1.The best show on television right now, in regards to storytelling, acting and best of all production values, is Justified, on FX. Based on a character invented by Elmore Leonard, the best mystery writer I have ever read, it follow the exploits of a US Marshall in Harlan County, KY. Raylan Givins, played by Timothy Oliphant travels through the show each week, shooting bad guys and seducing, and getting seduced, by beautiful women. The bad guys are amazing, especially Margo Martindale, who won an Emmy last year, and the incomparable Walton Goggins (Shane from the Shield), playing an old high school buddy of Raylan, who is alternately good and evil (sometimes in the same scene). The show is so beautifully filmed and lit that I find myself taking notes about lighting techniques, sometime stopping the DVR and rewinding to make drawings of where the light is coming from and trying to figure out how they do it.

2. Boss, which just completed it’s season, stars the amazing Kelsey Grammer as a corrupt mayor of Chicago, who is also dying of an incurable ailment. The camera work is exceptional- almost every scene is shot from an unusual angle with more extreme close-ups than any other show on television. The tension that is built from a full frame half of a face is fabulous. The occasional gratuitous female nudity is kind of fun also!

3. Prime Suspect, on NBC, is so good that, of course it has already been cancelled! Maria Bello and Aiden Quinn star in this great NYC police drama. The lighting and photography are amazing, matching lighting to the vibe of the scene (harsh lighting for interrogation chambers, soft lighting for high end murder scenes) It is mostly shot in muted earth tones, and New York at night takes on an otherworldly look. The acting is great, with just the right amount of humor to break up the sadness. Maybe a cable network will pick it up and save it.

Day one: Hanging with the Shure guys (that’s who I am working for out here). Appearances by Ken Caillat (engineer of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” and his daughter Colbie. Line around the booth to get her autograph after she was done performing. Paparazzi everywhere (This is Southern California, after all). Kept on flashing flashes in her face, taking the same picture over and over. Day ended with The Makepeace Brothers, young Americana band that sounded great. I Think that they might make something of themselves! As I was leaving, I ran into my old friend C.J. Vangston, who is famous for many things, one of which is for being the keyboard player for the mighty Spinal Tap!!
Day two: The day started out with an autograph signing with Meshuggah, a Swedish hard rock band made up of four guys that look to be in their forties or fifties. Nice guys. I wonder if any of them are Jewish. Meshuggah in Hebrew stands for crazy! Next up was Lincoln Brewster, California Chrisian guitar player and singer. Couldn’t have been nicer. Equally so were his fans, who mingled with the fans of the next two acts- Korn and Alice Cooper! Then the craziness started. First Alice Cooper, then 3 guys from Korn! Their fans were very peaceful, unlike the slimeball photographers, who continually shot off flash after flash in their faces while calling to the artists, asking them to look up and ignore their fans so that they could get another twenty identical pictures! WTF, the guy is sitting on a couch on a stage, every picture looks the same. It was obvious that they were trying to crop out everything but Alice’s head, so they could get a mediocre headshot (or 20) for their agency. It is always hard to understand why they put up with this, but I guess it is part of the job now.

Day three: Hanging out with the GOD OF METAL. Rob Halford of Judas Priest arrived to sign autographs and receive a chrome microphone from Shure. For an hour and a half, he signed for anyone that walked up, and was, as I told him after the event, a total mensch! He told me that he was looking into doing a search to find out if he is part Jewish (he has a Rabbi working on it.) Following him was Dawes, a new rock band who played some great stuff and signed for an hour also. The day was filled with many celebrities coming to hang out, including Kerry King from Slayer, comparing head tattoos with Rob.

All in all a cool three days, but I am heading home to peace and quiet

See http://www.kramerarchives.com/ for some great stuff!

