A friend asked me a few week ago who my favourite new Brisbane band was.  I replied that I didn’t really have one; most the Brisbane bands I like have been around for at least a couple of years and when you become more ’successful’ in photographing bands, getting the opportunity for higher profile gigs, you sadly lose touch with the grassroots music scene and what’s new and upcoming to some degree.  But all that changes tonight with DZ firmly installed as my favourite new(ish) local band and their 1am Troubadour show being the best show I’ve seen in a long time (I had seen the band before at last year’s MereNoise Xmas Party, but with them being the first band I’d photographed with the new camera I’d bought a few days earlier, I wasn’t giving them my full attention). 

It’s amazing stuff and despite my usual views on photographing in venues without photo pits, there’s still something really exhilarating about trying to photograph from within a really energetic crowd and being in the midst of it; you feel a true sense of documenting what is happening as opposed to the more sterile environment that exists when there is a barrier separating the audience from the stage, even if it makes it a whole lot easier and a much more pleasant experience for photographers.   

It definitely is a case of suffering for my art, with the hand operated strobe lighting being held right in front of my camera lens at one point, giving me an unhealthy flash of bright light from point blank range.  Having not actually left the house on Sunday, it’s not until Monday that I really notice it , with my eyesight being really shimmery and finding it hard to keep my eyes fully open at work, as it just seems far too bright outside my office window, even though it’s overcast and rains on occasions during the day and feeling like I really need to be wearing sunglasses indoors.  Looking at my eyes in the bathroom mirror is worrying as almost two days after the gig my pupils aren’t dilating, but by the Tuesday everything seems back to normal.  

I don’t normally put videos on my blog; I’m never sure of the copyright implications and I’m also trying to keep it focussed on still photos but here’s some video footage from the night.

And this is DZ’s must-see video clip for ‘The Mess Up’.  Stick with it to the end; you can probably guess how it’s going to end.

More photos on Flickr.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Red Riders. They were amongst the first bands I saw after moving to Sydney, when they supported theredsunband at @Newtown in September 2004, with Matt emailing me after I uploaded the photos to a certain Australian music website to say that he loved the photos and since then our paths have crossed several times over the years; the first Come Together festival at Luna Park in April 2005, supporting Faker at The Zoo in Brisbane in October 2005, and in the process have the dubious honour of the very first band I ever photographed with a digital camera, supporting Louis XIV at The Zoo again in June 2006 and finally at the first/only Pauhaus Festival at the Powerhouse in June 2007.

Supporting redsunband at @Newtown, Sydney - 4 September 2004

The 1st Come Together Festival, Sydney - 23 April 2005

1st band photographed with digital when supporting Faker at The Zoo, Brisbane - 21 Oct 2005

Supporting Louis XIV at The Zoo, Brisbane - 15 June 2006

Pauhaus Festival, Brisbane - 9 June 2007

With the band seemingly disappearing off the face of the planet for the last two years and then seeing that Adrian had gone solo, with him supporting Joan As Police Woman last year, I had assumed they had split up. However, it was nice surprise to read in street press of the announcement of a new tour and new material. There’s something warm and fuzzy in seeing a band over a period of a number of years and watching how they progress, both musically and in terms of popularity.

But having said that, the first new single, ‘You’ve Got A Lot of Nerve‘ was disappointing, although the stop-motion video that accompanies it is pretty good, as is the second single, ‘Ordinary‘, that’s just been released.  They’ve both got a lot more of a ‘mature’ sound but are both somewhat underwhelming when compared to instantaneous pop hooks of some of their previous songs.  Although Adrian has been replaced by Vines bassist Brad Heald his presence is definitely missed tonight and there’s a noticeable change in the band’s onstage dynamics. Adrian very much acted as a foil to Alex’s school of random bizarreness when it came to taking to the audience between songs, and seeing them live again now it has a feel of ‘The Alex Griggs Show’. That’s not to say that Brad or bassist Matt Chapman or drummer Tom Wallace do anything wrong; it’s just that they seem happy to be in the background whilst leaving the limelight solely to Alex.

