This past Saturday, electronic rock band Lotus performed for a sold-out crowd at the Turner Hall Ballroom in Milwaukee. Performing a number of tracks off their 2014 Gilded Age EP (as well as songs from their entire discography), Lotus accompanied their mesmerizing light show with great vibes for one of their Wisconsin stops on the Gilded Age Tour. Check out our photos below, as The Early Registration’s Halley Shaw was there to capture some of the best moments of the night.
This past Saturday electro-house musician Steve Aoki brought his energetic Neon Future Experiencetour to Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom. Fans lined up for blocks in the Chicago winter, hours before Aoki hit the stage, and the wait was well worth it for the sold-out crowd. And while the line was starting to build at the Aragon, Aoki held a private listening event at Casabar for his Neon Future II project, the highly anticipated second half to his Neon Future album. Neon Future II is scheduled for a May 12th release and features Linkin Park, Snoop Lion, Matthew Koma and more (stream the video for its ‘I Love It When You Cry’ single here). Not only did fans get to experience Neon Future II last night, but Aoki also performed a number of cuts and fan favorites from his entire discography to keep the crowd hyped. Check out our photos below, as The Early Registration was there to capture some of the best moments of the night.
Cashmere Cat has really blown up this past year, and he is showing no signs of stopping. Not only is he currently supporting Ariana Grande on her Honeymoon Tour, but as soon as he is done warming up arenas, he heads to venues to headline a tour of his own. Last night Cashmere performed for a sold-out crowd at The Mirmar in Milwaukee, playing a number of cuts including his new DJ Mustard collaboration ‘Ice Rink’ as well as his highly anticipated Kanye West track ‘Wolves’, the first song on Kanye’s forthcoming So Help Me God album. Check out our photos below, as The Early Registration was there to capture some of the best moments.
This year, February was jam packed with great releases from a variety of artists. Some came to us as a surprise, others beating expectations, and some just simply getting it right. Check out some of the best releases the month of February had to offer.
My grandfather once shared with me an old saying that goes… “there are two things in the world that everyone loves, rap album covers and red pandas.” Okay… maybe I made that up. But if you don’t like Kanye West album covers and videos of red pandas playing in the snow, then there is seriously something wrong with you. So in honor of my spirit animal and the creativity of rappers, we have took the liberty of photoshopping red pandas into famous rap album covers. Enjoy some of our best attempts, re-imagining the works of Dr. Dre, Kanye West, Drake, Rae Sremmurd and more!
Here at The Early Registration we like to pride ourselves on our music knowledge, to stay polished on our musical expertise our new feature is a little game of musical “6 Degrees”. For those who are unfamiliar, six degrees of separation is the theory that everyone in the world is connected by six or fewer steps, so we are now taking the liberty of connecting musicians by songs and features, who you would never think could be connected. This week our 6˚ piece is in anticipation of comedic rapper Lil Dicky’s upcoming Spring 2015 Professional Rapper Tour, which kicks off next month in California. For those who don’t know, Lil Dicky has received quite the buzz after his ‘Lemme Freak‘ video (one of our favorite videos of 2014), and through his raps LD is on pursuit to become the next LD (Larry David of course). And who better to connect Dicky to than his favorite rapper and fellow non-gentile, Drake? This may be a little hard as Dicky has only been rapping ‘professionally’ for about a year, but we’re up for the challenge.
Dan Garcia isn’t your “average photographer”. By day he is a 26-year-old lawyer from Wisconsin with no formal photography training. In fact, just a few months ago was his first time in a photo pit and his first time ever shooting with a DSLR camera. But despite breaking traditional norms for entering into the competitive music photography world, Garcia landed his first gig at Lollapalooza, where he shot for the first time among some of the best music photographers in the country. In less than a year’s time, he has shot photos of some of the biggest names in music, including Kanye West, Eminem, Outkast, Lorde, Calvin Harris, Childish Gambino, Chance the Rapper, Migos, FKA Twigs and Wilco, just to name a few. He also founded this very site, The Early Registration, (among other reasons) to continue to shoot concerts and also give opportunities for other young photographers to shoot shows throughout the country. For someone who describes himself both as “not a real photographer” but who ask views himself as one of the best music photographers in Chicago, we wanted to interview the young lawyer slash photographer.
Let’s admit it, we all have a favorite rapper of two that we wish we started listening to well beyond when we actually did. So for our new series we will be showcasing an artist that you probably should be listening to by now, but for whatever reason maybe they flew under your radar, and you want to get up to date before they continue to take off. So for this week, there is no better rapper to showcase than Chicago’s Vic Mensa. With the release of Kanye, Vic, and Sia’s new collaboration ‘Wolves‘, there will be a lot of rap fans who are just now learning all there is to know about the SAVEMONEY rapper. Vic has been huge in the city of Chicago for quite some time, but maybe you have slept on him for too long. Don’t worry! We got you covered with a Late Pass.
Last year Consequence of Sound posted a feature I wrote, titled “Let’s Play Moneyball with a Summer Music Festival”. In the piece I used price quotes of popular musicians to swap out acts from the 2014 lineup of Milwaukee’s music festival Summerfest, in attempts to also make “the World’s Largest Music Festival” also the world’s best music festival (in my opinion of course). This year I wanted to do the same, in anticipation of Summerfest releasing its full lineup within the next couple months. I used the estimated budget that I calculated last year and booked a number of great and relevant acts in 2015, to show just how great Summerfest COULD be (when the festival as is, is already pretty great!).
Yesterday Chicago’s Chance The Rapper continued to give back to his city, by hosting his first “Open Mike” event. From raising $100,000 for Chicago schools, to attending Big Sean and Donda’s House‘s “Behind the Mic” event for young Chicago artists, Chance always puts on for his city. Last night though, Chance and the Young Chicago Authorsgave local high school students a night that they would not forget, as the Chicago Cultural Center was packed with nearly 300 young artists. In addition to young musicians, poets, and comedians getting on the mic, some of the pros got to hit the stage too. Chicago comedian Hannibal Buress and rapper King Louie both performed for the young crowd, and SAVEMONEY‘s Vic Mensa was even in attendance.
Check out our photos below as we sent our photographer Andrew Baker to capture some of the best moments last night, and be sure to stay tuned as this is just one of many similar events that Chance will host in Chicago.
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