So, after a few takes of the song, something needed to be adjusted and everyone took a break. Robert started playing a simple melody on his steel guitar. Buddy, sitting next to him, without looking over, started playing along. The rest of the band, two of whom were not even in the same room, joined in. No words were exchanged, nobody looked at anyone else, and ten minutes of amazing music emerged through the speakers, while all the onlookers in the studio just stared at them with amazement. I turned my eyes to the board, and Eddie was mixing the song as it emerged. At one point, with no visible communication, the song came to a conclusion, and spontaneous applause erupted in the control room. Robert looked at Buddy and smiled, and Buddy said “Let’s get back to work.”

In my almost 40 years in the music business, I can count on one hand those kind of moments that make all the crap in the business just fall away, and the true reason for being in the business becomes apparent. MUSIC!

I regularly get two kinds of calls about this kind of situation:

1. Publications and record companies that want to use one of my photographs as “artist reference.” Regardless of whether they want to paint something loosely based on one of my photographs, or want to copy the photograph exactly as a drawing, they have to pay me an artist reference fee. I almost always agree to this, for a small few, as it usually doesn’t conflict with my ability to license the photo.

2. A visual artist will contact me and ask my permission to paint a painting based on one of my photographs. I always allow them, as they can slightly alter my work and call it a derivative work. So why not let them use it? It is kind of flattering.

My biggest question concerning this issue: The photograph on the cover is a rather simple tight photograph. Why didn’t the producer find a guy who looked like Miles, photograph him and a horn on a black background and digitize that? Could have saved himself a lot of money!!!

1^st up: The Ramones

2^nd up: Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie

To wrap it up: Tom Tom Club, with Jerry Harrison, basically the Talking Heads without David Byrne.

I asked for a photo pass, and was told I could shoot the first three songs of each set. Oh well, better than nothing, I thought. Then they called me back and asked me if I could get something from the tour into Playboy, my biggest client at the time. No problem. The Ramones were cool, Debbie was better. After the three songs, I sat on the side by the backstage door to watch the rest of her set. As the set end, the stage got pretty dark, she grabbed her shirt and took it off, stood in the middle of the stage for about 10 seconds, and the stage went dark. WOW- perfect Playboy shot- too bad I couldn’t shoot it!

Depressed, I walked backstage and ran into Debbie. She said “I did that for you- did you get it?” I explained why I didn’t, and she shook her head, exclaiming “That’s pretty stupid’, and walked away. She came back five minutes later and said, “What are you doing tomorrow? Want to come to Milwaukee?”

So the next morning I called the publicist and asked for 5 minutes with each band after sound check in Milwaukee. Done, and I packed to head up to cheese country, 90 miles away. After sound check, I did three photo shoots in about 10 minutes, and Debbie told me to be ready at the end of their set later that night. I was!!

So, now we turn to November 1982, and she was playing the big hockey arena in town. I called her publicist to request a photo pass, and was told that Pat does not allow photographers at her shows any more. In those days, I very rarely took no for an answer, so I went to the show anyway, and snuck my equipment in. I found a pretty good spot and shot the whole show. The next day I sent photos to all the major rock magazines, and made a killing off of them, as there were no good photos around.

I have always thought that that was the start of the “no photos” era of the business. I tried to fight it for a while- I knew a lot of the security guys at the local venues, and they always let me sneak in, but I soon realized that the photos weren’t as good, it was too much of a hassle, and if they didn’t want me there, I would just as soon stay home. Oh well, the beginning of the end.

Yesterday (Saturday) I watched an ESPN Special on Tebow, documenting the time between the end of his college career (Heisman trophy and 2 national championships at Florida) and the moment he was drafted in the first round by the Denver Broncos. During the entire period documented, the show kept on cutting to so-called experts explaining why Tebow would not make it as a quarterback in the NFL, and would most likely be drafted in the 3^rd or 4^th round of the draft. In between these glowing testimonials, the show followed him dedicating himself to making himself an NFL quarterback, including one amazing scene of him pushing a full size SUV down a country road and getting it up to 10 miles on hour!

So this year, Tebow was made the starting quarterback, out of desperation, and has led the Broncos to seven wins in the last eight games, and has brought them to first place in their division. Today (12/18) he goes head to head with the best quarterback playing in the NFL right now (Tom Brady and the New England Patriots). We shall see who prevails.

