I'm a Freelance Music Photojournalist from NYC and Founder of the Heavy Metal website PiercingMetal.com; I created this blog site to showcase the other things in life that keep my interest or catch my attention. Believe me that is a lot of stuff to talk about when it comes down to it. I hope you enjoy what we are delivering because there is so much to share as a resident of this bustling metropolis.
Readers already know that we have hit a few conventions for the sake of blogging and featured them here if the adventure was deemed suitable for this medium as opposed to my main website PiercingMetal.com; Sometimes the wanderings and viewpoints cross-pollinate across both blogs and such is the case with the Blogworld and New Media Expo that was recently held at NYC’s Javits Center. My colleague Skeleton Pete and I decided to go to this event and wander the exhibition hall to see what it offered up. Since we are both bloggers and photographers, the thought was that we might be able to take some solid information back to our respective readerships while at the same time learning some tricks of this wild west of a trade. As PiercingMetal’s official blog is my true “main blog”, I felt that the ideas formulated were best served up in that space, but I decided to use the PiercingKen blog as a bit of a traffic sign. Please click the logo below to be taken to that story and the images that were captured.
Please note that comments are disabled under this posting but readers with topical views can easily leave them under the main post that this page leads to. Thanks.
You might recall my mentioning about how I had attended the NY Comic Con back in October on behalf of my Metal & Hard Rock entertainment site PiercingMetal.com. If you don’t – well now you know. I did this because the music medium and the comic book one are two things that work together as well as peanuts in M&M’s and like that other adventure, this particular one is being served up on my Official Blog for PiercingMetal.com which we affectionately call “PiercingMetal Musings”. With the last convention I decided to let this side blog offer you a chance to see it by clicking the logo and since that worked out rather well I am doing so again. The logo below shall take you to the main page of the article and it shall show you the chapters. It was a fun time but vastly different from that of the gigantic NY Comic Con.
Please note that comments are disabled under this posting as its more of a traffic sign than an actual posting. Feel free to leave any thoughts or impressions on the individual chapters as you see fit. We always love to hear them.
Can you believe it? I know that I can’t because I didn’t expect to use this blog site as much as I ended up doing but that is okay because I love the freedom that it offers me as a provider of written and visual entertainment. When I launched PiercingKen.com, you might remember that it originally had a Blogger account for a few posts. If you don’t recall this, that is okay because every post was imported into the new WordPress medium we moved to only a few months after launching. Looking back on the creative year that it’s been I found a little surprise that I didn’t manage to start off the blog with an introductory post about its premise, but I guess I was just too eager to start delivering different content to a different audience from my PiercingMetal.com readership.
Since launching the site, its been fortunate enough to develop its own fan base and readership and I was happy to find this being the case. I’ve really strove to do a lot of postings that reflect my interests and passions and to do so in a manner that brings you readers into the mix and leaves you hopefully wanting more. I have no master plans for the second years posts but I can say expect a little bit of the same, a little silliness and perhaps even something to inspire. I don’t think too deeply on this and I suggest that you just sit back and enjoy the offerings. I’ve gotten our Facebook page up and running so please be sure to “Like” us over there or even Following us on Twitter. The links for these are below.
Closing up, thank you so very much for the time that you spend on this site. I truly appreciate it.
I’m sorry, I just felt that you readers deserved to know that I was instantly made hungry by this single photo of the White Mana Diner in Jersey City this afternoon. It amused me that I found this image after having shot it about seven months ago while helping a friend move some of their things from an apartment to a storage unit, but here it was – just sitting in a folder of hundreds of shots that I had yet to determine a use for.
I took the photo while riding “shotgun” in my friends car, and I had the little Sony point and shoot camera with me, as I am often apt to have be the case these days and as we hit a red light, I drooled and said “Mmmm burgers”. Of course she was in a rush to finish moving her stuff so this was all I would see of the place and that bothered me after the fact when I learned it was in fact a historical landmark and is associated with the 1939 World’s Fair. I am not sure that my friend ever tried it but she did make mention that it was well-known and that made me look further into it. Too bad we didn’t have a few extra minutes because stuff like this just gets the curiosity going.
Read all about its interesting history via the Wikipedia entry HERE.
Now the only question I have left is who is up for an adventure out to Jersey City with one of the purposes being to visit and eat something from here? Summer is good exploring time.
Many years ago I pursued the challenging career of working musician and while I did achieve some local notoriety in bands from the region such as Eclipse and eventually Machine after them, I did not stick to the plan proper and remained more of an occasional jam here and there. Maybe a blog in the future will discuss that bit of adventuring. One of the dudes from my way back years is Rob Emery and reconnected a number of years ago and since that time I have been supporting his project that is entitled “Ragtag”. Sometimes the band sports an “NYC” after the name but I have not seen that lately so perhaps it has been omitted for good.
In any event, Ragtag is a three piece Rock/Funk outfit with Robbie singing and playing some serious axe while Alan Chan grooves on the bass and Sinehead Doug locks it down on the drums and 2011 finds the band celebrating being together for ten years. They play a mixture of originals and covers on any given night. I hit the recent gig at Sullivan Hall in NYC which is a venue I like even though they don’t really do much Metal over there. It’s a pleasant change of pace and even though I was not “working” my usual role as journalist and photographer, I did use my Panasonic Lumix to snare some video which I am sharing with you all. I figured this is a fun little side thing to offer readers of the PiercingKen blog, so let’s see how much more comes in the future. The video posted is a performance of their original number “Not Long Ago”.
Congratulations Ragtag on your ten years of making music together. I raise a glass to you my friends. Keep on rocking.
