We are half way through 2012. Going back just 12 months no one would have heard of him.
In a year Michael Kiwanuka will open for Adele, sign with Polydor, appear at Later with Jools Holland, win the BBC sound of 2012, release his debut album and sell out is first tour.

It is an achievement a few artists could put on their CV. I can’t think of anyone else in recent times.

It doesn’t happen to any emerging artist, with no albums and no tour history to open for the artist who has sold 30 million records (and counting) in the era of the music industry worst crisis.
It doesn’t happen that Polydor knocks at the door of any musician in London who has been around for just six months, who doesn’t have a large live following, with a fountain pen and a contract.
It doesn’t happen that the BBC and its musical embodiment, Jools Holland, broadcast new music throughout their powerful channels.

Home Again, the first single extracted from Kiwanuka album was released on new year day. Twenty weeks later it turned 3 million hits on youtube.
I could continue with striking achievements, I’ll stop and talk about the music to attempt one of my reflections.

There are three reasons why such an advance is possible:
- Michael Kiwanuka is an outstanding artist, one of those to appear once in a generation.
- Someone in Kiwanuka management is very good at marketing.
- …he is not Italian so I will not consider the third option.

Kiwanuka is a soul musician. His is plain, traditional, soul(ful) music.
He plays guitar, his record have brasses, percussions, there are choruses, there are the arpeggios, there are the gospel echoes, there is love and suffering. There is Ben Harper, there is Jimi Hendrix

Kiwanuka sings, with the deep voice of the soul singers.
He knows by heart all soul singers. Otis Redding his the main, almost too obvious influence, but anyone from Marvin Gaye to Wilson Pickett, from Solomon Burke to Sam Cooke can be used to identify his singing.

Kiwanuka album, titled as the single, Home Again, recalls the soul golden era in any details. Stax records, Memphis, Detroit but even Van Morrison. He’s of Ugandan origin but grew up in London.
The cover photo portrait, a low contrast brown tone close-up, the simple yellow graphic and the label logo on the front. All is in pure 60s, vintage style.

You play it and you’re in Memphis. The arrangements are crystalline has it used to be, as it must be. There are the back vocals answering the singer, the big sound, the bluesy rhythm and the flawless electric guitar. And Kiwanuka voice is impeccable, if you sing soul you got to be in tune.

A major production, backed by Polydor, with no improvisation and an overall feeling of perfection.

Perfection. This is probably the right word to describe the whole package. I cannot find a defect, a weak point to the entire Kiwanuka “operation”. It’s spotless.

Here the skeptical me jumping in.
Such a rise in such a short time it is what I think possible only when there is a strong masterplan behind.

I haven’t seen Michael Kiwanuka spending years and years playing gigs in pubs to emerge. He has a good voice but he’s not the new Otis Redding.
I rather see managers of a label analysing graphs, data, statistics and come with a strategy.

So I asked myself, what’s the strategy?
I came with the idea that in the end it could be very simple. Egg of Columbus at Polydor.

Soul music has been missing from the scene for quite a long time.
Soul music has always been top seller. Strong feelings, tunes for lovers, radio, adverts. It targets older people, those that never learned how to download illegally and still buy music complaining about how expensive it is.

Ben Harper has been probably the last male superstar of soul music but his music was politically inclined and for more than 10 years he changed his sound towards noisier rock and less successful territory.
There have been UK women. Amy Winehouse, sure. Duffy which dramatically failed her second album and, of course, there’s Adele. But women soul is a different thing for a different crowd.

The Black Keys gained an incredible success, and Grammys, when spiced up with soul flavours their blues. Danger Mouse is quite good at this melting pots.
Listening to Kiwanuka‘s I’ll Get Along reminded me of the Black Keys at their most soulful.

“Get out there and find me the best soul voice you find”. I can hear someone asking a talent scout while scribbling on a piece of paper the sequence of moves to build up on that. To find a big tour to support, to contact BBC, to win something.

We are in the era where new music is discovered on the virtual web and get shared on social network. Virtual friends talk through Twitter, rarely know each other and sometime don’t even meet at the gigs they are both attending.
I may have been distracted despite my obsessive persistent presence online, but I am confident to say that Kiwanuka rise bypassed most web music channels. The web is just catching up now.

He went the old path. He came up from TV, Radio and the BBC to get embraced by legion of lovers. I saw his CDs at Tesco and he sold out the big venues throughout the country without a Barfly date or a Lexington stop-by. I may be wrong.

I get to the sold-out Junction in Cambridge to see Kiwanuka first gig in town.
Spring has started a couple of months ago in the rest of the world but this is the first warm English night since he emerged as an artist.
There is a mature audience, parents with their children in the first rows. It is full of black people to Cambridge standards, expectedly, and there is an incredible amount of loving couples hugging and kissing. Kiwanuka must be responsible of soundtracking most of 2012 love stories as Duffy did in 2008.

The concerts starts on a low. I am not impressed by the first half of the gig but I am tenacious and I stay. I know the setlist.
I am even more suspicious to be not in front of a new outstanding promise of soul music but a clever management and experienced press office.

Things change in the second half. The moment Kiwanuka plays Jimi Hendrix’s forgotten beauty, May This Be Love, a bit more known as Waterfall. I remembered it as a psychedelic ballad on Hendrix debut, Are You Experienced?
Tonight the song is a beautiful soul piece and, because there’s no guitar solo - no one that should ever attempt going Hendrix in his solos – the result is impressive.

It is followed by I’m Getting Ready, probably the sweetest ballad in Home Again and then two songs that Michael Kiwanuka plays solo. Couples hold tight. Health and safety stupid rules prohibits lighters and smoking isn’t in fashion anymore but, if we were in ’66, the entire Junction would be a sea of flickering flames at this moment.

The band comes back for the single, Home Again. Bill Withers’ cover I Don’t Know gets everyone merry. All is very good now and seem to work at perfection almost as in the album. Kiwanuka voice is a bit less impressive live than on CD, the six members band does its job well but has to get on the road more to gain confidence and mutual understanding.

Kiwanuka is back on stage together with the bassist for a one song encore. He picks Lasan, a B-Side of an early EP. Clearly he doesn’t have material left to delight is loving and clapping audience.

We will see if Kiwanuka comet is here to stay for more orbits. There will surely be more to listen in the near future.

If you have been missing some pure, unadulterated soul music for many years, Michael Kiwanuka is your man and these are the places you want to visit to keep in touch:
[website][facebook][twitter][myspace]

Photo tip

Kiwanuka photo policy is a two songs no flash affair, which I hope it is not the way the industry is planning to move because, despite you can still take some shots, five or six minutes are not enough time to get accustomed with the performer and his stage presence. We had no time to understand how and where he moves and it is time to move out of the pit.

Before the start, probably influenced by the album cover photo, I imagined of taking some portraits from a side. Dark background and a light coming from the other side.
Clearly it was just a dream. In concert photography, photographers don’t have any control and all they can do is to deal with the available lights. These were not suiting my idea.

The available lights tonight are good. Front white spots and mainly striped (is this the correct word?) backlights.
What I didn’t like was the cold tone that I don’t think suits Kiwanuka as any black artist.

Back home, I let my photographic rigidity go. I attacked the raw files with one of those devilish controls on photo editing packages. The simplest. The white balance cursor slid to the right into warmer temperatures. It is like adding sun to a cloudy day.

It may well not be what the gig looked like to an experience eye, but I like the photos more. Digital photography is plenty of opportunities that I discover bit by bit. Even more slowly I embrace and adapt to my style trying not to change dramatically what my eyes witnessed. To be open minded is never a bad option, whatever you do in life.
This is what the original situation looked like.

The first time I saw Tinariwen was a different affair. They emerged from hiding in the Libyan desert to come as a storm in the world music scene. In the 80s member of the band were trained by Gaddafi to guerrilla and spent years fighting Tuareg revolt against Malian government. In the 90s they left the weapons to embrace guitars. A nice tale that got an emotional response from France, first, to the world followed.
It was Barbican 2004 and blues legend Taj Mahal joined them on stage. A once in a lifetime concert if you are into world music.

At that times the music press used to call Malian music desert blues. Tinariwen released Amassakoul, their second album and first to have international recognition. Ali Farka Touré was still alive and about to kick Savane. Two albums that would change the history of African music, or, better, change the perception of the Western world about (West) African music.

Martin Scorsese blues series was out about that time as well. He filmed Feel Like Going Home a story documenting the journey of a Bluesman back to Africa in search of his roots. Good movie, but that concept never convinced me. It looks a marketing strategy to sell African music sticking the once appealing label “Blues” on it.

Tinariwen fell into that shelf for a long while. Backed by American musicians the tam-tam spread among world music circuit and soon they were labelled as the pioneers of Electric African blues. Desert blues. Electric whatever Blues.

Their music in reality wasn’t and still is not much more than African music played with Fender Stratocaster and electric guitars in addition to traditional percussions.
It is beautiful, reinvigorating and pushing the world music cliches away.
There was no need to dope that.

Tonight, 8 years later, Tinariwen are still up and running. They are touring Tassili, they’re latest album, fifth in total and Grammy Winner. All albums have be praised by the specialised press, all increased a solid following both sides of the ocean but the Grammy is the icing on the cake. Is the final proof to be part of the industry. As Bon Iver and the Black Keys are now experiencing too.

Advantage that the label blues seems to have gone. People don’t mind if they really play the blues and blues isn’t selling anymore.
If even Jack White (arguably the latest of bluesmen) record a solo album without hints of blue notes the trend is a fact.
Blues will come back, so far there is not much point to attach it to a Malian record.

Mali is having some problems again. Tuareg, the people to which the band belongs too, just declared independence on the north of the country following a military revolt happened ad the end of March. It is not clear what is going to happen next.

One thing is clear tonight though. When the band came onto the Shepherd’s Bush Empire stage, I noticed the absence of Ibrahim. The founder of the band and the undisputed leader tonight is missing.
I was pondering if he went back fighting, left the band or what. The girl at the merchandise stall told me he simply couldn’t be at that date.

The Observer writes he was back to Mali to help his people. Nice confirmation that Tinariwen music and belief are not something negotiable.

I would have appreciated to know the reason. Why English audience has always to keep music and politics separated even when there is such a strong link is a big question to answer. Unless there is Billy Bragg on stage.

The concert as it happens with Tinariwen has its great moments and some redundant passages. African rhythms can make the entire venue dance to their beat, some of the guitar solos are unnecessary or just too self-referential, the hand clapping is effective to warm up the air of another rainy and miserable spring night in London.
What makes Tinariwen special is what made them pioneers. They electrified African music, they moved it from self-assembled instruments to loud amplifiers plugged into Fender axes. Link to that a desire to voice the voiceless, arm the armless to mention Tom Morello and the mixture is explosive.

Enough to be looking forward to another Tinariwen show, waiting for Ibrahim to be back and Mali to live a peaceful future. Even because that is one of the places where I want to go for one of my photographic journeys.

Tinariwen are online at [website][facebook][twitter][myspace][spotify]

Photo tip

There are missed occasions for photographers at any gig, but this one was a sort of collection of missed occasions.
Not only pictures fail to happen when we are still within the allocated time slot.

it’s plenty of missed occasion beyond photographers’ control. And these are the ones that hurt most.

Ibrahim absence is one of them. He is surely the most photogenic member of the band, his intense glance is an easy winner. The revolutionary revolutioning with music. Ibrahim was in Mali not much to complain in reality. Praise to him to stand for the rights he always fought for.

Jose Gonzalez was the special guest opening for this special show. At a certain moment in the show the Swedish songwriter joined Tinariwen on stage to sing the TV on the Radio vocal part of Tenere Taqqim Tossam. There is not photographic evidence of this passage apart from once another bad quality youtube video. It was beyond the third song so photographers were moved out of the pit.

How many great concert moments are being lost because of the first three songs rule? I know I write this every other post but will never stop saying until someone has ears to listen to me and explain to me why.

There is more. This show was special because Tinariwen were going to be doubly awarded on stage. They picked the Songlines music award, from the magazine specialised in world music, and, most important the Grammy who marked their brilliant career and was airlifted straight from LA for the occasion.

This happened at the end of the show, when photographers were not allowed in the pit and most of them already on their computer downloading and post-editing the first three songs shots.

Missed occasions. Sadly.
There will be more, I will report them. Sadly.

A rule is as a statement that puts a limit. History taught that the ones writing rules, building barriers, are often unprepared to foresee all consequences.
Limits are raised, walls erected aiming to contain. But they pose a symbol to overthrow.
Sometime someone succeeds. Jumps over and obliterate the limit. Setting a new standard. If he’s a rocker, he may become a rockstar.

It is difficult to say whether it is because of the internet or the artistic suicide of the few antagonists, Casablancas and friends to name the first. Truth is, this millennium (so far) has one star left to shine in the rock’n'roll sky: Jack White.

The stage. Even before Jack White concert begins, in the half hour the roadies take to set up the huge and mysterious stage, it’s clear his show is going to be something different.
It’s not secret Jack White is as obsessed by his look as he is by his sound.
Since the first White Stripes LP cover it was pretty evident. Tonight, 15 years later, the situation hasn’t changed.

The color scheme of the new period has changed to an ice-cold blue/grey. HTML somewhat around #95B9C7. The gadgets-rich merchandise matches.
It recalls Blunderbuss’ artwork, the new (and first) solo album out today. He is about to performing live in London tonight. With only one show happened the night before in Paris, this is UK debut for White as a solo artist.
I may have a personal record here. I was at the first Racounters UK gig at the Astoria; I photographed (on film!) the first Dead Weather show here at the Forum and here I am at the first Jack White solo gig after a tenacious attempt to convince XL Records it was worth giving me a photopass. Surely it was worth insisting.

Oddities. The floor, instead of the standard black, is painted white. The roadies are a band in the band. They don’t wear shorts or t-shirts from obscure festivals and forgotten bands. They are fully dressed in black suits, hats and their ties match the color scheme. The duty is to set up the instruments, monitors and cables but the operation is done with a harmony that looks like a dance. And they are here to control the control freak. When I try to take a picture at the guitar effects, I am stopped. It’s forbidden (as long as roadies are on stage I am told). All the effects have been painted in #95B9C7 and are unrecognizable. There’s a Boss, there’s another pedal (may be a wah-wah or a volume?). I don’t know. Unless you are a professional guitarist the recipe producing the most identifiable guitar sound of the last 20 years is top secret.
The ‘head of the roadies’ put the setlist to the floor with (white) tape. I don’t have the time to grab the camera to snap that he throws a brown towel over it hiding the songs’ titles.