Local buzz band, The Cairos, much loved by the Courier Mail’s Brizbands, brought large numbers out to see them, with the room being at its fullest whilst they are onstage. They’re competent enough, but it’s mid-2009 and some bands are still doing early U2/The Cure-lite, photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of post-punk that’s been done to death over most of this decade.  It just seems so unnecessary but audiences still seem to be buying into it.

Ruby Tigers are first band up tonight. Their songs have terrible titles and the songs have some really cringe-worthy clichéd lyrics and awful rhyming couplets. And yet underneath all that the songs have such a huge commercial sheen and are so commercial radio-friendly, with fist-pumping anthemic choruses by the dozen, that you could see someone taking a punt on them and them going on to world domination.  They blot their copybook by finishing with a cod-reggae song but you can’t have everything.

More photos on Flickr.

 Having seen and photographed Violent Soho plenty of times over the last few years and having photographed them recently in The Zoo car park, I took the opportunity to relax from needing to get editorial photos for publication and take a roll of film instead when they supported …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead at The Zoo (although I having used the roll of film, I did take some digital shots in their last song). 

I used my usual film choice of Ilford HP5 and developed it in Ilford ID-11 for 14 minutes.  The negatives were scanned into Photoshop to do a bit of tidying up; namely using the Heal Tool to remove the worst of the dust, small scratches and any water marks on the negatives.  I also upped the contrast using the Layers and Levels tools to make the images a lot darker and  grittier.  A few more photos on Flickr.

When it comes to live music, I’m usually a ’stay ’til the bitter end’ type of gig-goer.  For the most part I can never fathom why people would purposely walk out of a gig after only a few songs; maybe it’s just the optimist in me that hopes however bad it is it will get better, that the band might impress me, even if they only manage it in the last 30 seconds [Note: since drafting this post last week Swells has sadly died and whilst I think you'd be hard pushed to find a music fan he hadn't managed to wind up and infuriate over the years, the vim and vigour which he approached his writing makes it a sad loss for music journalism].  I will admit to leaving The Drones opening of The Hi-Fi after only half a dozen songs due to its late starting, and I did leave Sloan’s show at The Globe last year well before the end, but it was 12:15am on a Thursday night when I left and I had a photo deadline as well as work on the Friday, but from memory the only show I’ve walked out of due to anything other than acute tiredness was a Spin Doctors show at Newcastle’s Riverside back in the early 1990s - they were so desperately dull and even some mid-show games of pinball at the back of the room couldn’t improve the sense of utter boredom from their workman-like, emotion-draining, insipid, early1990s college rock.

As much as I wanted to, I don’t stay for the whole of tonight’s Trail Of The Dead show, bailing about half-way through, the night another victim of a long day and getting up at 4am to watch the Barcelona football master-class in the Champion League Final.  It’s a sad excuse really as the Trail Of The Dead’s show is such a extreme case of sensory overload, both visually and aurally, that if they couldn’t keep me awake and alert then nothing would.

From a photographic point of view, I assume my normal position at the front stage left, although it means that I’m in a poor position for action shots but in a good place for the obligatory Rave portrait shot.  They definitely are a band that I would love to shoot from a photo pit.  And preferably on a day when I haven’t gotten up at 4am. 

Violent Soho supported, in their last gig before heading overseas and to Download.  Was an ok show from them but far from their best, with the band not as finely tuned as they normally are when playing shows more regularly.  The new songs they played at the Tym Guitars Zoo car park gig were given another airing and were a lot more intelligible than when they were played on the aurally abusing p.a. system they used in the car park. 

More photos on Flickr.

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead

Violent Soho

As well as taking the usual digital photos at Brisbane Sounds 2009, as previously posted here, I also took a couple rolls of Ilford HP5, rating the ISO400 film at ISO1600 and then developing them for 14 minutes in ID-11 developer.  The results are very grainy, as was expected, although slightly less than the photos from the middle Saturday at the UnderExposed when the film was rated at ISO3200.

A few more on Flickr.