I would love to see someone go back and ask all the “experts” what they think now. It always galls me when I go to see a band, they give it their all, and I read the next day in the paper about how bad the band was! I always want to call the critic and ask to hear his recordings, or ask when he is next playing live!

The next afternoon we went to Billy Branch’s house, where he and Halim jammed together in the basement and wrote and performed a song together. Just a really cool couple of days.

The following day, for something completely different, I photographed a band called Straight No Chaser. That was a challenge- 10 guys singing acappella and moving around like crazy! The guys were really nice, and put out the challenge- to get a good shot where you could see all 10 of them. Very tough, but I got a few.

Right before the show, I went out to find a good shooting spot and watch the opening, very funny video. Halfway through the video, the announcer started outlining the rules and regulations- no smoking, etc. When they came to the part of the announcement talking about no photos allowed, the video screeched to a halt and a new announcer yelled “Wait, not for our show. We want everyone to shoot as many pictures as you can, and post them to as many websites as you can. We also want anyone with a video camera to shoot as much as you can and post videos to uTube!”

WOW, WHAT A CONCEPT! And it really didn’t hurt their draw, they played in front of 10,000 people in 24 hours in Chicago.

The group was led by Bono, Ashley Judd and Chris Tucker and hit Lincoln, Des Moines, Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville and ended up in Nashville. Each day was headlined with a performance at a college auditorium or a church, with Bono doing what he does best- doing his part to save the world. He would always start off each event with this comment: “There is nothing worse than a rock star with a cause.” Then he would disprove it, at least in his case. There is nobody better than him at distilling an argument down to it’s essential issues. And putting it forth so you see it in a way that makes you want to follow him anywhere. Both Ashley and Chris are brilliant speakers, and all were very funny.

Ashley’s sister Wynonna substituted for her on the final day. Not a lot of music but it put me in the mode of realization that the world can be a better place if people stop talking and start doing. I was also reminded of this trip when reading an interview with Bono in this weeks Time Magazine, where he made another impassioned plea for help in ending the AIDS epidemic- and explained how it could be done.

There were some lighter moments, as when Bono and Chris jumped up on stage with the hotel band in Cincinnati to sing covers with them at a Friday night singles party. Also in Cincinnati, at an AIDS clinic, I was standing next to a balding, middle aged guy in a blue sweater with a nametag on his sweater that said Peter Frampton. I thought that was pretty cool that a guy in Cincinnati had the same name as the famous English rock star. Then he started talking and lo and behold, it was the actual Peter Frampton, who now lives there!

Also, during that 10 day period, Bono was working on a newfangled thing called a blog! Every night about 1AM, the phone in my room would ring and this Irish voice would say “OK, let’s look at some photos.” I would grab my laptop, walk over to his room and we would go over the days photos. He would find the ones that matched what he was writing about, and I would go back to my room, size them and email them to some guy at a website that I had never heard of till that week- www.aol.com. Cool idea! I wonder if that blog thing will ever catch on.

Between all the laughs, awareness was raised in a lot of places, and maybe went a small way toward making the world a better place.

Thanksgiving morning, to prepare, I went to the grocery store and bought some sliced turkey, a loaf of Wonder Bread, some mustard, some beer and a pumpkin pie. Early afternoon a taxi pulled up in front of my house. Out of it walked four tired LA musicians, and a tired Warner Brothers guy. They immediately dug into the food (It was kind of a joke on Thanksgiving, but they were real hungry).

After a great two hour shoot, I piled them into my car and gave them a tour of great gangster sites on the way back to their hotel! A good time was had by all.

The following year, their publicist asked me to come to LA to do a new shoot with them before their homecoming show there. I lined them up outside the LA Palladium, and did a quick shoot with them. Not a single guy in the band remembered me, the shoot, the gangsters or the food!

Oh well, maybe I should die my hair orange.