The drumkit on the left is kept covered till the last minute. Even the sound is checked under the light blue/grey cover. A pedal steel stands on a pedestal on the back. A Fender Telecaster sits on its right, a Gretsch on the left. Everything is in the ice-cold blue theme. There is a valve amplifier for each of the guitars. Three of them, aligned on the back. It’s the apotheosis of analogue stuff, any vintage lover would go mad. In front of this set.

Keyboards are on the right, opposite to the drumkit. In front of it there is an old acoustic guitar. It is so timeworn that I think it’s a century old. It reminds me of the only Robert Johnson picture.
Coolness at its peak, this is 100% Jack White.

9:30. It’s about time. The Forum security works hard to avoid the appearance of any smartphone/camera. They threaten to kick people off the venue if photos or videos are taken. It is written everywhere. On the long run it’s a lost war, but the battle tonight seems partially won.
My photopass sticker is even more precious. It obviously looks cool. It says: “I’m taking photos” and has the three stripes logo of Third Man record. Want to guess the colour? Click here.

9:40. Jack White, profession rockstar, arrives 10 minutes late.
In a brilliant interview to Alexis Petridis for The Weekend, Guardian magazine, he tells that until he can afford it, there will be two bands on this tour that alternate. One all-men and one all-girls band.
I realize White has a lot in common with Prince. They’re both incredible guitarists, they’re both control freaks and they are obsessed with coolness. No surprise that Prince‘s lesson going: “given similar conditions an all-girls band is sexier” is what Jack White opts for his London debut. Six girls appears onto the stage.

Three seconds into it, everyone is surprised. No one, not me for sure, expected that on the night of Blunderbuss’ launch, Jack White would start the show with Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground from the best White Stripes.
He also stands next to the drummer, his natural place for so long. I think at Meg for a split second. Carla Azar, the girl on drums is the opposite of Meg. Instead of leaving it to the pause, she fills any instant with a relentless drumming. Add to that a bass, a pedal steel, a violin, lot of keyboards and a couple of backing vocalists and this clearly will never sound as any other ensemlbe Jack played before.

Jack White doesn’t disown his past. He looks forward to reinterpreting it. He shows off his songs proudly. It is not a greatest hits set, every song is different from the way people know. It is a reappropriation of his songs merged with brilliant new tunes.
The new single Love Interruption, played on that delightful old acoustic guitar, shines as much as Hotel Yorba from White Blood Cells. Two Against One, from the disappointing album Rome, recorded in collaboration with Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi gets revised. The ghost of Meg revives in We’re Going to be Friends.

He plays a lot of guitar. Opinions on Jack White have divided guitarists and music lovers for at least ten years. This fact in itself is enough to prove he has left a sign in rock. To find another guitarist which style influenced mainstream rock in such a recognisable way, we have to set the clock back twenty years and evoke Kurt Cobain or Tom Morello.
Jack White fathers are Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page this is as obvious as it is superficial. So it is no surprise to imagine his grandfathers playing the blues in cotton fields in the Delta.

There is more. White is an emotional musician. His style is all about impulse, temperament not technique. He isn’t precise and doesn’t need to be. The only thing he is obsessed with is the sound. It is more important than the notes. Stripping it to the bone Jack White belongs to the school of Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young rather than Van Halen or David Gilmour.
His solos are anomalous waves. They arrive all of a sudden and last as much as he feels.

The closing piece tonight is a raucous version of Ball and Biscuits . From his ice-cold Telecaster a downpour of saturated notes puts an end to any debate, the audience is gobsmacked.

Jack White is on a happy mood. He plays without compromise. You may thing such a setlist is a safe bet. To go through White Stripes, Raconteurs and Dead Weather hits protects him to face the reaction of his fans on the new stuff. I don’t think it is a planned strategy. There’s no answer because there is not a conceptual questions. Simply he wants to play his music and feels free to pick his favourite.

The encore, after the song that closes Blunderbuss, Take Me With You When You Go, offers a rich trio of crowd pleasing tunes. The White Stripes’ Doorbell, Raconteurs’ Caroline Drama and even Seven Nation Army that I didn’t think I would ever listen to, again, in this life. A riff which has become part of rock history next to Satisfaction, Money and Smoke on the Water.
Maybe the last riff.
Jack White salutes, acknowledges and thanks the faithful English audience with a folk piece borrowed from Leadbelly. Goodnight, Irene is his homage to London, the city who made him a rockstar.
Maybe the last rockstar.

Jack White on the net is at [website][third man records][facebook]

Photo tip

Color scheme. Light Scheme. All has been prepared and is matching on stage. Blue/grey/white and him, Jack White, dressed in black!

Lights are not easy. Blue-ish throughout. There is not a warm spot in sight. There is some magenta appearing here and there, maybe to match his eyes make-up but overall It is an ice-cold blue affair. #95B9C7 you know!

To shoot raw is a must do at any concert. If you are serious about your photography, you must shoot only and always raw files. Too much unpredictability to risk unworkable images. I’m telling this after many years I have been shooting filml.
At this concert raw is more important than ever. Having the flexibility to balance the whites in post production is essential to avoid that all the pictures look the same blue.

The white floor is something unusual and helps. It acts as a reflecting panel. It brightens up the shadows and gives roughly a stop to the otherwise dark conditions. I managed to increase the shutter speed to around 1/200s at f/2.8.
Jack White moves a lot on stage, unless you want a mic-in-the-face photo with him singing behind the microphone, it’s a typical hide and seek situation. The faster shutter minimize motion blur.

This was the hottest concert of the year so far. The news of the album setting N.1 both in USA and UK mark a milestone for White already rich career. There was a dozen of photographers in the pit. We had less than a dozen minutes to nail the moment. The first three songs were quick to switch lenses (another body would help). For me it was a 24-70mm one night stand.

On the train back home I look at the pics, moderately satisfied by the result. I regret the short time. I must be obsessed to get the perfect image as Jack White is to get the perfect sound. I am sure with more minutes and less pressure this gig has potential to deliver awesome images. I ‘imagined’ some incredible pictures during the show, after the third song. No one was allowed to take. Someone has to understand how this is damaging music and photography.

These photos have been successful and justified the train journey and a 3.30 AM post-editing. Published on the Guardian, The Independent, the Daily Telegraph, The Quietus, The 405 and several other websites I set my personal record. Ready for the next.

I shot Kathleen Edwards at the lovely Islington Academy in London last February and would be a pity not to report from her nice show.

I didn’t know much about Kathleen Edwards too. Until the day NPR First Listen pre-streamed her new album, Voyageur, at the beginning of the year. It was the same day as First Aid Kit Lion’s Roar and that helped a lot my day at work. It also showed that 2012 has started awesome for female music.

As I typically do since Spotify, when I am attracted by a nice album, and Voyageur is a very nice album, I point to the streaming site and listen to the rest of the artist’s LPs.
What doesn’t really happen everytime is that I spend the rest of the night listening on loop to 4 albums. Everything Kathleen Edwards recorded.

Then I seeked info about the tour, I discovered it was going to happen soon (how much I love London, do you want to see someone you discover it is coming next to you).

I was lucky too. The405 offered me to go and shoot her show so I didn’t even have to fuss around searching for contact and convincing a PR that I am worth a photopass.

I said yes, I was on the list and on the day of the show I jumped on my usual after work train to London Kings Cross.
It’s nice to have a stroll from the station through Angel to get to the hidden (in a shopping centre) jewel which is the Islington Academy.

Last time I was here I shot the Walkmen in an amazing gig that also marked the last time my film cameras got to work. Exciting as sad moment. I thought about celebrating it going film for once again but I didn’t.

It’s nice to arrive there early, get a drink and sit on the leather sofas in the gallery upstairs. It has a wonderful view on the stage and, before the crowd, nice and relaxing music.

Kathleen Edwards has been around for almost 10 years and is well known and appreciated in Canada, the country where she is from. I am late, that’s renowned, so I am in the process of discovering her. Her guitar is full of writings I’d love to decrypt to know more about her.

Many more people are discovering this artists too. Because part of the rumours around Kathleen latest album arrive because of the fact that it has been produced together with her partner, Justin Vernon, which is in fact Mr Bon Iver.
Some sort of news have an impact and Vernon influence can be heard in the LP.

This shouldn’t and doesn’t obscure her value. Compared to her previous albums, the songs here are less constrained into a classic structure and pulse into more familiar Bon Iver musicscapes. Her music is inspired mainly by male rockers and female folksingers. She loves north American music. The landscapes. The grasslands. The vastity.

In Voyageur there is less place to solos and music jams. Instead of riding the rock’n'roll horse, more space is given to personal songwriting, call it the Bon Iver way.

The gig is a different task. Despite it rotates mainly around the songs of Voyageur, her partner is playing the other side of the world, somewhere in New Zealand, and Kathleen is with her solid band to enjoy her very personal and important London show.
The venue is full. There’s no Bon Iver T-Shirts around. There are fans of all ages. People is here for her and I am very curious to know why.

Live Kathleen Edwards reveals first of all her love for Neil Young. The music is indebted with her fellow countryman. The guitar has that raw sound that only Neil Young has been able to play so consistently for the last 40 years and brings imagery fresh air and muddy boots in the packed academy.

Echoes of rock’n'roll remind me of Sheryl Crow‘s best period pre-Eric Clapton. Her folk vein is what you expect from Lucinda Williams if jamming with Tom Petty‘s heartbreakers.

The heartbreaking moment arrives when she introduces House Full of Empty Rooms explaining it tells of a house she had to leave and the meaning of having a place to call home.

Kathleen Edwards write nice songs and sings them sincerely. She also plays very well the rocker part on the most upbeat moments, helped by the briallant band lead by Gord Tough on guitar.
It’s clear the chemistry she has with the musicians the way they alternate for solos and duets.

When she plays A Soft Place to Land Edwards on the violin I have moved back upstairs and enjoy the perspective on the stage from the balcony.

The show for almost two hours hasn’t had weak moments and convinced every person to have been part of a key moment of an artist’s career. A very deserved moment.
I had been waiting for Oh Canada, which is maybe my favourite of her songs, but it didn’t happen and it didn’t really mind.

I walk back to my train with it playing on my earphones.

Kathleen Edwards is online here [website][facebook][twitter][myspace][spotify]

Photo tip

It’s a classic of concerts. Those moments between songs when the music goes quiet and the artist does something else than strumming a guitar.
To shoot or not to shoot? As usual it depends of what is happening on stage.

To a photographer it’s a less intrusive and less distracting moment. But what about the picture?
There are mainly 3 situations.

The performer stops to have a sip.
I have seen them drinking everything, from water off a plastic bottle to a whisky shot.
Commonly is beer or wine but some pure British eccentrics are used to having a cup of tea.

Personally, after several attempts, I skip the plastic bottle and anything inside a plastic cup. Plastic doesn’t please my severe aesthetic. It doesn’t add that image that makes a concert gallery different. It disturbs.

I feel more comfortable with beer, wine and whisky. They are the rock’n'roll good stuff, aren’t they? I’ll may comeback to this when I get a proper pair of images to compare.

The chat.
Many artists like to chat between songs. Considering that photography has the disadvantage of not recording audio  (you may have noticed that), the problem with this photos is that it must be evident what is happening otherwise it will look just a bland photo of a musician not playing or a singer not singing.

It would have been a touching image catching Edwards tears introducing the song, but it was after the third so.. go guess.

The setting/tuning moment.
I am annoyed by this. It’s a compulsory attitude for some musicians but often it breaks the moment.

I assume it isn’t a critical step considering some guitarists ignore it. To tune a guitar every other song, pausing the moment, it’s something I’d justify only to change guitar tuning. In that case it’d be appropriate get another guitar, though.
By the way, tuning happens often. I shot it hundreds of time and I can’t remember to have used one of the photos (if my memory doesn’t fail). My suggestion is that you can rest and wait for the song to start.

What can be nice, instead, is when the musician deals with the pedal effects. It’s not a rule that applies everytime but in some occasions is the cool source for that different image photoeditors are after.

Reason it that when a guitarist kneels down to manipulate the effects she/he gets very close to you. For once the tilted angle of standing lower than the stage is cancelled. It’s possibile to close up and shoot a portrait with a wide angle which always give an unmatched sense of presence.

Another factor is ruled by the stage decorations. Some nice (and some ugly). If lucky to have only those analogic boxes, cables and setlist, it’s worth being ready to catch the moment.
If they have (as Kathleen Edwards did) a nice carpet, the pictures may be even nicer.

Things I avoid are towels, plastic bottles, leftovers and everything that doesn’t fit with the subject but messes up the composition.

A balanced photograph is the meeting point of lighting, subject and background. Photographs that forget the importance of the background aren’t usually strong. It must either be neutral or fit with the subject. A difficult thing to achieve at concerts where photographers’ control is close to nothing.

If the background completes the subject, it will boost the effect of the photo. If it is distracting, the eyes of the viewer will be attracted by it and move away from the subject.

My first date with him was when he was dating Isobel Campbell. The first (or second?) album together was out. 2008. The beauty and the beast setting. The fairy tale. I shot them on b&w film at the Union Chapel. Nice gig, very dark lights.

The second time was not much later. He came back to London with Greg Dulli. The Gutter Twins collaboration; acoustic version. I got a photo pass for the show but when arrived to the Union Chapel (from Cambridge, not Angel!) I found an advice on the old wooden door of the church that all photography was forbidden. I enjoyed the gig and took some point and shot pics who made for a very different post.

About a year later, the third time. Lanegan was special guest of Soulsavers. Writing about that I conied the term Laneganize [anyone else's music] and ended up attacked by his fan club. I was still on 35mm film at the Electric Ballroom.

Fourth time Lanegan was playing a solo show, back at his beloved Union Chapel. A sort of “the blues enters the church” performance. It wasn’t proper solo, I have never seen him playing an instrument, but with just a defiled guitarist it was as stripped down as it can go and quite emotional. Shot on digital this time, but still B&W because there was only a red light from the gig to full darkness.

So this is the fifth time. You may believe I am a desperate fan, I am not actually. This is also the first time I saw Mark Lanegan Band. I missed his Bubblegum tour and I was distracted by something else to be at any Screaming Trees concert in the nineties, assuming there was any in Rome, Italy.

Tonight is London, the venue is Shepherds Bush Empire. If it wasn’t for the Bolshevik bureaucracy of the staff, it would be my favourite theatre in town to photograph live music.

