Kevin Warnock

Rachel Thoele, Ted Falconi, Steve DePace and Bruce Loose of Flipper, March 2, 2012, Oakland, California. Photo by Kevin Warnock.

I have photographed bands since I was in college. Usually the bands were small punk rock bands few had heard of.

Sometimes the bands had a recording or two out.

I even did a shoot for an album jacket for Sluglords, for my friend Willy Lipat, the bass guitar player for Sluglords.

Rachel Thoele, Ted Falconi, Steve DePace and Bruce Loose of Flipper, March 2, 2012, Oakland, California. Photo by Kevin Warnock.

I have never conducted a formal photo session with a famous band until earlier this month, when I photographed the groundbreaking punk band known as Flipper.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to photograph Flipper because I am friends with the drummer, Steve DePace.

DePace handles publicity and booking for Flipper, and he asked me in February if I could come to their concert at The New Parish on March 2, 2012 and photograph the band before their show. I agreed, and I am really glad I agreed.

Steve DePace, Rachel Thoele, Bruce Loose and Ted Falconi of Flipper, March 2, 2012, Oakland, California. Photo by Kevin Warnock.

I wrote about Flipper on February 25, 2012 to help promote this concert. The show itself was outstanding, and I hope to write a review later. I shot high definition video at the show which turned out well. I brought a tripod and set up in the balcony with a clear shot of the stage. I got some great stills of the band performing, including an exceptional shot of guitarist Falconi in action.

Steve DePace, Rachel Thoele, Bruce Loose and Ted Falconi of Flipper, March 2, 2012, Oakland, California. Photo by Kevin Warnock.

Here are my favorite eight shots from my nine minute photoshoot March 2, 2012 with Flipper. The band was also formally interviewed before their show. I didn’t want to take too much time, and I felt that after nine minutes that I had some good results. I could have gone on much longer, but I wanted to make a good impression by being decisive and quick. I hope that Flipper will recommend me to other bands they know, as I really enjoy photographing groups of people. I gave a lot of directions on this shoot — including telling people where to sit, stand and where to look. I didn’t tell Rachel Thoele, the bassist, to kick singer Bruce Loose in the head. They were joking around which was great. You would think I knew all these members in advance from how relaxed everyone looks, but I just met Thoele, Loose and guitar player Ted Falconi a few minutes prior to the shoot.

Steve DePace, Rachel Thoele, Bruce Loose and Ted Falconi of Flipper, March 2, 2012, Oakland, California. Photo by Kevin Warnock.

Loose only pretends to be hurt from his kick in the head. He grimaced for a solid ten seconds like he was really injured — then he broke into laughter and stood up straight and was fine, as you can see in the final shot. He had me fooled.

Steve DePace, Rachel Thoele, Bruce Loose and Ted Falconi of Flipper, March 2, 2012, Oakland, California. Photo by Kevin Warnock.

All the members of Flipper were exceptionally nice to me. Ted Falcone even talked with me as I was putting away my lighting equipment. He asked me about LED photography lights and what I thought of them. I was impressed by his knowledge of the subject.

Steve DePace, Rachel Thoele, Bruce Loose and Ted Falconi of Flipper, March 2, 2012, Oakland, California. Photo by Kevin Warnock.

I shot these pictures with a Canon 5D Mark II camera. These pictures may be seen at full size if you click on them twice. Full size is 21 megapixels — huge — bigger than your screen.

Steve DePace, Rachel Thoele, Bruce Loose and Ted Falconi of Flipper, March 2, 2012, Oakland, California. Photo by Kevin Warnock.

Flipper leaves soon for a European tour. They will be flying, not swimming.

Here are the tour dates:

• April 5, 2012 The Croft — Bristol, UK
• April 6, 2012 Res­cue Rooms — Nottingham, UK
• April 7, 2012 The Duchess — York, UK
• April 8, 2012 Stereo — Glasgow, UK
• April 10, 2012 XOYO — London, UK
• April 12, 2012 De Klinker Club — Aarschot, Belgium
• April 13, 2012 Sonic Protest Fes­ti­val — Paris, France
• April 14, 2012 L’Epicerie Mod­erne — Lyon, France
• April 16, 2012 Nachtleben — Frank­furt, Germany
• April 17, 2012 Knust — Ham­burg, Germany
• April 18, 2012 Sten­gade
• April 20, 2012 Arena — Vienna, Austria
• April 21, 2012 Latte piu’ Live — Bres­cia, Italy
• April 22, 2012 Rössli — Bern, Switzerland
• April 24, 2012 Wild At Heart — Berlin, Germany
• April 25, 2012 Club Vaude­ville — Lin­dau, Germany
• April 26, 2012 LVC — Lei­den, The Netherlands

I got this list from the Flipper official website. I added the hyperlinks by performing Google searches for the names of the venues.