Screamfeeder

Gentle Ben & His Sensitive Side

Vegas Kings

The final additions to the 2009 Splendour In The Grass festival were announced today, to go with the already announced list that I blogged about last month, with the final 18 bands being as follows:

• Happy Mondays
• Doves
• Architecture In Helsinki
• You Am I
• The Beautiful Girls
• Downsyde & Drapht
• Kisschasy
• Little Red
• Bluejuice
• Children Collide
• Miami Horror Live
• Art vs. Science
• Paul Dempsey
• Dappled Cities
• Dananananaykroyd
• Holly Throsby
• Bridezilla
• Deya Dova

This year the first announcement had 28 acts, with the 18 announced today making a total of 46 artists for 2009.  The 2008 second announcement had 21 acts to go with the 26 announced in the first line-up, making 47 in total over the weekend.

In my previous blog I posted that the main disappointment was the choice of Australian acts, which just seemed to be the same tired old acts that get wheeled out at every Australian festival on a two-year rotating cycle.  Looking at the lineup in full, of the 46 acts playing, 5 played last year and a further 8 played in 2007 (although that does include the non-Australian Bloc Party).  Another major disappointment is that whereas 19 international acts were on the bill in 2008, this year there’s a paltry 13, almost a third less.  And the big rumour that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs would be on the second announcement proved to not be true, although being just too good to be true it was no great surprise really.

As I predicted in my Part 1 post, Bluejuice have been added to the bill, as have Dew Process’s very latest signings Dananananaykroyd.  No Tame Impala though, which looked like it was a definite considering their omnipresence on every festival bill in recent months. I probably should have predicted Children Collide and Little Red but thought they must have worn out their welcome by now, having been on just about every festival lineup since the start of 2008.  Little Red are also one of the five bands that played last year, along with Bluejuice, Art vs. Science, Paul Dempsey  and Yves Klein Blue.

The playing times don’t get published until a week or so before the festival so I’ll have to wait until then to start planning the weekend and who I’m going to photograph with military precision.  I have previously photographed 16 of the 46 bands playing (compared to 13 of the 47 who played in 2008), those being:

• MGMT
• Hilltop Hoods
• Midnight Juggernauts
• Augie March
• Sarah Blasko
• Little Birdy
• Josh Pyke
• Lost Valentinos
• Yves Klein Blue
• Jack Ladder
• The Middle East
• You Am I
• Bluejuice
• Paul Dempsey
• Dappled Cities
• Bridezilla

Whilst I plan on photographing a number of those bands again, and will no doubt end up doing some that I didn’t plan on photographing anyway, I’m open to suggestions as to other bands that I have to see/have to photograph so feel free to tell me who I must go and check out.  Although the second announcement is disappointing I’m still really looking forward to the weekend; as previously posted it’s really exciting to get to photograph Jane’s Addiction, Flaming Lips and the Gutter Twins.  There’s not a whole lot that interests me personally in the second announcement; I’ll go and check out Dananananaykroyd to see what the fuss is about, I enjoyed Bridezilla at ATP Mt Buller so I’ll try and catch them and for old time’s sake I’ll go and see the Happy Mondays, although, having seen them a number of times over the years, they’ve always been pretty terrible live. 

Five weeks to go.

It was only when I started processing these photos that the significance struck home; as a photographer you wait years, a lifetime perhaps, for that one perfect split second moment to create an icon, construct the legend or fuel the myth. 

I know that every few blog posts I end up including a link to this photo; as a music photographer it’s inescapable.  Let’s call it ‘The Pennie Smith Moment’.  As music photographers will forever be posting in Flickr forums, historically the great music photos were not hindered by stupid music industry rules and conditions that are inescapable in the modern age.  ‘The Pennie Smith Moment’ happened because she was on tour with The Clash, had access all areas and was free to photograph for as long as she wanted, from wherever she wanted.

When opportunity presents itself you need to read the situation, anticipate what is going to happen next and be ready for when it does happen.