Mark Lanegan isn’t only an anomaly of this blog (no one has appeared more than twice except him). He has been an anomaly of the music scene for the last 20 years.
After the Screaming Trees broke up, he has been involved in countless collaborations with completely different artists. From Stoner rock to avant-garde electronica to acoustic folk, he sang with them all.
Lanegan has always been generous on offering his baritone to anyone brave enough to match the music to such a dominant voice.

Brave. Because, and I come back to the point infuriating fans a couple of years ago, Lanegan voice is so centred, so unique, so overruling that any kind of music going with it is at risks of being ‘Laneganised’.
Some musicians (Isobel Campbell) handled it better than others (Soulsavers or UNKLE).

To have Lanegan on a record is surely a plus because there’s no voices like his and because he increases sales.
I am pretty sure that Isobel Campbell post Belle and Sebastian career, despite her good songwriting wouldn’t have gone any far without Lanegan. Even the best QOTSA album, Songs for the Deaf, must give big credits to him.

On a recent interview with the Quietus, Lanegan revealed his intimate side. He told nice anecdotes, he seems to have come to peace with his troubled past and confessed his inability to say no when offered a collaboration he likes.

Not considering the Screaming Trees, Lanegan discography is too large to be discussed here.

Me. I felt in love with him the day I heard the traditional Where did you sleep last night covered. A version hundred times better than the hundred times most famous Nirvana at the MTV unplugged.
Kurt Cobain is on back vocals on Lanegan’s, it says it all.

My favourite album goes to I’ll Take Care of You. Another cover from the album of the same title, but in addition to the amazing title, I do love his songs in Whisky for the Holy Ghost.

In 2004 Mark Lanegan Band released Bubblegum. It is the apex of all his discography and his most commercially successful release. Stellar collaborations including stoner rock legends as QOTSA/Kyuss Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri, Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli, her majesty PJ Harvey on vocal for few songs and many more help to build a solid sound and a larger following.

Lanegan voice never ceases to be central. To be there.

Blues Funeral (another great title) is Mark Lanegan first solo album in about 8 years. It came out in February and seems to have split Lanegan’s fans in two.
Newer fans are loving it. Old school ones seem to have doubts.

I am split in two too. At the first listening it didn’t really work. Comfortable with the most Laneganized songs, I was frowning upon the “let’s-take-a-new-direction” ones, especially that Ode to a Sad Disco which uses, anathema!, electronic drums and sampling.

I kept it on loop to get prepared to this gig thanks to the online streaming (the stream is still available here) the album made it into my head.

I am still not convinced by some of the songs but overall I am liking it then… You know what I do… I go and see the live thing.

Shepherds Bush Empire has been sold out for a long time. 4AD found a ticket for me very last minute thanks to someone pulling it out, (that) Bolshevik staff, differently from most London venues, doesn’t let you stay with the photopass for the gig if you don’t have a proper ticket. Even if you have a ticket you go through a series of procedure to leave your bag, get out from the backdoor, enter from the main… bla bla.

A twenty songs long setlist, starting at 21:30 implies I have no chances to take the 23:15 train in Kings Cross. I am relaxed and prepared for another late night out on the First Capital Connect train in the middle of the week, not counting it’ll happen again the day after for Jeff Mangum. Exhausting and brilliant!

Lanegan arrives on stage with a 4 band members. A classic line-up made of guitar, bass, drums apart a guy on keys + Apple PowerBook. Macintosh laptop is the ubiquitous instrument on stage nowadays.

Lanegan grasps the microphone pole. Left hand on the mic, right on the pole. It won’t move for the next couple of hours.

I’d like to be an expert of body language to read into the pose all the insecurity the man seem to face anytime he is on a stage.
Lanegan doesn’t seem a confident person. He never plays an instrument (can he actually play, considering he composes his songs?). He rarely speaks (he introduced the band tonight, though). He doesn’t interact with the public beyond a “thank you, I appreciate”. Everything is filtered by the voice as it was something not his. An extension, an instrument he can play. That voice is the artist Mark Lanegan. The rest is elusive.

Ode to a Sad Disco arrives towards the end. That’s a determining moment of the show and being the first London show with the band in years, it is a key moment of his career. London. His band. Presenting to your audience an audacious new direction of his music. Blogosphere is agitated and divided.
Mark’s nervous. He leaves the mic pole for the first time in 5 gigs. How did it go?

It was the best moment of the show.
I changed my mind and realized that what sounds a bit out of place on the CD, it is perfect on stage.

For once Lanegan de-Laneganized himself. After putting his trademark on everyone else’s music. He removed that trademark from his own. He is the brave one. Kudos.

Fans may have been displaced, but they were not. Lot of applause and Lanegan, who his a clever guy, didn’t do an electronic techno concert but fitted part of his show with new elements. He gave the gig a fresh breath.

The band follows him. Lanegan pays a bit the fact of not having a proper touring band since the Screaming Trees. It changes in the different phases. He has some stellar guests on CD that cannot always follow his tours.

The keyboard/laptop man is the responsible of these musical new twist and he’s the essential element of his 2012 band.
The guitarist is a bit lacklustre and the rhythm session doesn’t do anything more than a good job. I missed a Josh Homme, not the man, the riffs.

Mark is generous. People loves him. The 50 or so people still queuing inside the venue half an hour after the gig to have the album signed show a devotion that is rare in modern times. I had to leave to take the last train.

Mark Lanegan Band on [website][facebook][myspace][spotify]

Photo tip

With 5 concerts 2 on films, 2 on digital and one on a point a shot, I can dedicate a full phototip to “How to photograph Mark Lanegan“.

And it is not an easy task. Or it is the easiest. It depends what you expect from your photos.
Mark is charismatic as a performer and is attractive enough on his lone wolf pose to guarantee some good photos assuming you have a camera able to deal with the dark and you are not after variety. For a portrait he’s fantastic. For a photostory is a bit of a problem.

Mark Lanegan doesn’t play instruments. He stands. He holds the Mic pole and never moves from there.
Left hand is on the mic, right is on the pole. Check the tattoes on his hands, they seem to be there ready to be photographed.

Lights are fixed. For the joy of digital shooteer he constantly has a red light theme that doesn’t change. Some blue is added to the back.

Kneeling down allow a backlight to be covered by his head both sided, highlighting the hairs with a halo. It looks nice, assuming there is some light to lit up his face. Which often there is not. So that you have great hair (check the histogram may need some underexposure) with a flat face in the shadow. A fill in flash may help…  never tried, highly forbidden.

He moves the face from the mic when there are breaks in the lyrics. Follow the song, follow his body language. The left side, looking at the stage, is the best. That is where he turns the head, showing is immersed, grieving face. That is the moment to avoid the mic in face irritating portrait.

So far so good.
The rest is up to your focal length and colour setting.
Go wide to include the band, go telephoto for some close portrait.

Mark Lanegan will not surprise you doing something unexpected. Or at least it still has to happen to me. I tried B&W film, B&W digital, color (red/blue) and now sepia.
I will be there a sixth time, to see to which limit he’ll push me.

On one side The Guardian have been praising Laura Marling music since her debut. Any of her albums had nothing less than 4 stars and so did most of her shows. She is constantly covered on the paper, got praised and often interviewed.
The Observer recently also gave away a nice compilation CD of her music for free. It sounds like a happy marriage.

On the other side, The Guardian has coined and overused the neologism New Boring. Originally created by Peter Robinson, one of its contributor and Popjustice editor.

It’s effective to define a new genre with a new term. A word which, at the same time, is ironical and judgmental. It’s the sort of combination that readers love, hence a success for journalism.
To be fair, the term New Boring originally pointed its invisible finger to popular acts as Adele, Coldplay and Mumford & Sons more than Laura Marling. Nevertheless she has often been thrown in that box. Incorrectly.

I don’t like genres definitions and even more the market need of new genres creation but, from a pure hilarious point of view to read: “The term New Boring [...] suggested pop’s Beige Wave – Adele, Mumford and Sons, cathedral-blighting folk simperer Laura Marling….” it makes me smile.

To complete this intro and aim to be (new) boring myself, there’s a pop/gossip side to this tale: Laura Marling rocambolesque love stories a few years back. A tale still not missed by the Guardian.
Very young, when she was back vocalist for Noah and The Whale she was in a relationship with the band lead singer Charlie Fink. After the band first album where she is credited, Laura left the collaboration and left Charlie Fink as well to get involved in another relationship.
Nothing interesting to the press, if the contender wasn’t Marcus Mumford, The leader of the competitor and fast growing band going to lead the brit-folk invasion in USA.

The split with Fink was very talked about and made ‘tearfully public’ when the second and best album by Noah and The Whale was released. First Days of Spring is Charly Fink sublimation of the grieve following the end of love with Laura Marling.

From the paper point of view, to “run with the hare and hunt with the hounds” (I had to look for this!) and throw into some celebrity gossip definitely works. It gets both lovers, detractors and gossip people interested in reading.
From Laura Marling point of view, she may be annoyed, but it works too. She is indeed one of the most covered artists in national newspapers. “As long as they speak about you is OK” there’s an Italian expression used for celebrities need to be on the spotlight.
From my point of view, I’m confused and all of this had me prejudicially prevented to get more information.

I also have a problem with the misuse of the term folk. Folk music in the last 10 years had a huge success. There is a commercial interest in defining folk. Everything that is played without a distorted guitar, regardless it’s rooted “enough” in popular culture to effectively play folk music.

Wendy Fonarow, the Indie Professor on her blog, still hosted by The Guardian, tried to address this point recently in another of her interesting posts/answers/lessons: “What do we mean by ‘folk’?” triggered by a tweet from Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos: “Is the folk thing finished yet?”

I went to check myself, you may have noticed this year started ‘folky’ with King Creosote and Jon Hopkins and First Aid Kit. Cambridge is the folk UK capital, I repeat everytime. Cambridge has the most important Folk Festival in July and Laura Marling headlined its latest edition last summer.

Laura Marling isn’t a proper folk artist to me. She uses acoustic guitars, she has been playing in folk bands but my orthodox point of view wants folk to be more rooted into popular influences in terms of music played and instruments used. Laura Marling, if you need a definition, sits in the acoustic pop which can be very relaxing (and very boring) mainly depending on the songs played.

It is my first time but, only 22 years old, Laura Marling is touring her third full length album: A Creature I Don’t Know. The album was out in late September not much after the release of her second, the multi awarded I speak because I Can. She has never been short of inspiration and, undoubtedly she has a gift on writing catchy songs or, more appropriately, on catching fans with her songs.

With a date at London most prestigious theatre later in the week, the 5000 capacity Apollo Hammersmith, this opening night of her UK tour in Cambridge, which follows a sunny Australian break, is long awaited, sold out and perfect for a general rehearsal.

Dressed in white, blonde hair on warm spotlights, with the band all around her in a shadowy dark blue background, the light engineer has been clear to highlight whose the leader here.
To come onto a stage with an acoustic guitar and play to a full theatre your personal stories, at 22 years old, isn’t something as straightforward as it looks. Imagine yourself, imagine your daughter doing this. It requires, nerves, self-confidence and, above all, skills.

Laura Marling, as her friend/enemy/rival Emmy Lee Moss, (aka Emmy the Great who I reviewed and photographed here) has got all of this. And she has enough songs to fill 90 minutes with no much more than her personality and music.
The band never manages to take the centre stage, not even when she introduce all of them one by one, including Pete Roe who was one of the support acts.
Laura is the star, the band help her shining.

The set starts around her latest album with a growing number of insertions from the past as it goes on. She kicks the band out for a solo moment which, if anything, emphasize her value.

I notice a song because when it starts I think it is a cover of Jose Gonzales’ Heartbeat used in the amazing advert of Sony Bravia some years ago. I am wrong, it is similar but it is called My Friends, one of the new tunes.

The concert has its sweet moment. Laura praise the internet and youtube videos and asks the audience to record and upload her birthday wishes for her sister 30th. The “permission” to video record doubled the hands up holding a smartphone. A modern times ritual of rock concerts getting out of control.

After Rambling man and nicely introducing the last song she prepares the audience there will not be an encores and let the concert close on the notes of I Speak Because I Can.

If you want to know more, Laura Marling online is here: [website][facebook][twitter][myspace][spotify]

Photo tip

This is a true and nice story, happened to me last Friday.
I was having my lunch break, I picked one of the newspapers available, The Independent, I flicked through the pages until I saw a Laura Marling review from the Hammersmith Apollo gig (the review is here but the picture was only on the paper edition). It had a large picture going with the article.
My first thought was, “wow, she played London with exactly the same lights and pose of Cambridge! I got similar shot to this”. The split second my eyes needed to get to the credits and I discovered that it was actually my photo. With my name bottom right!

At that time, I had just started writing this post about the Guardian and Laura Marling to find my shot of her was published on the Independent. Hilarious.

A photo taken in Cambridge, used for the London review it’s unusual and rewarding. To have been selected from the large bucket of available images that newspapers can browse including, I guess, the ones of her London Hammersmith show is satisfying.
If I was told and I rushed to a newsagent to pick up a copy, it wouldn’t be the same feeling.

It’s plenty of concert photographers at each gig. It’s very hard nowadays to get published on a national paper, especially on a large print. For several reasons. To get the right image of the right artist to the right person at the right moment is tricky.
I may be good at the first (self-confidence mode=on), but not at the rest. I shoot artists who I like to listen, usually far from mainstream. Instead of going home postediting the photos I stay to watch the show hence I am not always quick to send pics back to agency. I am very rigid on the selection, don’t shot many and select even less. If you know my portfolio, prefer more arty than clear and sellable images.

I am picky and stubborn. I don’t get overexcited by a success not put down by several failures. I keep doing what I like the way I like.
After several years in the field, I came to conclusion that solely concert photography can’t be a profession. There are not enough money to supply all the amazing photographers who are part of the circus.

The concert cake is tiny and must be shared in multiple slices. No one is going to be full with it. You’ve got to go for the wedding cake if you want to live as a photographer. There’s very few other options if you starting now.

There are also too many aspiring photographers giving away material for free. And even more bands, label, venues, promoter, magazines and everyone working for a profit in the field happy to compromise on quality to have freebies. Remember, if you give away photos for free once, people would expect photos for free forever, resist.

Yet there is some space to see gigs, to meet people, to connect, to learn and to have fun.
It’s about ten years I do this consistently. It cost me much more money than I earned but the adrenaline kick I have when the lights go down and it’s just me and the band in front of me for the next 10 minutes is something I’m not willing to give up just yet.

