Tattoo Artist Mag by modeledzero - March 30, 2012
By Oliver Peck(er)
Crash: Everyone who knows O’Peck knows that he lives a rare sort of tattoo life, full of travel, adventure and goddamn great tattoos! He’s going to be sharing some of that with us… But before we even get going, I asked him to make a few comments on his personal experience of doing the Ink Master television show, just to get it out-of-the-way.
Personally, I’ll say that Oliver is one of the most genuine people you will ever meet, in any walk of life, and of ALL the tattooers I know, he’s the guy who should be on TV! A tattooer’s tattooer, bar-none! -C
Oliver Peck: How to start… There’s a question? Well first; I don’t have a television at my house and I haven’t had one, or cable or satellite in over a decade… So my opinion of what is on TV is not really relevant most of the time, but when I was approached to be a judge on Ink Master I had to really think about its, pros and cons, getting paid and exposure, criticism of my peers.
Well, obviously I chose to do it and now I feel I made the right choice, it was an awesome experience, I got paid well. Dave Navarro, Chris Nunez and myself all had a great time, we got along well & are all lookin’ forward to doing it again. With my limited knowledge of “Reality TV”, (which most of us know the term “reality” is used loosely), I think it is silly, so my expectations for the outcome of the show weren’t really that high. I also went into this knowing that the show was marketed towards the general public, not the tattooing community.
Of course, I expected haters to voice their opinion, especially from those who like to consider themselves the “tattoo elite.” But anyway, we made the show, we said what we said, I was 100 percent genuine and Nunez, Dave and I did our best to judge what we saw and I am confident that we made the right choice… But I knew that they had a lot of control in the editing so I was concerned on how it would come across in the end.
So I watched the shows and I was pretty happy with the outcome, of course they made it as dramatic as they could and made certain characters play against each other, but overall I thought it was funny and entertaining. Most of the feedback I have gotten from the general public has been positive and the show did great in the ratings hence we are doing a second season…
Now to address the negative feedback I have heard from a few people in the tattoo community, the first thing I need to let you in on (if you didn’t already know) is that this show is not made by tattoo people, and is not marketed to the serious tattoo community. It is a cable TV show for the general public, whether they be tattooed or not.
So you shouldn’t be upset if you don’t like the show… you should just change the channel. I ride motorcycles and love motorcycles more than almost anything in the world and all the motorcycle-themed TV shows fuckin’ suck! So I wouldn’t watch them even if I had TV.
Okay, Dave Navarro! Why is Dave Navarro on the show? What does he have to do with it? Well, it’s a TV game show… You need a host and usually they wanna’ celebrity host, right? So who to choose? I think Dave is an awesome choice, coulda been some lame-ass Joe Rogan type, some pinup/porn chick or who knows what else?!
Dave is a rock star, Janes Addiction! One of my favorite bands; he’s been gettin’ tattooed for over 20 years from Bob Roberts, Mark Mahoney, Greg James, Freddy Negrete etc… That’s bad-ass! He is an artist and a fuckin’ cool dude! He did a great job hosting the show and his part of judging was just as a tattoo collector, he left all the technical shit up to Nunez and myself, if you have a problem with us… Well, so be it.
Now on to the contestants… The only problem I had is that they stated these were the top 10 tattooers from all over the world! Well, everyone knows they are obviously not the Top 10. Just the 10 they could get. I know a lot of great tattooers that turned down this show, so they shouldn’t complain about who is on the show. If what you want is better tattooers on the tv shows, then be on it! If not just let it go. The producers obviously want characters that will be good on TV, they want it to be interesting, entertaining, and possibly a little informative for people to watch, which I think it was.
So in closing I will say I am glad that I made the decision to take part in this project and I am lookin’ forward to Season 2 and I can’t wait to see what good and bad tattooers they have lined up to compete! Thank you to all my friends in and out of the tattoo community that support me in this and to all the haters, I understand…
Haters gonna hate!
(Oliver Peck can be found at Elm St. Tattoo in Dallas and True Tattoo in Hollywood.)
Very cool, and interesting!