“I remember thinking something was wrong, realising Paul was going to crack - and waited. The shot is out of focus because I ducked - he was closer than it looks” - Pennie Smith

With the generously suppplied AAA pass from The Zoo, I find myself side of stage at the end of the Vegas Kings‘ set.  The band are building to an end of set noisy climax, Pete and Ben swinging their guitars around and holding them aloft as the end of the last song builds up to a crescendo. And then Ben has the guitar above his head and without warning  hurls it guitar neck-wards towards the stage.  Being the main guitar I’ve seen him over the last few years and with Vegas Kings also being in the studio recording a new album I just wasn’t expecting it to happen, expecting him to feign a throw and just swing it around.

So with the combination of not anticipating it, being a single shot photographer as opposed to a machine-gunner and the darkness of the Zoo I end up with a close-but-no-cigar single shot - an underexposed, not-quite-in-focus, noisy, red light lit photo that could only really be saved by making it monochrome, with Pete’s guitar lead dangling down the middle - and a yearning for another once in a lifetime photo opportunity, another ‘Pennie Smith Moment’ to come my way sometime soon.

More photos on Flickr.

Screamfeeder

Gentle Ben & His Sensitive Side

Vegas Kings

The Blackwater Fever

New Jack Rubys

The Mercy Beat

Australia music seems to be intrinsically linked to a notion that the best Australian bands have to play to tiny audiences in tiny venues, get little attention in their own city, let alone the rest of the country, due to the parochial tendencies of each major city/state and the unhealthy competiveness that goes along with it, move overseas, get the recognition they deserve and then, and only then, can they return to Australia be hailed as all conquering heroes by the general population and the mainstream music media and newspapers who had zero interest when they were playing the small/cheap/free local shows and the early in the evening support slots to better known/more popular international and Sydney/Melbourne acts.

From The Saints to The Go-Betweens, from Nick Cave to The Triffids, continuing through to a current age when bands like The Drones seem to garner a much higher degree of respect and recognition outside of Australia than within it. Even moving away from the plight of Australia’s better bands, Jet’s and The Vines‘ success was largely based on the UK music media championing both bands when most Australians had no idea that the bands even existed and even Gabriella Cilmi and Sam Sparro’s UK success means the Australian music industry were falling over themselves to give them ARIA awards last year. In the UK it’s the complete opposite; go to somewhere like the USA and make it big before you’ve at least tried to do it in the UK and no one will take you seriously (see: Bush. Although they were also hampered by the fact that they were rubbish, basically the 1990’s version of Nickelback).

Violent Soho seem to be the latest band to embark on this well trodden career path, having signed to Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace record label and playing the UK’s Download Festival in June 2009, to go with previous overseas tours in 2008.

Tonight they’re playing a free show to celebrate Tym Guitars’ Anne Street Shop’s 1st anniversary, along with the Boondall Boys, in The Zoo’s car park. By right the place should be packed (or as much as you can pack out a car park) but looking around it’s the same familiar faces that you see at every Soho gig, the usual suspects you see at most local shows and the unequivocal, unwavering supporters from other Brisbane bands, most of whom have shared a stage with band over the last few years. In some ways it’s great; it’s like being a teenager again and having a special secret band that you share with a few like-minded souls with good taste in music and that you don’t want to share with the world, lest the mainstream success change them, spoil them, and yet you can’t help but think that they deserve to be playing to much bigger crowds somewhere a lot more luxurious than the Zoo car park in the middle of May.

The Courier Mail’s Briz Bands blog, where ‘Candi and Khan explore Brisbane’s vibrant music scene with news, pic galleries, videos and tracks from some of Australia’s edgiest new artists’ has a solitary blog posting about the band related to when they got the Black Francis tour support last year, the usual press release cut and paste blog they excel at; it was written by ‘Carts’, who mysteriously went MIA and was replaced by Khan, who is only able to write about hip-hop…

By right Violent Soho should be the ones with the number one records, with the Rolling Stone features, the extended interviews on Video Hits, on constant rotation on Triple J, playing the sell-out shows at huge venues, being lined up for the ARIAs. But the people of Australia have spoken. And they want Eskimo Joe. At least they do this year.  But history has shown us that should Violent Soho make their return accompanied with column inches in foreign music papers, having had their records played on overseas radio stations and played some high profile festival and tour support slots, the rest of Australia, outside those gathered tonight and similar cliques in other cities, will start to pay attention. 