I missed Kurt Vile set at Primavera 2011. It was impossible to watch anything. I prefer concerts. Longer sets, the audience is more concentrate (it pays for that gig), the band know you’re there for them and give its best to make you enjoy the show and come back next time.

I bought Kurt Vile latest CD, Smoke Ring For My Halo, seduced by one of those FOPP 5£ offers (it was back to 9£ last Saturday). I listened to it a lot in the weeks before this gig.

There is something in there. Actually there is a lot from a musical perspective (what other perspective a CD must have? Whatever!). From Americana to fingerpicking; intimate songs and outburst of energy provided by the presence in the studio of his touring band, The Violators.
Also there isn’t something. The impalpable thing missing. The perception of a good album that can’t break into my heart.

My personal way to get that ‘thing’ is to go to the show. I know no better way to test a musician than live. It’s not a technical comment, it’s not because I want to check if he has good skills. Kurt Vile surely have and I am not in the position to recognise them. If a musician makes some errors or can make impossible things isn’t always obvious Kurt Vile isn’t John McLaughlin, yet is an impressive guitarist. Mine is an emotional thing.

Kurt Vile concert at Koko sold-out fast. He headlined one of the NME Awards 2012 nights. A rich line-up including Real Estate and the solo project of ex Spacemen3 founder Peter Kember known as Sonic Boom.

As tradition, Live on 35mm covers one artist at a time not a gig. I won’t talk about either of the supports. It is a good thing considering I found Real Estate boring and Sonic Boom electronic noise quite pointless after the first 10 minutes.

The expectations for Kurt Vile to resurrect a night that so far had been as mediocre as the Brit Awards broadcasted on ITV simultaneously were high.

It’s about 9 PM when he came on stage with the Violators, his band. They check that all pedals and cables are ok.
Kurt Vile and his band seem to share a passion for lo-fi, analogical devices and the same hairdresser.

When everything appear to be ready they disappear. Typical. For a couple of minutes (what does happen those 2 minutes in the changing room, anyone?) until the are acclaimed back on stage for the proper start. Rites of rock.

Kurt Vile comes back solo, acoustic guitar and those long hair hiding his face. The photographers’ joy. This set has been on the road for about a year and sounds solid from the start. I don’t know very well his early material but it’s evident from the beginning that the difference tonight isn’t between present and past, rather between the intimacy of the solo moments and the explosion of energy the band provides when it joins him.

Three guitars + drums without a bass player. Hard times for bassists. Even the softer ballads become electrifying rides. Guitars don’t play the same chords, they either overlap or run after each other relentless.

When Vile is with the Violators, he concentrates more on the singing. His guitar take a break, it gives more space to the other two. Vile instead reveals a deep, multifaceted voice which isn’t always obvious from the record. The balance works at perfection. One of those things I wanted to see live, checked.

When he is on his own, he has the control and, unexpectedly, the situation seems to slip off his hands. The guitar has the burden of holding onto the voice and it is the singing to pay the price. Kurt attention is on the playing. His voice seems to lose its impact, weakens and hides behind the chords and the fingerpicking. Vile hides behind his hair.

If it wasn’t for the reverb overdose the songs are filled, the way Vile modulates the singing has a lot to do with Bob Dylan. Something evident since The War on Drugs days. No mystery he loves and celebrates Mr Zimmerman. He does his own way, though, and he does it well.

Curiously, it is a cover of the other legend of American music, Bruce Springsteen, to mark the best moment of this great show.
When the wall of Violators guitars ride Downbound Train chords progression a perception of excitement growing in the audience is palpable. In less than a minute half the venue is singing along the chorus. Several people, many very young, wonder what song that is. The overlapping solos of the two other guitarists are raucous and advance uncompromisingly. No one can stop it.
After one of the best cover I heard in years, Kurt Vile made me want to listen to Bruce Springsteen more than the Boss has managed in the last 20 years.

Instead as soon as the main set closes, I had to walk to the Station to catch my train back home, skipping the encore. Twitter rumours say Peter Kember came back on stage to play Spacemen3 songs Hey Man and Amen with Kurt Vile and the Violators. I can’t find a video of this happening in London. I will blame First Capital Connect and National Rail for the rest of my life.

When an artist on stage makes me quote both Dylan and Springsteen in the same writing, when he manages to send some shivers to my spine with just honest songs and reverbed guitar music, when he can close a set covering Spacemen3 with one of the Spacemen3 in person, you know you have been part of something special.

Kurt Vile (of Philly) is proud of his Philadelphia origins as you can see in several nicks he pick for his presence on the web, here [website][facebook][twitter][myspace]

Photo tip

Talk to fellow photographers.

It can be because I am Italian, not even that outspoken for an average Italian to be sincere with you, but anytime I am in a pit I say hello to everyone and attempt to talk to other photographers. I have noticed that it is rare, many of us stay in a corner silently playing with a smartphone, waiting for the start.

For concert photographers a pit is like a boat for a sailor. Those 20-30 minutes we are in the same boat. A narrow space packed with people in love doing the same thing: shooting gigs. You may know someone but there are always new additions and very rarely we are all alone.

I found some very good friends in the pit. I got some nice professional contacts, I learnt a lot and even realized I was shoulder to shoulder with Ross Halfin or Steve Gullick. Useful to know, there’s not a better thing of shooting a gig with a great photographer. It is like having your own workshop. I would say it is even worth missing some pics to check what he’s doing.

You can learn watching others but also talking with others. Any photographer loves talking about photography, be sure. And you may have something to tell too. It is a take/give – win/win situation. Sometime we are the experienced and will answer questions, other we ask.

Problem. The first question between photographers in a pit is, 99% of the times, this: “Who are you shooting for?”

It used to annoy me, now I got used. Beyond the natural curiosity I see it as a way to investigate how hierarchically important you are even before asking your name. I never ask that. If you came across the question by someone, you now know it’s not me.

Competition. This is the biggest enemy between concert photographers. Some of us have an unpleasant attitude. They think to be better, to not have time for you. Some think to own the recipe of success. Sometimes are paranoid to the point of thinking you will steal their secrets so better reveal less as possible. With the amount of images and info online, this is nonsense.

There are no secrets, there are no geniuses. There is only experience and dedication. Overconfident people saying they are the best or explaining why they are doing better than you, means they are probably not. Because if you know and you think to be great you don’t need to show off saying you’re great. If they do, they have a problem.

They are not the majority. Most of us are a passionate bunch of friendly people.
Introduce yourself, ask a less intrusive question, and we won’t be on the defensive.

The funniest thing these days is that likely some of the photographers shooting next to you, are people you follow on Facebook or Twitter and you don’t know. It happened to me. Our nicks are not displaced on our photo pass sticker. Our gravatar is nowhere near our real face.

Next time you’re in the pit say hello, I’ll reply, we may have a chat, shoot the gig together and hang out for a beer after the third song.

Scandinavian music after all is at its most popular peak since ABBA, although releasing much better records.

I was to photograph a first First Aid Kit concert at London Union Chapel more than two years ago with the editor of The Line Of Best Fit which is 5 years old today. Last minute he had to pull out obliterating my photopass with his decision, that also mean my set ended up being digital instead of film. (Not being resentful after all this time, I just checked my gmail to remember why I didn’t go in the end)!

Those days First Aid Kit were two teenage girls. Klara had to wait for school holidays to tour, Johanna had probably just finished it.
There was a lot of rumours in the blogosphere about this emerging acoustic folk duo who covered Fleet Foxes’ Tiger Mountain Peasant Song. Nordic music wasn’t yet hyped and folk revival was started among the others by Fleet Foxes themselves.

First Aid Kit debut, The Big Black & The Blue, was just out. A nice album that resembles a good fruit in need of some ripening.
Everything was in an unstable equilibrium. This could have been just another band redesigning the hippie fashion style of the sixties. The music, coupled with the bucolic image the girls transmitted, was going that direction.

During the American tour, they were noticed by Jack White, who never misses getting in touch with a duo made by young, pretty girls. As he did for his collaboration with the Smoke Fairies in 2009, he produced a 7” to First Aid Kit who recorded two covers, Universal Soldier and It Hurts Me Too for his Third Man Records. Experience experience.

Two years on from that debut; one year from White Nashville studio; school finished, the Lion’s Roar has just been published. As it happens these times, days before its release it was streamed on several websites and had a very positive response.
The songs sound brilliant and captivating as nothing else I have listened to this year. There’s not better way to show the potential of a band than releasing a convincing sophomore album. Lion’s Roar is indeed convincing.

First Aid Kit haven’t really moved from their style. The difference is that the music had time to ripen and the album has the songs. Not a couple of good singles as the previous, but ten solid tunes. Out of these the first three and the last two stand out.

Teenage innocence allows and justifies some overconfidence and, as often happens, who dares win.
They dedicate a song, Emmylou, to Johnny Cash and Emmylou Harris. The song has been praised by Rosanna Cash. There are collaborations including a precious cameo of Bright Eyes’ Conan Oberst on the closing track, King of the World, and what a track that is!

This First Aid Kit London gig was scheduled to happen at the small King’s College London Students’ Union. Tickets demand beyond expectations forced the organizers to move it to the larger and prestigious Scala.
(On a personal selfish note, delightful place of choice for my commuting from Cambridge to Kings Cross, thanks girls!)

Scala sold out too, which is a photographer’s problem. Happiness and relief caught me when I saw the barriers delimiting a photographers’ pit rarely present there.

While waiting for the girls from the comfort of the pit, I glance at the setlist. I noticed, Waltz for Richard a favourite from first album isn’t present. I also notice there is a song called Blue. Doubt… what ‘Blue’ is that? Smartphone + Google = problem sorted.
They have one song titled Blue in Lion’s Roar. I’m very bad at remembering titles but Blue is an unforgettable album (and song) by Joni Mitchell. Not a cover, the source of my worry, I read it as homage to Joni Mitchell, one artist they must have listened to a lot. Even more convinced ambition can be a good thing.

Klara enters first and stands on the right with her guitars; Johanna is on the left on red keyboards. They’re quite far one from the other. There’s a drummer and nothing else (if I understood well, it’s their brother).

Since the first notes it’s clear the concert will be about two wonderful voices.
I can’t say which of the two is my favourite, the way they modulate the singing make each songs special. The music is fairly simple. Klara’s guitar and Johanna’s keys aren’t more than simple melodies and plain harmonies.
The singing makes the songs. Both when alternate or when harmonize.

There are some highs in the show. The first is when the duo leaves their positions to stand close and delight the audience with a Ghost Town sang off microphones with the help of the audience. It can be seen as a show off, I loved it because it was the only moment the two girls played next to each other and had an incredible feedback by the singing crowd.

Johanna leaves his keys to play New Year’s Eve with an autoharp, instrument unknown to modern music since PJ Harvey shook England.

There are some light moments during the show, songs that have been written with radio coverage and charts in mind but there is nothing wrong with it because all First Aid Kit tunes sound genuine.
Indie musicians know that the other thing their audience love, beyond the quality of the music, is the sincerity they put in songs.

The duo find the time to introduce the brother and even tell their father who’s at the sound desk. I think at the tour bus as a nice family campervan on the road throughout the world.

Not on the original setlist, Kings of the World can’t be forgotten and it closes the two songs encore on a high.

I stop at the merchandise desk to buy a copy of the album. I always try to buy from the hands of the band and I am on the train with a nicely dedicated copy. Win.

If you still haven’t been in touch with the lovely tunes of First Aid Kit why don’t start from here [website][facebook][twitter][myspace][spotify]

photo tip

What was beautiful at this show musicwise, it wasn’t photography-wise.
Nothing intentional. Simply stating a sad reality.

The first three songs where the shyest part of the show. Quite understandable for two young girls headlining their biggest concert in the most important capital of live music.
So why promoters and tour managers, whoever is responsible, can’t understand this?

The autoharp moment would make some beautiful neoclassical portrait of Johanna in her medioeval, green, velvet dress. It went unreported. As for Ghost Town sang without the nasty microphones covering their faces, it was listed at number 8 then missed by pit photographers and left to snappers.

The encore had much more dynamics. Johanna assaulted her keys as Beach House Victoria Legrand. The moment she finally mistreated her instrument and got is hair in the air was raucous. It couldn’t be photographed.

None of the best moments of this show have been recorded by a proper photographer and this was because none of this happened in the first three songs.

This is not sad only for our portfolios or magazines wanting the best images from us, it is bad for the band and for the fans who want to live the real atmosphere of a wonderful gig again and have to face the reality that the first 10 minutes left to photograph it do not represent it at all.

It has to be accepted that some artistic trends, some music genres failed. They made sense (and even had some mainstream success and gathered large groups of aficionados) for short periods in the history timeline but then, either violently or quietly, they proved wrong and disappeared.

It’s not only within art. It relates to the humankind bond with experiment and research. We are prone to seek new forms of expression, new theories, new philosophy and new politics. It can be done with the best intentions but, unfortunately, that doesn’t mean we are exempt from making mistakes.

I could fly high with examples and take the rise and death of Communism as something that still today works very well on paper, makes perfect sense, is based on open-minded and wise principles but anywhere it was put in practice failed. Violently.

I can come back to earth, to music. Fusion, Remember that?
It was mid 80s. The decade musicians evolution had a big regression.
Those years Jazz musicians tried to find new form of expressions putting together avant-gard, easy listening, world rhythms and sparkling some rock electricity.

For a very short period of time it almost made sense. Travels, a double live album by Pat Metheny won a Grammy and was a bestseller. Those days it sounded OK. Now, when you visit your uncle next time, ask to see his CD collection. Pick Travels, clean the dust out, put it on the stereo and listen.
While listening you will be in front of the evidence that human beings, even talented human beings, make horrible mistakes.

Progressive was a big mistake. It was born the moment rock music looked for new inspiration but looked for it in the wrong place: Classical Music. From the end of the sixties to its peak in mid seventies, prog aimed to achieve credibility among the disbelievers of rock music. It did competing with it. Using the pretentiousness of technical skills (ELP redoing Mussorgsky’s Picture at an Exhibition, Deep Purple playing with a symphonic orchestra and so on).
Rock music turned to progressive tried to conquer a new market not showing its intentions but pretending hiding them behind a surrogate of what that market wanted.

It was like selling a Big Mac to someone who is used to eating juicy Argentinian Fillet Steaks.
There is no chance you become Caravaggio because you can paint. There are no chances to create something good from an inferiority complex hidden behind grand ambitions.

