Wadleigh and hoped that one day I would be pointing a Leica at the Heart of Rock,  just like Jim Marshall.  I quietly waited for the day that my black m4 and summilux would be as brassed up, beaten, and full of history as Jim Marshall’s.  I’ll forever be in debt for the perfect motivation at a critical moment in my youth.  Learning that Jim Marshall had died just now, I was compelled to take a photograph of my camera sitting here, where I left it when I sat down to edit tonight.  It was the only thing I could think to photograph in that moment.  I wouldnt be anywhere without the take your face off inspiration that Jim Marshall was for me when I was a tike with unstoppable dreams.  Thanks, thanks, and thank you Jim Marshall, there’ll never be another.

I had met

that grew up on Os Mutantes.

I’ll take a train in technicolor.

to survive one week in a harsh desert environment.

The fine guys at Crack For Your Eyes spreading the gospel on 18 March 2010.

Check out CYFE !

I have a three page editorial in the second issue of Geil Magazine out now.

Shot this last Summer in Amsterdam with a wonderful team: Jeroen Kamphorst stylist, Joke Kroon Makeup Artist and model Dennis Gijsbers.

check out the issue online, the layout is on pages 57-59.  Geil Magazine Issue Two!

We thought we might fly on Wednesday.  Wind.  White.  No surprise there…

Thursday morning popped up and I met John over at Burning Sky to check the weather and see about our flight.  This comes after a morning of pacing around my camp, my neighbors camp, the camp across the street and the camp next to them, extolling my calmness while chewing my fingers down to the cuticle…  After they announced the second weather hold, we headed back to Mystical Misfits, I hadnt spent much time over there yet and was clearly missing out on some fun.

Backing up just a bit, John is, I suppose one could finally say, a dear old friend.  I met him on my first job in the movies plugging in lights when I was 20 or 21 and this guy is absolutely the reason I first attended Burning Man in 2006.  As my good fortune would have it, John is a sky diver and jumping at Burning Man is as much of the ritual for him as is going in the first place.  You can scroll back through my blog to find a bit more history on this fine character in my circus.  Last year I shot him packing up his chute after a jump.  This year, there was a different story to tell.

There are a few different ways to jump at Burning Man, I think that if you have a plane or can talk a pilot into getting you in the air, nobody is really going to stop you however most people jump through Burning Sky.  Its a fairly well organized camp and they charter a plane and pilot for a few days for the express purpose of skydiving at Burning Man.  I am not a skydiver, so have never gone through the process, but from what I understand, you buy jump tickets during the winter in packages of five.  I also think you need a significant number of jumps under your belt before they’ll sell you a ticket at all.  John was not planning to use all his tickets jumping and that’s where things would get Juicy Junior, real Juicy (in a black suited kind of way).  Burning Sky might not let you jump with no experience, but if you get a ticket from a jumper they will let you fly in an observer seat providing you land with the plane.  And thats where I was this morning, holding a poker chip that would finally get me on a plane to see this madness in the center of the ghost of Lake Lahontan from about 11,000 feet.

Back at Mystical Misfits, I got a good look of what the camp has grown into.  Now two flatbeds worth of scaffolding large, slowly hauled up from the bowels of LA County, they were a sight to see in 2009 and easily the biggest camp on the block.

The big addition to the camp this year was a swing.  Safest swing in Black Rock City.

There was much discussion that morning about truss welds, the joys of rigging, trust and ultimately, hope.

We killed about an hour enjoying the view, trying to find more coffee and eating some bar-b-que sausage creation before heading back to check on the weather.

The scene back at burning sky was exactly as we left it, a bunch of bored skydivers and two anxious people, rocking on their heels, looking at the sky, hoping to trade white for blue.  We had made the decision to get on the plane if there was a plane to get on, and twenty mintues after checking in, a walkie squawked and we lucked out with word that there was a clear enough opening to fly.  With that announcement, there was madness in the camp as everyone scrambled to get their rigs together and hop the ride that would drop us at the airport.

Next thing I know Ive been handed a parachute, walked the plank into the back of the burning sky art car and am trying to balance the adrenaline surge and quell the freak out of the summer.  After months of waiting, this was actually happening…

increased heart rate.  check.  sweaty palms.  check.  tunnelvision.  check.  and this was just the van…

The best part of the mad dash into this van so we could make it into the air before the weather changed was the breakneck five miles per hour speed which hurled us towards the airport.  There are few things that I know of that can stretch time quite like driving in a car really, really, really, really slow.  Just what the doctor ordered…

End of the road and a long walk back.  Welcome to Nevada’s own wretched hive of scum and villany.