More photos on Flickr.

Violent Soho

Boondall Boys

Even at the time, 1996 was one of the best years of my life: my PhD was beginning to take shape but was in a worry free stage, still years away from having to write up a thesis, living in an amazing share house with great friends, a beautiful hot summer, a feast of football on the TV every night, the amazing night of jumping up and down of the sofa watching this, the Saturday afternoon barbeque a few days later and the place erupting when this happened, followed by the mandatory trip to the park straight after for a jumpers-for-goalposts drunken kick-around, my weekly lustful date with Anna, the amazing Phoenix 1996 line-up, a line-up so good that if you put it on in 2009 it would still be better than most of this year’s festivals, and of course Reading 1996, when for the first 60 seconds of ‘I Wanna Be Adored‘ everything in the world was perfect. 

Of course not everything was perfect; everything apart from those first 60 seconds of the Stone Rose’s Reading performance, for example, and there was of course the dastardly Britpop Pavlovian experiment, where in the combined efforts of the UK music and mainstream press, Chris Evans and Radio 1 were engaged in a war of attrition against the British public, convinced that if they wrote about and played enough Cast and Ocean Colour Scene they would be accepted amongst the upper pantheons of British musical culture.  Sadly far too many were convinced of their and other Britpop also-rans’ greatness and many still are, even to this very day. 

Obviously until a few years ago Screamfeeder meant nothing to me.  So tonight I find myself at The Troubadour for the launch of their re-mastered/deluxe edition of their apparent classic 1996 album ‘Kitten Licks‘, an album which of course means nothing to me and I’ve never even heard, and a ‘Don’t Look Back‘-style run-through of the whole album. 

It’s a slightly strange feeling; feeding off other people’s version of 1996 nostalgia.   Strange and yet it seems so natural and is so easy when there’s such a noticeable and infectious mood of happy reminiscence to less complicated and happier days.  You can’t help but be caught up in it.  Even though ‘Kitten Licks’ is not the soundtrack to my 1996, it has such classic indie rock, hook-laden songs that it just sounds like it should have been or could have been; in a lot of ways it has an eerie sense of a long-forgotten but happy memory. And it would have made the perfect soundtrack to my Summer of ‘96, much preferable to being forced to endure the seemingly inescapable likes of Shed Seven and The Bluetones on TV and radio.

More photos on Flickr.

Screamfeeder

Midget

Butcher Birds

You just haven’t lived until you’ve seen a giant throw a midget at a couple of ninjas…

After recent lukewarm shows at The Troubadour and at The Hi-Fi, at the third attempt the widespread and vocal support of Hits in Brisbane makes perfect sense. In spite of all the odds, the worst sound possibly ever ‘heard’, far, far worse than that at the Hi-Fi bar a week earlier, Evil Dick having to hold two microphones up against his mouth to get any sort of vocals coming out of the PA, and yet somehow they pull it off with typical aplomb and bravado. Maybe the answer is that Hits work best when the sound is ultra-fuzzy and not the crystal clear sound that you normally demand from a music venue, with the vocals niceties largely lost in the mix, with the melodies turning into an integral part of the songs rather than being something that exists in a layer that lies on top of the guitars, bass and drums.  And, whereas the distance between the audience and the band was detrimental at the Hi-Fi show, when they’re in your face, on a stage so small they might as well play just play on the floor, the band’s exuberance and cock-sure swagger shines through.

The sound problems get even worse for Sixfthick, something no one present thought would be possible during Hit’s set, to the extent that the band end up split into two camps, with Dan, Tony and Fred continuing to play on the stage, whilst Geoff and Ben have to relocate to the mixing desk and plug their microphones directly into the desk. A typical Sixfthick show usually involves the band playing from both ends of a venue at various times during the course of the night, but tonight it takes on a whole new meaning.

More photos on Flickr.