As often happens, at the beginning some fresh ideas almost made sense. This was also the reason why the bubble got bigger and inflated. The moment it succumbed imploding into its own baroque-ness the air inside did show is vacuity.
Unfortunately that moment arrived about ten years and ten millions albums later.

Progressive is probably the biggest example of a music genre that aged very badly. To deteriorate its third age quickly, it wasn’t of help and it wasn’t a coincidence the fact that its teenage son, punk, got rebellious. As teens must be they fought violently against daddy’s manifesto.

I’m not going to write anything else about punk rebelling against prog and the social clashes at the end of the seventies. Not because it isn’t true, but because it is so true that has been written more times than progressive albums have been played.

What doesn’t make sense is the fact that progressive still pretend to exist and some of those bands are unashamedly trying to survive.

It is maybe because those prog-fathers became prog-grandfathers and those punk teens are now wise men. Fathers themselves not bothering about revolution but accepting and respecting the elders.
The elders also have time, money and a luggage full of nostalgia that make them happy to pay for a ticket to see old heroes. It gives the double satisfaction of listening to the music of their youth and discovering that even heroes, as them, get old.

YES epitomize prog music. If Pink Floyd were helped by psychedelic origins, King Crimson by Robert Fripp passion for experimentation, Jethro Tull by folk, Genesis by Peter Gabriel characters, Mike Oldfield by soundtracks, Yes were not. Yes are (with Emerson, Lake and Palmer) the quintessential progressive band.

Yes is the band that recorded lengthy compositions occupying the entire side of their vinyls. Suites filled with multi-storey symphonic organs, guitar solos, huge drum-kit, high pitch voice that sings impenetrable lyrics of mystical content. All packaged in horrible looking cover arts and dressed with even worse costumes.

To their defence, some of this mix of weirdness, 40 years back in time, managed to produce some good music. With such ingredients, it is a huge achievement.

Yes, YES are back. They never really went away, they have always been around with different line-up and slightly different names. Kept apart by myriad of tedious legal battles around copyright, among band endless list of members, to then come back in peace again.
Yes are back with their first album in 10 years, Fly From Here, produced by Trevor Horn which is the same producer of Owner of a Lonely Heart. It says it all. Undoubtedly, one of the worst songs of all times.

A tour follows the album and the attempt of convincing new audiences that they still have something to say is bound to fail. I mean, I am don’t question they have something to say, it’s just so boringly dated no one cares to hear.

They haven’t said anything interesting for 30+ years. They don’t seem to embrace this world but a wolrd of fantasy that most people started to doubt in 1974.
It would be much better (but much less convenient) to accept this than to insist on a lost cause.

Nevertheless Yes are around, I pulled my masochist sideand sorted a photopass to see them live for once and for all.

The hardcore fans coming to the show don’t seem to care. Beer in hand, they just want to listen those tunes again, wear those T-shirts one last time and wish the past will materialize while they keep singing Close to the Edge. Dicto.

You know what you’re getting, they know what they’re offering.

You also know what you are not getting.

Jon Anderson. The original singer (Yes had umpteenth line-up changes) isn’t in the band. In an interview to Rolling Stone he told he was fired by the band not even letting him know. Crisis, credit crunch, tough time for employees, you know. Part of an already-seen boring soap opera. The singer appearing at these shows, listen here, is Benoit David and he was the singer (it’s serious) of the Yes tribute band: Close to the Edge. If Jon Anderson resemble the modern flexible worker, David had a career growth to his dream position.
Now, I am reading today that David Benoit is out of Yes replaced by Jon… Anderson? No, Davison. Whatever he is, I’m not bothered to google his name.

Rick Wakeman. He is not in the band this time. On and off between the stage and the court to prosecute Yes in the last 30 years, the Yes original Keyboardist has been replaced by Geoff Dawnes.
Dawnes is infamous to be playing in Asia albums and famous to be listed in The Guinnes Book of Records to have played with most keyboards in the same concert: 28 (yes, twenty eight)! He brought a third of them with him this tour.

What you get is what allow this band playing Yes music without being a tribute band despite sounding pretty much a tribute band.

Steve Howe on guitar, mad shirts and backcombed hair.
Alan White on drums, personalized cables and endless drum kit.
Chris Squire, on bass. He is the only Yes member to have played in all albums. Guilty then. No excuses. He smiles all time. He looks as he’s having fun.

What you get is a show that tries to sell the new album mixing it up with old compositions. You hope it could make some sense, it doesn’t.

There is not much to say about this show that cannot be said better putting on a turntable an old vinyl and pretending to be in 1972.
“Too old for Rock’n'Roll too young to die”, some of their prog pals would sing.
They should follow the suggestion and retire somewhere in Cornwall harvesting strawberries.

Instead, Yes will keep touring in 2012, starting from Australia and New Zealand.
If you really want to see where, here’s their [website] [twitter] [facebook]

Photo tip

There is one nice thing of progressive concerts: Progressive concerts photographs.

In a parallel way to how technique and show off replace the emptiness of music ideas, these bands tend to fill up the music box, (the stage), with huge colourful show off of instruments, lights, videos. Photographers’ paradise.

Where indie goes for intimacy, punk for rebellion, songwriters for theatre and mainstream rock for stadium; progressive goes for circus.
And circus, it goes without saying, is one of the most picturesque subjects.

I am sure If budget would allow, you would see lions roaring on the stage while Alan White roars his twohundredtwentyfive toms.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see an octopus jealous of Geoff Dawnes playing 10 keyboards despite he was born with only a pair of arms.
A fashion journalist, if he can manage depression and panic attacks, would love to document the match between Steve Howe shirts and the Persian carpet he walks.

I believe if Yes were as big as 1973 they would get elephants, lion tamer and fire eaters. On tour.

As for today you get some videos, light and surely the clowns and the fancy dress party.

What you can’t get out of their instruments, you can get out of your cameras.

Cambridge is a folk capital, there’s no debate about that, from the folk festival to the many tiny folk concerts all year round there’s not another British place where popular roots are as adored and followed.

Ticking concerts as ‘folk’ in Cambridge also has a marketing side to take into account. Artists that you wouldn’t probably define as folk elsewhere often become here. To get some boost in ticket sales, I guess. Nevermind.

As my friend advises on organizing a lift (it’s always nice to swap a below zero scooter ride for a car journey) “better we get there early, folk people like early nights”.

King Creosote surely doesn’t play hardcore or doom metal, nor does Jon Hopkins, yet I still found difficult to tag the music we are about to listening as ‘folk’ or ‘alt.folk’ which is even worse. Actually, what’s the music I am expecting tonight?

Their collaboration (excluding Hopkins productions of Creosote material) counts a Mercury Prize nominated album, Diamond Mine, released about a year ago and two further songs in the vinyl-only Honest Words EP released last September. The entire bulk is well below the hour and unlikely to expand into jams and solos.

Consequence is that, even accepting an early finish it’s probable that the audience will be pleased with some extemporaneous treats. I am looking forward to this.

The show opens with Jon Hopkins playing a sweet, very quiet melody on a piano. He reveals it’s classic training despite today he’s renowned for the electronic material and soundtracks.
I bet that, If he was offered to be some great of the past, he would go for Beethoven. His attempt to get into (or the inability to get rid of) Beethoven melodies as the Moonlight sonata is evident and fits better than the dodgy attempt to use the real thing by Glasvegas (remember that?) or some of Patrick Wolf older tunes.

The tune is First Watch, the opener of Diamond Mine, which they’ll play in its entirety. If you heard the album, after that piano which reminds me of Keith Jarrett in search of the inspiration to start his impromptu solo concerts, you know King Creosote arrives to sing next.
The mixture of sweet voice, whispered guitar and Hopkins now on his alternative instrument, a squeezebox (an air pumped hand driven kind of organ, whatever its name is) makes John Taylor’s Month Away one of the most beautiful tunes with one of the most obscure titles of 2011.

Diamond Mine came to the attention of the public, and King Creosote and Jon Hopkins to my attention, because of a Mercury prize nomination.

The richness of Diamond Mine is all in its simplicity. The album where showing less is better than more. Less notes, less instruments.
Jon Hopkins influence is key. He gives the record a quiet, ambient, ‘soundscape’ feel. It translates live to perfections.

One of the consequence is that my shutter becomes the noisier thing in the theatre.
After a couple of gazes at me by both because of my side-stage photo activity, I gave up shooting before the end of the third song (and having jumped the first).
In the end there was not much more to portray, they’re not the Stooges on stage. I always remember a quote by Keith Jarrett. Jarrett idiosyncrasy with photography is well known and once he stopped playing at an Umbria Jazz gig in Italy to tell a ‘tog: “why do you want to stop something that is flowing?”.

The concert indeed flows, uninterrupted and quietly until Your Young Voice, the closing song of Diamond Mine, ends. The pair has been very concentrated so far, the singing and the playing was very intense. The squeezebox and the grand piano (‘baby grand’ to be fair) made the experience dreamy, acoustic, relaxing… not literally folk.

Then things (read: King Creosote) turn upside down.
Kenny Anderson ( this is his real name) begins chatting between songs. He tells about missing the support for a Nando’s snack and more of the funny Scottish humour that makes me want to investigate where the difference between English closeness and Scottish openness starts and resides.

It is now less obvious to identify the tunes. They surely play some covers, test some of their most experimental material live. Whatever it is played everything is laidback and has a totally different feel from the first half. Which is quite refreshing, this would be the moment to get back shooting.

The theatre moment happens when Anderson jokes with Hopkins perfect pitch. He picks a random note on the guitar, Hopkins gets it on the keyboard. Chords included.

I am in admiration, awe and also extremely jealous. I hate people with a perfect pitch. I am so frustrated by my incapability to differentiate between to notes that it sounds impossible that someone can do it. My dream is to listen to a song and get the chords. In my next life, perhaps.

That is why I found interesting to read the five stars review of their Brighton gig by Alexis Petridis on the Guardian. It looks the “perfect pitch” scene happened again. My evil-me pretends they agreed on the notes to play for the tour. After all, perfect pitch doesn’t exist, does it?!

Since King Creosote announces Simon and Garfunkel’s song The Only Living Boy in New York, I can list this. He mentions it as one of the songs that didn’t make to their endless greatest hits and should have done.
The song works great played by the stripped down entity that the duo is tonight.

I wish they played Prince’s Nothing Compares to U as Petridis reports from Brighton but for this kind of curiosity, you know there’s youtube. Damn they did it in London too!

With Creosote catalogue worth about 40 albums  (and counting) recorded in just over 10 years in his Scottish homemade studio it was impossible to know what happened next and, more important, it was irrelevant.
The music was great, the audience was loving it and the night was very entertaining making the overall experience great.

The concert works as a wonderful sweet dessert despite it was too early to have a proper dinner before but, if you want the icing on it, the pair was at the merchandise desk to sign your copy of the album.

You can find more on King Creosote and Jon Hopkins on the [website] [facebook]  [Jon Hopkins on twitter]  and listen to the [album Diamond Mine]

Photo tip

“Why do you want to stop something that is flowing?” (Keith Jarrett)

It makes a nice pair with

“Our job is not to provide photos to photographers” (Efrim Menuck)

Concert photographers aren’t loved by some artists, despite all artists wouldn’t survive a minute without concert pictures

There are some times any motivations are unjustified or pretentious, other they have a reason.

I can’t understand why an artist that becomes bigger changes its policy and starts being demanding. All photos right, ridiculous restrictions on songs, shooting from the mixer desk. Things that just a year before were not in place.

I know controlling your image is essential, nevertheless making professional photographers’ life harder has the only consequence of increasing the number of paparazzi phone shots that will decorate your press. It’s quite obvious to understand, yet…

Different is when the photographer is indeed a nuisance, and we can be. This happens quite often at acoustic gigs in theatres. The balance is difficult. DSLR can’t avoid that mirror to flip and that creates noise. Sometime that noise is louder than the music played.

This is what Keith Jarrett (Robert Fripp and more) hates to the point of leaving the stage if a click is heard.
Some musicians are more tolerant (or just more in need of photos and press) but if you are a photographer and has ever found yourself in that situation it is embarrassing.

There are two ways to avoid it.

One is to not shoot. The other is to make less noise.

The first option doesn’t need a suggestion.

The second I can give a couple of tips.
Wait for the music to become louder and shoot in those instants or wait for the moments between songs. I know it is not be the best frame but it’s your work to compromise and get the best from what you have. Respect for the musicians, first, and the audience, second, it’s paramount.
Move side of the stage or back from the stage, go to the balcony and everywhere you can still take some pictures moving your shutter away from the speakers and other people ears.

Unpredictability of the landscape in the ever evolving internet era is probably the most fascinating of the trends in independent music.
While labels bosses need visionary skills and must have severe headaches when it comes to sign the next act, to a simple listener is quite fascinating to see the multicolour blossoming of a melting pot which changes, mixes, gets inspired by both the most obscure bands and the most unexpected.

In less then ten years the taste of the audience moved from lads indie rock playing jangling guitars to symphonic folkers playing violins. Folk mutated into acoustic intimate songwriting to turned electro-hipster-pop. This year is about to propose a revival of classic heavy metal (see I’ll Be your Mirror friday line up) and a resurge of 90s alternative american underground (saturday and sunday line-ups).
Among all of this, Scandinavian pop is living its own renaissance with an intensity that hasn’t been seen since Abba, thanks god, stopped recording.

As it was for Abba, this is driven by UK. With the tam tam of The Line of Best Fit and its sister site Jajaja nordic which is focused mainly on Swedish music, the hipsters generation has felt in love with Nordic musicscapes.
Robyn has become a superstar, Lykke Li is big enough to fill the biggest London venues and artists as Niki and the Dove, signed by Sub Pop and praised by the BBC Sound of 2012 panel, are bound to follow.

If there’s a trend there’s a market and, either you accept capitalism or not, where there is a market, ‘growth’ is the word.
The vein is expanding outside Sweden and Scandinavia.

Iceland Airwaves has become the festival to be if you want to be hipster-cool. Its 2011 line-up last October put together the gotha of the genre attracting fans from all over the world.

Norway couldn’t sit there staring the ashes of the satanic masses of its Black Metal rites, could it?

Casiokids have a name and fit a genre which I would leave a country mile away from my garage rock background.
I realised they were playing Cambridge while reading ecstatic reviews of the previous night show at the Cargo in London.
Pretending to be open minded (I’m not), I decided to go.

