“Someone should nuke this building,” I say to my friend Holly as we pass the first security checkpoint. “Black Eyed Peas, Nickelback, Perez Hilton, Lady Gaga, The Jonas Brothers. It’d be a noble sacrifice to wipe them off the planet.”
Anyone who talked to me that day could tell you I was a little jaded about coming to the MMVAs, a celebrity-affirming orgy of staggering magnitude. My stepdad assures me that when I was 14, my taste in music was just as questionable as the throngs of screaming fans 20-deep in any direction from the old Chum City building. But I’m not listening to him.
Upon arrival I immediately navigate three layers of security to the press room and the press bar. Canadian, Candadian Light, Canadian 6.0 Coldshots and wine are the only options this year. I already have plenty of whine so I order a Coldshot.
My job tonight is to shoot the Soundcheck section and I like to get cross-section of the demographic at any event. I take some photos of people milling about outside, mostly nominees who knew they hadn’t won anything the moment they arrived. “If you aren’t assigned a handler, you aren’t going to win,” a nominated director tells me
I get photos of people who didn’t win anything, and a few of people who weren’t even nominated.
I get a photo of one VJ and think to myself, “Is there someone I can shoot who defines this show?” I’m immediatly distracted by the sound of a thousand fans screaming as one. More than anyone else, I realize, these fans will define the character of the evening.
I make my way to the front lines to get a photo of the crowd. As I lift my camera a ripple of arms rise and people around me start to scream. I take a few photos and get some quotes from some of the youngest fans. They’re all smiling, jumping, squeezing the barricades with their little fists, having the best day of their life.
Time passes and I’m upstairs watching The Black Eyed Peas give a post-performance interview. I almost forget all of the joy outside as I watch the band I most despise say one moronic thing after the next. They finish and Fergie starts walking toward me. I ask her for a photo expecting a brush off. “No problem,” she says.
I ask her a couple questions and to my surprise and astonishment she doesn’t brush me off. Her handler tells her that she needs to go but she tells him “just one second,” and turns back to answer my questions. I thank her.
As she’s about to leave, to my shock, she sticks out her hand and asks me my name. And then she thanks me.
I started feeling silly about all my whining and complaining.
If Fergie can make all those kids out there so happy and still be a fully decent human to me, does it really matter what I think about her music and her band? If the Jonas Brothers, Lady Gaga, Nickleback and The Black Eyed Peas are so important to so many people, who cares what one or a hundred jaded photographers think about it.[rssbreak]
