Rummage - John 3:16

My friend Lindsey who I've been friends with since kindergarten came to visit me in Ventura, California, sometime around late 2003. I remember bringing her and her girlfriend Jenna (which on a sad side note has passed away since) down to LA to go site seeing, must of been their first time in LA. We ended up in Santa Monica at the 3rd Street Promenade. We made our way in to a Barnes and Noble and I was flipping though Annie Lebowitz's new book. Now this was around 2003 like I said, and I've only been into being obsessed with this photography thing for a couple months now. Very very new to the world. I'm flipping through the pages, and stop on this full bleed picture of John Frusciante playing guitar on the floor of his hotel room at the Chatau Marmont. I got this tightening in my chest, and was completely inspired by this type of photography. I thought, this is what I want to do. I knew this was the direction I wanted to explore and plus, how cool would it be to photograph John. Then I didn't listen to much of John's solo work, but I did grow up listening to the Chili Peppers. My earliest memories are jamming to a cassette of "Mothers Milk" in my friend cowan's bedroom in 7th grade, before we went to skate on his front porch. That evening when I got home, the first thing I did was research a little about John and found out he was playing a show coming up in Hollywood, and that it was going to be very low key, no more than 50-60 some in attendance.

With all that said, during the day of the show February 2, 2004, which was titled " Performance 3 ", a lot of things fell into place. One of the biggest besides, me seeing the picture in the first place, was that it was raining all afternoon in Hollywood, so I brought a rain coat to wear while I stood in line. If it wasn't raining I wouldn't of been able to sneak my camera under my jacket in to the venue and none of this would of been possible. This was back when it was a little more relaxed, before Dime Bag was killed on stage, but they still were very strict on camera's, because of bootlegging and all. They did have 2 big ol' bouncers as you walked in, but thankfully no metal detectors. So I made it in, and again luckily, that day I rented a digital camera, a whopping 6 mega-pixel Canon D60, with an on camera flash, which of course froze the moments and made every picture sharp, than having to shoot available light, which nothing would of came out. Again, made it that far for nothing.

I remember standing there a couple feet from John playing to an audience of 50 plus people, playing the same as if it were an arena full of 100,000 fans. My hairs stood on end, feeling the vibrations of the music throughout my whole body. The vibrations were as much of a part of the music as the audio was. You could see and feel that's how John felt too.

I also met a cat named SMAK, while I was in line. I asked him if it was OK if i brought my camera in. He said he didn't think so, while he tucked his video camera farther in to his cargo shorts. We exchanged business cards, in hopes of swapping some stills for video weeks later, which thankfully we did. I now have that whole gig on dvd. To me that was a moment in time, which I can go back to and relive, and even better share with others.

So this page is from journal number 6 rightfully titled " You must create what you are looking for ", it's contains some photo's from the show and the concert ticket stub, and also looks like some gaffers tape too.