There are not many gigs in January. The Portland Arms is a small gloomy backroom of a Cambridge pub, much less trendy than the Cargo, much better to photograph live music and be in close contact with the bands.

Tonight the place is packed. After all which is another UK city where the population is young, posh, trendy, cool and rich enough to afford live music on a Tuesday night?

It’s ten o’clock when the six bearded (but one) guys in the band are standing aside, looking at the crowd and waiting to start in a mixture of northern European shyness and desire to break the ice and made everyone dance.
The Dirty Cousins (first support band) entire line-up plus girlfriends is ready for a lively mosh pit.

The ice didn’t have time to break. It melted in a couple of songs with the room temperature reaching levels who won’t allow me to use any other lens cause the cold glasses are fully covered by condensing humidity.

Nevermind, my 24-70mm and a first row spot is all I need to pester the band with my presence. And the band dancing behind me too.

Casiokids look surprised to have a photographer pointing a lens just 50cm from their vintage toy keys but are easygoing and don’t seem to bother.

The name says it all, doesn’t it? They are in love with the clasic teenager in the 80s Christmas gift that allowed too many kids to feel a musician and to play any instruments with a simple plastic toy and a switch button.

The stage is so small that fitting six guys in position isn’t easy. Imagine what happens if they use to swap positions and instruments throughout the songs.
Not an easy night for the sound engineer.

The few available lights pulsate with the music. To take the right photo is a question of dancing to the rhythm, with an eye in the viewfinder, learning on which beat the white spot lits up.

That made me a ‘dancing photographer’, which sounds as ridiculous as their grandparents most (in)famous hit: Dancing Queen.

Halfway through the show a green and red laser light helps my composition obsession for the background and I end up sitting on the floor to avoid the Portland arms messy stage and shorten my distance to the minimum the 24mm lens can focus.

The songs, sustained by a kind of funk-ish groove are irresistible.
(I have to mitigate the word ‘funk’ which is a forbidden term in the hipster-cool world).
It is impossible to not get dancing when the bass loops flirt with the keyboards over a massive percussive rhythm.
Rhythm is at the core of Casiokids music, it is the fulcrum.

Looking at the phosphorescent merchandise table, I am surprised to discover that Casiokids have already recorded three albums. This latest, Aabenbaringen Over Aaskammen (?) they are presenting tonight contains the irresistible hit Fot I Hose (??). Anyone will be dancing to the sound of this impenetrable words in the next months, believe me, actually, listen here.

The lyrics, mostly in their vowels rich Norwegian language, are sang in a high angelic pitch which is the must-have style of the decade.
Not a big point to me. English audience tend to be reluctant about band not singing in English, I don’t really mind.
Casiokids don’t pretend to be the National, they don’t want to be a literate band putting poetry attempts in music. They play sunny electro pop and are happy with it.

The tunes are filled with nice melodies, bouncing beat and it’s there to have fun and make you happy too.
If they stormed a Cambridge pub on a January night, imagine what will happen under a festival tent this summer.

You can follow the Casiokids everywhere on the net: [website] [facebook] [twitter] [myspace]

And you can also listen to a remix tape on Soundcloud, courtesy from the friends at the 405.

Photo tip

There are different way to approach concert photography. Some arrive to shooting concert from portrait and fashion, some arrive to music photography with a photojournalist background.
Results are quite different.

A fashion/portrait/studio photographer at a concert usually is the one that complains about the lack of lights, the lack of freedom, the impossibility to set the stage or to pose the subject. He is used to be in control.
They tend to work with telephoto and portrait lenses and to care for perfect lights, in focus crisp sharp images with no tilting.

A photojournalist as a first rule doesn’t want to interfere with what is happening. It is documenting the event as it is. He doesn’t want control.
He wants to bring the show to the viewer. Ideally he’d like to bring the viewer to the show.

I belong to the second category. This is why I tend to use wide and ultra wide lenses. Always a step ahead, never one back. I don’t really mind if a photo is out of focus, if the lights are a bit messy or the composition is tilted.
I only care to bring what is really happening. I want you to feel as you are there. I remain neutral as much as photography can (and will never) be.

There is a risk of being invasive with this attitude.
Both with the band, with other photographers and with the audience.
The line is tiny and perceiving when we are occupying someone else’s personal space is not easy but it is very important.

At the very first sign of being a nuisance, which is often a body language sign not a word, step back and take a break.
I know very well how passion make us blind and unaware of what’s happening around us. As we see ”the photo” we go for it.
Other people are very aware of what a pain in the ass (photographer) is.

To be always kind and respectful with bands, colleagues and the audience is probably the first difference between a real professional approach and one that only pretends to be.

2011 has been Warpaint year.

An all-girls Californian rock band, is already a nice news in its own. But there’s much more. Let’s see.

Some bad.
John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers liking them to the point of being involved in the production. He’s the most genuine of the ‘peppers’ yet not the group you want to sponsor you.

Some good.
Warpaint are one of those bands that needs time to grew. They slowly enter the subconscious with a mixture of Beach House inspired dream-pop infused with some sunny west coast guitar arpeggios curated by someone in love with art-rock and art whatsoever.

At least in UK Warpaint took some time to grow into people minds. Included myself. A significative sign is that
Fopp price for the CD which rose from 6£ to 10£ while its contemporary records were going the opposite direction.

My first listenings to The Fool, Warpaint debut weren’t very successful. I wasn’t caught by the music, maybe distracted by too many things going on in my life to get seduced by 4 LA mermaids playing dreamy choruses and delicate guitars.
I archived the album on my CDteque without much troubles.

Then?
Then it happened that I has a small slice of Warpaint set at Primavera festival in Barcelona in May. They weren’t on my list of must-see acts but playing close to Yuck stage I went for few songs and left before the end to walk the mile to the main stage where Fleet Foxes were about to starting.

I was impressed by those few moments. In one of my very rare admission of being wrong I promised myself to give Warpaint a double chance. My mood and my life must have shifted into a scenario fitting their sound better.

Back home I gave the Fool a second chance and it sounded as it was a first time. Has it ever happened to you to relisten an album you didn’t like and fall in love with it? Some songs sounded ace and I didn’t really know how I couldn’t see that just few months before.

Undertow at those times would have been one of my track of the year. Too late to rank with 2010 list.
It’d be fun to review my best of lists after years and check what still stays there and what replaces forgotten music, but this is maybe going to be another post.

Newly excited by the LP, I checked the summer tour to find Warpaint were going to play Cambridge on the 11th of May. That was a perfect time and perfect venue to see and photograph them on their own tour in a small venue close to home.
Only after my first e-mail to chase a PR to ask for a photopass I realized that was the day Josh T Pearson was scheduled to play the Union Chapel. Tickets in one hand and photopass in the other, I wouldn’t have missed it for no reason.

Especially because it was also a nice night out with friends and an occasion to shoot side by side with Steve Gullick.
Don’t know whether because of my competitive soul or Josh T or the Union Chapel but I know that is one of my favourite photosets of the year.

On the backside, I missed Warpaint Cambridge gig and, I was told, it had been brilliant.

These images of the Californians came from their third appearance in my proximity in that couple of months. London, 6th of August. Field Day Festival. Victoria Park.

Shooting and seeing them on a big stage of a Festival isn’t the same thing, especially considering how many stages there where with “first three songs” rules to chase.
In the end I caught another small set of their show. Enough to have the confirmation of a nice band.

With the amount of show I photographed last year it took me few more months to post these photos.

Weird enough, I am now listening to the Fool special edition on Spotify while writing this. It includes the album plus their first EP I haven’t heard before. (Why do they make deluxe editions if not to rip fans off? I hate this.)

I am now sitting and not as convinced as I was this summer about the record. It must be a mood related thing.
My appreciation of Warpaint has always been related to my spirit. It’s the perfect band on a summer day with friends and sun. It’s less effective in winter times and a troubled mind.

From the moment Warpaint album was released to the moment I have found the time to write about them and post my photographs (mostly unpublished) the entire 2011 slipped away. And many things went with it.

Hopefully 2012 will bring some more of Warpaint music, and I’ll be there ready to emotionally react to their sound.

While we all wait, you can find Warpaint on the net here: [website][facebook][twitter][spotify][myspace]

29/1/2012
Two new Warpaint songs from a Space 1520, Hollywood CA show on youtube [Hi] [Chic U]

Photo tip

Shooting festival gigs is very different from shooting a concert in a venue. I discussed this in several of my hundreds of tips on the pit.

Maybe of all differences the most useful is available light. Since there is no debate that photography is something else than picturing with light and, given that concert photography doesn’t allow the photographer much freedom of move and stage setting, shooting a stage lit by sunlight gives different images from a stage shot in a dark venue.

There are, as in everything, pros and cons. It is wise to get there prepared.

The main advantage is that you will not struggle with darkness. There will be light.
At summer festivals some shows are early enough to happen with plenty of daylight. Occasion for some changes.
It could be the time to use a slow telephoto. There’s less need of fast lenses easy to shoot at f/8 or more.
I am quite obsessed with the background noise of images so I take the advantage not really in a potential f/16 shot but in a potential 1/500s which means, if you have a fast lens, to shoot wide open with a fast shutter.
If you get the focus right a sharp image even of someone jumping is guaranteed.
Light also allows lower ISO which helps the ones with older DSLR, film and wanting some low noise raw files to get printed very large.

Disadvantage of much light is too much light. Too much light often means too much contrast. It’s really up to festival organizers (and the country where it happens). Worst case scenario if the sun sets right on the stage it’s trouble. Dark shadow and high contrast isn’t good for portraits.
One easy solution, if you are close enough, is to use flash. Even the one on the top of your camera body will do. I is forbidden but No one will notice the flash with daylight. The effect it has is to lower the contrast lighting up the dark shadows. It will save some images without changing the natural light that will still be the main source.

One unpredictable thing is the mixture of coloured and natural lights. It is difficult to control. Depending on several factors either one or the other will dominate, as you can see in some of these shots.
White balance in post production surely helps and is difficult to give a better advice than your taste. What I learnt is that the camera is much more sensible to the colours than the human eye is.
Those coloured spots that looks useless for a lightshow, will be much more visible on your photos. Consider including them for some special effects. Plain light image are usually not as dramatic as a gig shot under a multicolour light-show against a dark stage.

There may be much more to say, if it comes to my mind I’ll add them, if you do, please feel free to contribute.

Assuming this is also valid for a music photographer with blogging ambitions (me), time has come to post James Blake set shot last year and, more difficult, find some words to go with it.

I don’t like to publish a set of images about an artist without words. Internet is plenty and I like reading something about a gallery when I came across it, so I believe my reader would like that too.

I basically used 100 words to say nothing. Good try.

James Blake has been with few doubts (mine) a 2011 phenomenon. Since BBC voted it at the second place for the Sound of 2011 poll, his rise has been unstoppable.
Marginal observation, number one was Jessie J, number three the Vaccines.
If I had to follow BBC I’d give up music and start collecting butterflies. Thankfully there have been options.

The release of James Blake, his self title debut, last february, gave not only the music writers material to dance about architecture, which is pretty common. That record gave the music world enough inspiration and creativity to give birth to a plethora of albums blossoming by his debut.
Something not that common, must be acknowledged.

Who reads liveon35mm knows I am not a lover of electronica and sounds created on computers.
I am getting old, I am close-minded, I am conservative. I’ve been insulted with any sort of English and Italian word because of this.
Point is, I still haven’t found a music that is able to touch my feelings which is not composed through analogical instruments.

I appreciate some electronica, I prefer it when it gets extreme and is as far as possible from 80s and dance.
Nevertheless if it is old guitar rock’n’roll, or thoughtful songwriting I feel better.

To write this few lines I gave Blake another chance. I listened to the album several times. With scarce success.
I am still not getting the balance of dubstep, electronica, soul and Bon Iver he puts into his record.
After the third or fourth repeat of James Blake deluxe edition I needed an injection of SteveAlbinian Rock’n’Roll and I spotified the entire Slint discography.

I will do a surgical intervention here, to split the music from the singing.

James Blake Music is a balance of minimalism, electronica, samples and beat that underline his background as a producer.
Nothing very new, this blends go back in time several years. Even a totally ignorant person on dubstep (me) and a pretty much virgin on ambient (still me) can hear these influences. From Portishead to the cool bars of East and South London from pop minimalism to Feist, whose cover Limit To Your Love make him famous, Blake work is a revised mix of this sort of sound.

The magic mix comes with Blake voice. He loves soul. No doubt about this. I don’t. Soul it is probably the only other genre of music, with electronica and reggae that I can tolerate for no more than 15 minutes. I guess it explains many things.
Reviews keep citing Stevie Wonder as an obvious reference to me it is all about Justin Vernon and Bon Iver circa Emma Forever, Ago.

The combination of the coolest electronic music from South London, with a shaved version of Justin Vernon‘s intimate singing, is the secret of his success, especially in the second most trendy neighbourhood in the world after New York Greenwich Village: East London.

Those who don’t sympathize with mountains, bears and beards will sympathise with James Blake songs as much as some flanned shirt beardy man from Colorado loves Bon Iver.

Expectedly James Blake music soundtracked London throughout the year. Platoons of youngsters with moustaches, sunglasses and large headphones squeezed into any of his appearances.

His album has been ripped into any iTunes playlist and played at the opening of all the vintage photo exhibition happened in Shoreditch.

I met Blake live a couple of times. This set is from the Field Day festival happened in Victoria Park in August.

His fans packed the tent well before the concert started and stayed till the end despite the gzillions of simultaneous shows going on in the surroundings.
People were hypnotized by the combination of vocals and piano. I wasn’t.
I walked out before the end to chase the next interesting act beginning her set in the next stage: Anna Calvi, the other hype of 2011.

For James Blake as much as for Anna Calvi, history will tell if I am wrong and their fire will keep burning or I was right and both will vanish.
The feeling I have is that it won’t be their fault.
The second album is surely going to be the key event for both, but the consumption of music nowadays is so fast, genres change so quickly, people taste varies from one album of the month to the next album of the month that before Blake finishes his next collection of songs his fans may be heading to a heavy metal gig.

I do’t have more words, if I made you curious, you can follow James Blake online: [website][facebook][myspace][twitter][spotify]

Photo tip

It was plenty of photographers shooting James Blake. It was a festival which has loads of shooters and he was a key act.
Three songs in such conditions require a quick understanding of the situation and mutual respect between photographers.