Before you book a trip to that venue, please check to be sure I got the link right by making sure you can find Flipper listed on that site for that day. The sites all looked like music venues, but I didn’t take the time to try to buy tickets to make sure I found the correct venue.

Peligro playing at music venue The New Parish in Oakland, California USA, March 2, 2012. Photo by Kevin Warnock.

My good friend Willy Lipat used to play in Jungle Studs and in Sluglords, two interesting punk bands from San Francisco, California USA.

Lipat got to know many musicians in the punk scene.

Steve DePace and D.H. Peligro were two of the other four members in Jungle Studs, along with Tony Chatham and Freddy.

Unfortunately, I have been told that Chatham got too deep into drugs and alcohol and ruined his mind so severely that the last time I heard he is living at Laguna Honda Hospital, which I can see at night only when its lights are on through the trees outside my living room window, about a mile away. I’ve been told Chatham doesn’t remember even his own wife and two children, so I have not been to see him. I would like to visit Tony Chatham, so if his family finds this, please let me know if a visit would be appropriate.

I got to know DePace and Peligro in their Jungle Studs days because I was studying (aka wasting vast amounts of my family’s money) at Brooks Institute at the time, and photographed Jungle Studs for a class assignment. One of these days I will drag out my old 4 x 5″ Kodak Vericolor negatives and have them scanned so I can illustrate a post about Jungle Studs.

Chatham was fond of telling me that he had framed the photograph I took of Jungle Studs and displayed it over his bed.

Lipat is still friends with DePace and Peligro, and DePace even came to my house for my birthday in 2007, with Lipat.

I just learned last week that Steve DePace went to high school at St. Ignacious, an elite and costly private school in San Francisco. This makes perfect sense to me because DePace is a sharp guy who writes well. DePace seems to have taken on a leadership role in the vintage hard core punk rock scene. He organized a great concert March 2, 2012 at the Oakland, California music venue The New Parish. The other musicians thanked him over the public address system several times throughout the four band event. DePace was the only organizer thanked, so clearly DePace is the guy.

Steve DePace is the drummer for the influential punk band Flipper, founded in 1979. I wrote a blog post in February, 2012 about Flipper.

D.H. Peligro was the drummer for Dead Kennedys, my favorite punk band, during its heyday in the 1980s. Peligro briefly was a member of The Red Hot Chili Peppers, according to Peligro’s WikiPediA entry.

D.H. Peligro has his own band now, appropriately named Peligro. Peligro means ‘danger’ in Spanish. One word cool band names are rare these days, so I suspect Peligro is glad to have Peligro.

Peligro played March 2, 2012 at the DePace organized show at The New Parish. I was there with my good camera, at the invitation of Steve DePace.

Peligro has produced three recordings. Sadly, I am not familiar with any of them, so I can’t comment on them.

What I can comment on is that on March 2nd, Peligro looked healthy, strong, lean and powerful, both on stage and off. He appears to have the same physique he had when he posed in a loin cloth at Powell and Market Streets (the tourist center of the City) in San Francisco for the cover of their Jungle Studs debut record over 20 years ago.

By my calculations, D.H. Peligro is 51 years old. He’s just as bold with women as I remember him being years ago. For his Friday night performance, Peligro wore a Coca-Cola red t-shirt emblazoned in the Coca-Cola font in white that read ‘Enjoy Cock.’ What I wouldn’t give for Peligro’s supreme confidence. Peligro used to date gorgeous and frequently published models, and I would not be surprised if he still does.

Playing in a punk rock band looks tiring. Whatever position one has in a punk band, the intensity is generally at the top end of the spectrum. Frankly, I am in awe that Peligro still has the physical energy for this. At the Friday show, he was on fire, as you can see in these pictures, which I took with my Canon 5D Mark II with a Canon 80-200mm L zoom lens on a tripod from the balcony.

Peligro has two other strong musicians that were also on fire on Friday.

I’m including video I shot of one song, to show you their musical energy. I spoke with D.H. after the show, and he remembered me which was flattering since I haven’t seen him in perhaps two decades, but I forgot to ask permission to post this video. I had permission from Steve DePace to capture video of Flipper. I had permission from the concert venue to be there capturing video. I simply don’t know if I had permission to capture video of the opening bands. D.H., if you’re reading this and would like me to remove the video clip, send me a message on Facebook. If you want me to photograph your band or just you, I would be honored to help out. Have a look at my work photographing people, here.

Peligro playing at music venue The New Parish in Oakland, California USA, March 2, 2012. Photo by Kevin Warnock.

As is usual, I posted these pictures at full camera resolution of 21 megapixels. Click on them to see them at full size.

Here are two Peligro music videos I discovered while researching this post. Powerful stuff.

Peligro was nominated for a Grammy Award for his rendition of Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix, which you can see D.H. Peligro singing in the second video below.