Blake sits behind keys, which means position fixed. He sings, which means mic often covering the face.
There was a double set of backlights forcing the composition in a symmetrical way.

All summed up translates in: there was basically one spot where the right photo was possible.

Assuming promoters will never understand that dropping the three songs rule would help the artist as well as photographers with better images, the only way to shoot this show was to queue. Just one photographer staying there longer would be enough to block someone else getting their photos.

Tip is: if you are a photographer, don’t only be respectful for the artists on stage, keep an eye on the situation and on your colleagues and let them shoot too. Selfishness doesn’t pay. It can be your good chance one time but you’ll find a gig where your spot is the wrong one and would love to find a kind friend next to you.
Respect.

In the thirty years Sonic Youth changed the relationship between noise and rock, the 34th guitarist of all times (courtesy of Rolling Stone), has always been a busy man.

Thurston Moore discography goes well beyond the official (and already rich) Sonic Youth albums and solo production. It expands in a myriad of collaborations which have a cult following and would require an experienced archivist to be discussed here. Tapes only releases, strictly limited and coloured vinyls, soundtracks for unknown movies and whatever is needed to build up a mythological fame.

This is the last post of the year on liveon35mm. It has been a busy and difficult year, and I won’t speak about what I am not qualified. This 180th post on this little blog, will rotate around Demolished Thoughts, his latest solo work and one of my favourite albums of the year which surely contains my favourite song of the year: Benediction.

The photos, instead, were taken at a very special London date. For the first time Moore played his debut solo album, Psychic Hearts (1995) in its entirety, well almost, I will touch on this in a sec, stay with me.

Also last week, Thurston Moore did a reading of his poems at the University of Cambridge. Not being part of the hardcore fans, I actually didn’t know this further facet of his personality: poet.

I went and was happy to discover his deep passion for poetry, his knowledge for the underground poetry movement int the States (he owns a collection of thousands of soft published poems stapled and self released). Thurston read some old stuff to a cosy crowd of 50-ish people, most more into poetry than into Sonic Youth, which was interesting to see. He also premiered part of a diary he wrote in the (last?) Sonic Youth tour in South America few weeks ago. There is an hilarious poem on Julian Casablanca in it I’d love to share. Over a glass of red wine kindly offered by the University of Cambridge we had a chat about his large archive, the way the material gets revised, trashed, parked for future releases.
I couldn’t resist asking to sign the CDs (after I took them with me, you know), not so sure he was pleased by that. Don’t know if they were CDs or I was being a fan. Nevermind.

To end the intro, and not very relevant to his music production (Is it not? Maybe it is), Moore personal life marked a key moment in 2011.
He split up with Kim Gordon. Not only his wife for 25 years and mother of his daugther, but also Sonic Youth bassists who stood next to him for thirty years of stages and studios.

At present it is pretty much impossible to predict what’s going to happen to the band, but it would also be quite narrow-minded to think it will not have some sort of effect. Lee Ranaldo, his mate and fellow guitarist in Sonic Youth has a solo album to promote and said recently that the band is taking some time to think.

Demolished Thought (you can stream it here) is pretty much an acoustic album full of personal, intense, intimate songs. Yes real, beautiful songs. With Beck at the production it is easier to listen, nevertheless a jewel. Moore sings quietly and plays acoustic guitar throughout. Together with J Mascis solo debut, Several Shades of Why, also out this year, also beautiful, the nineties revival is demonstrating how much master songwriting there is and there was behind the layers of distortion and noise that characterised the alternative scene at the end of last century.

The first song Benediction, is an acoustic ballad, filled with violins and angelic arrangements and the rest of the album doesn’t move much from the formula. Most songs sound as conversations between Thurston guitar, with an electric violin and a harp responding to the opening chords. There’s plenty of instrumental bridges that he loves and his calm voice would not upset the customer of a quiet zone carriage.

The same band is on stage at the Electric Ballroom, harp and violin included.
This show follows another at the Union Chapel the night before. That was part of the Demolished Thoughts tour.

Tonight Thurston Moore gig is one of the ATP Don’t Look Back series. He is planning to play Psychic Hearts in its entirety.

Where Demolished Thought is about arpeggios on acoustic guitars, Psychic Hearts is more an electric affair where you can reconnect with Moore landmark bouncing guitar who defined his style and a genre with Sonic Youth.

Psychihc Hearts is not as easy listening as is not that easy to find. The merchandise desk, despite there is plenty of obscure stuff, has no copies of the album on any support.
There are even tapes (remember that?). They are bouncing back from being a discontinued to a collector’s items. Thanks to the lo-fi revival of the bands that used to record demos and writing the demos philosophy and are back on track.

What to expect tonight isn’t predictable. I see at least three options on the table. Psychic Hearts unplugged? Psychic Hearts faithful? Psychic Hearts revised?

Thurston Moore knows his job and goes for the third. He finds the balance in playing the album on acoustic guitar with the band touring with him, which comes handy.

The result is terrific.
After few funny minutes introducing the concert explaining that some songs will be not included because aren’t so interesting and the tracklist will be revised, Thurston Moore plugs the acoustic guitar and there’ll be nothing but the music.

He plunges into the opening track of Psychic Hearts, Queen Bee and Her Pals and by the time the song ends, the energy is high enough to make him crash against microphone and the sheets with all those handwritten lyrics are flying all over the photographers’ pit.

Two things emerge during this show.
An incredible guitarist can get even an acoustic guitar on fire.
Psychic Hearts isn’t going to be played from start to end, which is not disappointing. With this band the two albums merge nicely into a wonderful cocktail of songs and ‘acoustic sonicism’.

It’s less than a hour of music when Moore salutes, this is pretty disappointing, but it is the usual theatre bit of rock concerts.

A couple of minutes and Moore is back for another bunch of songs from both albums with a Sonic Youth cameo.
Then he goes and comes back again for a second encore. Being one encore the standard, the exception to confirm the rule says that either you don’t play an encore or you must play at least two.

All I am waiting now are two songs.
One is the obvious Elegy for All the Dead Rock Stars, the 20 minutes of sonic delirium closing Psychic Hearts. It arrives translated in 20 minute of awesome live noise delirium on stage, surely the best moment of the night.

This is the real bonus the people at the Electric Ballroom get tonight compared to the Demolished Thoughts tour.

The other desire was, of course, Benediction. Which fails to happen. Flipping through the setlists of his recent gigs I am less disappointed. For some reasons Thurston Moore is not playing that song since he restarted the tour this autumn.

Benediction was a constant presence on the first dates in the spring/summer.
In the middle there have been some Sonic Youth shows and the split with Kim. If this has anything to do with the the song, I don’t know. I didn’t dare to ask him at the Cambridge Lecture.

With benediction in her eyes,
Our dearest gods are not surprised.
You better hold your lover down,
Tie him to the ground.
Whisper “I love you,”
One thousand times into his ear, kiss his eyes,
And don’t you cry girl, he won’t disappear.
But I know better than to let you down.

With benediction in her mind,
She’ll never get you back in time.
You better hold your lover down,
And tie her to the ground.
Simple pleasures strike like lighting,
Scratches spell her name.
Thunder demons swipe her halo,
And then they run away.
But I know better than to let her go.

With benediction in her eyes,
Our dearest gods are not surprised.
You better hold your lover down,
And tie her to the ground.
Simple pleasures strike like lightening,
Scratches cross her name.
Whisper “I love you my darling, life is just a fling.”
But I know better than to let her go.

More on Thurston Moore can be found on:
[His section on Sonic Youth website] [sonic youth website] [facebook] [Twitter]

Photo tip

2011 concert wise is over, time for some end of the year considerations.

A key year for my concert photography. It has been the first since I started photography that I shot fully on digital.
Not a single roll of film developed in my darkroom throughout winter and summer months. To write this feels pretty sad. Said that, the amount of time, money and dedication film photography requires doesn’t pay anymore.

If I had even a single magazine wanting negatives (because they are film) end willing to pay for them, I’d load my Contax and be back on spending my nights in the company of smelly darkness.

Truth is, no one cares. Vintage is cool, film is cool, true, as long as it is shot on digital with Hipsamatic filters and uploaded on twitter through a smartphone. Ask how many of todays film lovers have ever developed a roll. Ask how many have even loaded a film camera.

I did more festivals and less single shows, and learnt that if shooting a concert is fun, shooting a festival is a profession.

So said the profession of music photographers isn’t in a nice position. Music Photography will always stay, but music photographers will not be professionals. With professional I don’t mean having a pro camera but that their income comes from (and only from) their music photography activity.

There are probably not more than 30 people (thirty) earning a life only from a music photography activity. With 30.000 (thirty thousands) members of the Concert Photography FlickR group, you do the math. Whether those 29970 earn money with weddings or a daytime office job or are just passionate, it doesn’t really matter.
What it says is that earning 50£ for a stamp size image once a month on a newspaper, with new pro bodies costing  100 times that price, photographer’s money has to come elsewhere.

The reason is only partially because there are not money in editorial budgets. A big part plays the fact that the budget shrank since within the music industry has passed the concept that photography can be available for free.

This is possible because plenty of wannabe concert shooters feed it. They do not only provide their image for free to no-profit blogs (which could be ok at a sensible pace) but, and this is the critical bit, they provide free images to magazines, managements, bands and artists that indeed work for a profit and have a budget that must include the costs of photography.

It’s plenty of articles and debates on the web about this, Music Photographers Facebook page is very active on the issue, especially on the battle against grab release forms, so I won’t bother you more.

I will end the year suggesting you a link:

Reasons Why Professional Photographers Cannot Work for Free

It is a letter written as a response to anyone asking to a photographer to work for free. It has been translated in several languages. Bookmark and send it to the next person who asks for your images in change of credits and visibility. It’ll explain why this is not possible and not sustainable anymore.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, see you in 2012 with some missing gems I didn’t find space to publish this year.
In the meanwhile you can enjoy my Music Portfolio HERE and if you wish order one one of the images as a fine-art print delivered straight to your door.

Ciao
Valerio

It’s more than 10 years Okkervil River are at the centre of attention of anyone interested into Americana flavoured indie-rock.
Whether you call it folk-rock or alt.country, they are part of it. They are one of the seminal bands for the genre.

It’s this week news the announcement of 2011 Grammy’s nomination list.
No, don’t get me wrong, Okkervil River are not among the nominees, but that is not the point. The point is that they could have well been. Which is as breaking news as if they were.

Scrolling through the endless (beyond the limit of ridicule) best >>put-the-genre-here<< record of the year list, there is something interesting.
The most attentive readers have noticed that, among the usual pop, soul and hip-hop bland stars built in a studio to make Grammy’s albums and take part at the Grammy’s grand gala, there’s a validation of a trend.

With the inertia that a corporation as big as a blue whale needs to move, the alternative folk rock scene has been accepted into the mainstream music world of the Grammy’s.

Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, My Morning Jacket, Wilco, The Decemberists and the Civil Wars are all nominated for one or more awards.
The groovier the Black Keys are back after last year prize.
Rockstars as Eddie Vedder, leader of Pearl Jam, approached the vein with an improbable project titled Ukulele which also got a classic “you’re-famous-so-you’re-in” Grammy’s nomination.

Last year Grammy’s it was Arcade Fire‘s turn to enter the elite club. It made all the orchestral, ‘pompous-pop’, grand ensembles rock a reality for the humans reading beyond Pitchfork.

This year not a single band but several examples of rock music inspired, a way or another, by American roots is in and some (Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes I would predict) have real chances to win the prestigious (?) award.

Last decade the independent scene was lead by indie-guitar art-rock bands and leather jackets such as the Strokes, followed in the UK by the likes of The Libertines.

This decade, or at least these last 5 years, saw the implosion of those indie-guitar bands due to an overcrowded scene and lacklustre ideas. Simultaneously the acoustic/folk affair grew both side of the Atlantic.
From Fleet Foxes to Noah and The Whale, from Emmy the Great to Band of Horses from Bon Iver to Wilco all grew exponentially and set the standard. No surprise big labels wanted their slice of the cake. Chart-pop edulcorated versions arrived including what the Guardian beautifully described as the ‘New Boring’ scene cashing on the likes of Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling and, above all, Adele. So far the biggest selling artist of the century. Loads of Grammys nominations this year to her too, acoustic music is about to conquering the world.

Okkervil River are not among the bands nominated to the Grammys because they have been more pioneering. Their best albums were released four or five years ago, at the sunrise of this vein (hence pioneers) and far too early to be noticed by the Grammy’s blue whale.

Okkervil River music is somewhere at the meeting point between the indie scene of the beginning of the decade and the folk infuse setting that followed.
They were too late (and too Southern) for the first and too early for the latter.

Formed in Austin, Texas, by Will Sheff and Jonathan Meiburg their first appearances, needless to say, were at the SXSW, the festival showcasing new music and happening in their town.
It was the end of the nineties, of that original line-up probably only Will Sheff, the singer and undisputed leader, is still in the group.

Sheff and Meiburg have been working together also on another project: Shearwater.
With a more psychedelic infused sound, Shearwater success caused the departure of Meiburg from Okkervil River and of Sheff from Shearwater. The two basically took one band each and went their own ways after about 10 years.

Back to Okkervil River, it needed a big effort to break through a restrict group of hardcore fans. That day arrived with the release of Black Sheep Boy in 2005, to me, still their masterpiece. A concept album set around the heroin addiction of country singer Tim Hardin is a record full of emotionally intense songs.
It captures at the first listening and never go away.

From that album Okkervil River journey has been on a much more comfortable stream bed. Black Sheep Boy sold in the tenths of thousands, charted Billboard and opened the doors to the following albums. In the meantime the scene became more welcoming to this music, Pitchfork started being called PitchfoLk and praised most of their releases since.

A legend as big as Roky Erickson, 13th Floor Elevators legendary leader, asked them to be the backing band for his 2010 True Love Cast Out All Evil LP. Not a very convincing record, surely not Okkervil River fault. It would have been even less convincing without Will Sheff and friends contribution.

Okkervil River arrive at Koko on a November night after almost a year continuously touring their latest record, I Am Very Far, one of their more folkier and another big success.

As soon as Will Sheff gains the Koko stage to set his instruments the crowd show love. His nerdy intellectual look, including a brown suit and thick spectacles, reminds me of a Texan version of Jarvis Cocker.
He is the frontman, the other members are part of his project.
Lauren Gurgiolo, who has joined the group only few years ago, has become the most important and effective member. Her guitar parts work perfectly along Sheff‘s most melodramatic vocals.

Concert formulas and set-lists are nowadays standardised. Unsurprisingly the show rotates around the last album with insertion of tunes from the past catalogue that become more concentrate towards the end.

Nevertheless a nice version of For Real happens while I am still shooting in the pit. When the show gets to the end the more crowd pleasing songs arrive together with the shivers going through people’s spine. As a good wine, they spread their intense flavour in the air.

The band comes back for an encore that goes back in time. It opens with a cover of Ted Lucas It Is So Nice To Get Stoned and closes with Westfall, picked from the 10 years old debut album, Don’t Fall in Love with Everyone You See.
Such a perfect show, that proves how important is to be playing live, relentlessly, for months.

I now understand why I hadn’t loved this band enough. Because I haven’t seen them live. Now, who reads liveon35mm could say that it is not the first time I say this, and you’re right. Reason is that I choose to see mainly bands that are renowned to play great live sets. So it’s not coincidence just a bit of lazy writing.

Okkervil River will now have a deserved break, enjoy Christmas festivity and celebrate the new year in style, thinking over a whisky or two what to do next.

To please the fans they have just released a free EP, Golden Opportunities 2, containing some covers. It opens with Ted Lucas It Is So Nice To Get Stoned played at this gig, it can be downloaded in high quality mp3 from their website (link here).
One more reason you can can stay in touch with the band at the following links: [website][facebook][twitter][spotify][myspace]

Photo tip

If Annie Leibovitz wasn’t enough, backing iPhone 4S camera as a proper camera replacement, her financial problems must have caused a sell-out of her proper gear, yesterday on the Observer there was an interesting comparison daring the unspeakable.

The Observer put together iPhone shots vs Canon Mark II pro DSLR and concludes in some condition a phone is better.
Seen through a careful eye of who knows the subject (read: a photographer) there is nothing to compare between the two.
If some of the iPhone pictures (especially the ones taken in tricky light conditions) seem better than the Canon DSLR it is because the iPhone does on the spot what a DSLR user is expected to control in front of a proper monitor. Post-Editing. No photographer would pay a couple of thousands pounds to have a camera taking control.

What the article, instead, fails to say is where the iPhone is indeed better than the DSLR. It’s not on quality, it’s on versatility.
These Okkervil River photos above, proper shot on a DSLR and edited on a computer, took me some time downloading and editing to be ready.
A few shots taken in sequence on my phone, stitched into a panoramic set (below click to enlarge) and uploaded on facebook, twitter and G+ all at the same time, took the outro of one of the Okkervil River less interesting songs to be online.

Both the iPhone and the pro DSLRs take pictures and they can take the same subject but they are not the same photo.
As you wouldn’t use instagram to show your portfolio, you wouldn’t enter a pit with an iPhone to cover a gig.

I have been after Other Lives in concert for months, so when I read about a Shepherds Bush appearance I started all my PR seducing techniques to get a pass… and a ticket to stay, which is a must-have thing at the Empire.

It wasn’t a big hassle, considering their online press is the best, kindest in UK. Nevertheless when I was approved I was overexcited.
I thought this would have been a very big show for them. Very deserved.

The day of the gig I got my e-mail printed, I got off work a bit earlier, I got to the station, took the train to London, tube… usual stuff. Shepherd’s Bush Empire is 2 hours away from Cambridge so I limit my journeys there to bands very important to me. Other Lives checks that box.

I also avoid arriving to gigs last minute, just in case there’s a nice support or to hang out with fellow photographers or friends.

So easy was to get a pass, so pain-in-the-back is dealing with Shepherd Bush Empire crew. I arrive and stand in front of the tiny box office window with the same feeling of being interviewed at the border by a police officer convinced you are a criminal trying to flee the country

The girl stares undecided whether I am a terrorist wishing to blow out the building or a mythomaniac pretending to be a famous photographer to stab the band leader.
I go: “There should be a photopass in my name, Valerio”. This is to hear back, behind a cynic smile while searching hand written lists: “I am sorry there is nothing for you”. My name is NEVER on the list there.

I search for the e-mail, show it, all cleared. Photopass sticker sorted and usual end of the drama. “I told you” “I’m sorry there has been an error it’s not my fault if your name isn’t hear I can’t let you in”. “My name was there” and the cynic smile travels back from me to the owner.

Out on the street, I head to the venue’s back door. They allow photographers in the pit only seconds before the band arrives. I get kicked off (the venue) after the third song; I leave the camera gear backstage and take the receipt/number to claim it back (one day I will lose that micro-piece of paper and will have to leave my gear to Empire’s security, I know it will happen).
I walk back into the venue (a missed song later, at least) only because I could show a proper ticket.
This was all for Elephant, the support band.

In fact, it was only when I noticed the stage times sheet on the Shepherd Bush Empire backdoor while waiting for the number/receipt that I realized Chapel Club were the main act tonight, playing after Other Lives, a second support.

Chapel Club, pretty unknown, headlining. Other Lives one of my favourite bands of the year, supporting them? My perception of the music scene is severely biased.

All this journey for a meagre 30-40 minutes/six songs set (minus one song to leave the bag, details above)!
Would this be worth? Was my big question around 8PM
Yes, It was! The easy answer around 9PM

Other Lives are otherworldly. Untrue on a literal sense, but it gives the idea of something special.

They gets inspired from Fleet Foxes harmonies and have the same impact of them on stage. Which is a big statement not a music comparison.
I think musically they owe more to the late Midlake from the songwriting perspective, but surely in the philosophy and the stage attitude they reminded me of Seattle new heroes.
Put the two together, expect something big.

Other Lives music has not a lot to compare with what you listen to on the album, despite their latest Tamer Animals is brilliant, live it improves.

The band five members bring such a huge sound on stage. The songs levitate as if the venue was a hot oven (it actually was tonight) where you’re baking your homemade muffins.

From the dough, you already know they will taste good, but it’s when they rise, when the heat propagate the smell, that moment you can’t resist.
You also know you can’t open the oven otherwise they got flabby.

Translating, this stupid metaphor means you want to listen to Other Lives live set in religious silence. The sophisticated arrangements they bring on stage develop the songs and require no distraction.

Unfortunately London isn’t the best place to listen to a concert in silence. Unless it’s jazz at Barbican or classical at the RFH, these days sport is to chat, drink, snap, video, upload or do every other activity smartphones can do except putting attention and pointing the ears and the eyes onto the music.

Imagine this projected on a gig where Other Lives are not even the headliners: bad. A gig at which they are opening for a band (I will discover later) with nothing in common musically with them: worse.

For once I enjoyed the gig more during the three songs allocated for the shooting than for the other three (minus one) songs I could stand in the audience.

All the same, nothing could release me from the perception that I was in front of a great band performing in the wrong… oven, erm, place.

Unfortunately I missed their gig at Giles in The Field a couple of days ago. With the news that they will be opening for Radiohead American tour in 2012, I feel the occasions to catch this band in an intimate venue are running short.

Maybe I will meet them again headlining Shepherds Bush Empire next year. It would be a nice way to celebrate and delete… I mean… forget this night.

This is the web places to be in touch with them [website] [facebook] [twitter] [myspace]

Photo tip

Mobile phones turned into smart phones sometime few years ago and became everything but phones. Mainly compact (video)cameras connected to the web full time.

Social networks boomed. The need of gratification coming from recognition (nowadays called “to like” “to retweet” “to follow” “to +1″) today is more important than the gratification from having fun at a concert.
It is about being cool and climb the coolness peak. It’s about hearing from our cooler friends how cool we are (so to increase our coolness factor) and make the less cool friends jealous (so to confirm our cooler position)

We moved from living life to sharing life. (shall I tweet this? I will)
We moved from watching life to recording life. (and this)

Anything we do today has a urge to be shared. Shared to get feedback. Feedback is a new kind of currency. Often a surrogate that fulfills the lack of payment. It goes like “I don’t earn as a photographer/writer/musician/blogger but I am cool because I have xxxx followers”. Klout.com score epitomize this. The New York parties (waiting for the East London leg) allowing you in only whether you have a Klout score above a certain number takes the Social Network addiction to a pathological level.

Let’s be clear, I’m not being snobby. I’m not immune, I don’t deny progress, I’m part of this. I am omnipresent on every social networks, I sign to them, check them, some I enjoy, some I neglect. This site would be much less visited without them. So they are indeed useful for visibility (not to earn an income but this is a different matter) and for plain fun.

I am interested to these psychological patterns. I’d like to read an essay on “the need of recognition and the satisfaction obtained by feedback from social networks”. If you are aware of something like this being written or want to write I will buy a copy.

Instagram is the iPhone-only photo social network. Being iPhone it is not a limit (million of iPhone users out there) and has the advantage that all its members have at least one thing in common: an iPhone. Genius.

Second it has a sort of old fashion, vintage film camera photos appeal that embodies the “hipsters” community. With the advantage of being digital and on your phone it easily went viral. So at UK indie gigs it is a must have thing.

The end point or my reflection is: social networks rise is unstoppable. We have to deal with it. The relevance of one network against the other will change (remember Myspace?) but there will always be a mass of people out there in need of recognition using YouTube or YouSomethingelse.

Where’s the photo tip?
Here: Please, whatever you do with your smartphone at concerts, try to do it unobtrusively and silently. I will follow you!

This was taken with Instagr.am at this gig.

In the stalls it’s sweating hot. The legion of people that didn’t leave a single ticket to the league of touts desperate outside to buy one, make it clear how the Girls concert in Camden is the hottest tonight, regardless the other 4, 5 big names playing in town.

In the pit is freezing cold. The air conditioned blows over my neck at an Icelandic temperature during the set of the support, provided by the inspired Spectrals. Shame the cute bass player had to cover her sexy red dress with an heavy coat.

Girls are from San Francisco, and the relaxed hippie Californian look of someone who’s used to live under the sun permeates their music since the debut album titled… Album.

The image they send is positive. Colourful. The smell of the real flowers taped on microphones on stage make me forget the air-con with memories of Frisco sunny streets.

Reading into the life of the band and in particular of Christopher Owens, the lead singer, mentor, writer; the ‘hippie’ influence takes a quite dramatic U turn from the flower power cliché we European are used to put on Californians.

As reported in this beautiful interview in the Guardian (and in Led Zep lyrics) all that glitters ain’t gold!

Owens past is a novel in itself, not always a nice one. He was raised in the sect of Children of God, one of those New Religions making up a cult mixing up alternative views of the Bible, some (in this case) hippie philosophy from the 60s and someone who believes to be a prophet enough to convince some others.

In Owens words: “Imagine being told everybody else in the world is bad, rejecting technology, rejecting medical research, being devoted to God and believing America was evil and the end of the world was coming: all the same principles.”
But also “I don’t like talking about the Children of God experience as entirely bad, because it wasn’t. I miss the sound of 300 people together singing in a room spanning from age two to 50. That’s something I’ll never have again.” There may be some gold in the glitters, as he will point out later.

From his biography to Girls music there’s enough material to make Freudian psychoanalysts at ease with a couple of essays on sublimation.

What started as peace, love and freedom to be emancipated from an evil world, to Owens and his cult became a prison where even music wasn’t allowed when not performed by Children of Gods’ members.
He had been trapped into this parallel reality until his teenage years when he someway managed to get out.
Expectedly he didn’t reject the principle of refusing the world he grew up with. Owens just used a different, alternative, antiparallel route to avoid society: Punk, sex and drugs.
He says: “(Heroin) never lets anyone go, that changes everybody’s life. The drug you can only relate to as the warmest hug you’ve ever received.”

Sublimation into music of such a difficult background could only produce great results.

Girls were born when Chris met with Chet “JR” White, the band bassist.
The turning point that saved his life much more the Children of God pretended.

“We’d fall asleep during takes, playing the guitar. Very dark. But that drug helped me a lot. I was in a lot of pain.”

The sense of freedom coming from not having any boundaries, either (pseudo)religious or chemical, the hippie communal cheerful background, the hardcore punk listening together ended up into the songs they recorded.

It’s no surprise Album, the debut LP came as a breathe of fresh air in 2009 music landscape. Those songs are immediately classic, they are classic rock. They are contemporary rock.

There’s the west coast of the sixties, there’s rock’n'roll, there’s soul but there is also noise, coarse guitars. There is everything that made rock great and all that everything springs out fresh also because of the segregation Christopher Owens was trapped. As when Roger Daltrey in Tommy runs wild singing I’m Free.

I don’t know the origin of band’s name. Judging from the advantageous position of the Electric Ballroom pit, I’d say it refers to the fans. Inverting the indie/alternative trend, the first row and most of the audience is a girls-only affair tonight. All screaming after their idol. I haven’t seen such devotion since I shot some post-teen indie-pop .

With his angel blonde look, Chris Owens instantly recalls the last of rock heroes: Kurt Cobain. The weird bio, the screaming fans and most of all, the songs, Girls have all the ingredients. A new rock myth is ready to start.

Who was lucky to be in tonight, witnessed it.

Girls are touring their second full length album: Father, Son, Holy Ghost.
If I hadn’t already bought the CD version I’d buy it on vinyl just because of the brilliant cover with all the lyrics printed on the front. It doesn’t happen that often anymore to see seminal record covers.

On the cover there’s also a “Record 3″ in capital.
A statements highlighting how much the band considers the EP, Broken Dreams Club as a proper record despite it’s just 6 songs long.
It’s a sensible statement. Most bands would be desperate to write six songs as those in their career.

It’s not surprise that tonight’s set opens with one of those songs. Heartbreaker it’s like a punch in the stomach. It breaks all the broken hearts gathered in the front rows. Heads wave at the rhythm of an electric guitars ballad lullaby-ed by the sweet voice of Christopher Owens.

U turn and the waving become dancing at the upbeat rhythm of Laura. The cheerful mood from the song, taken from the debut LP, seems to get a smile in everyone’s face which projects onto the band members. They seem surprised to be so enthusiastically received. “This is a tour highlight” one of them whispers.

Girls are an emotional band. Emotional is Owens, emotional the songs, emotional the playing. Throughout the concert they scan a whole rainbow of emotions. The lyrics touch all aspects of ours life. Love, death, delusion and happiness. Touch all the hot-buttons were an indie fan likes to be touched.

Love Like a River is basically Beatles’ Oh! Darling revisited by Otis Redding. This justifies the three back vocalists adding so much soul into that tune to send shivers on everyone’s spine for the next 5 minutes.

In over 90 minutes there wasn’t a weak moment. I could carry on with a song by song review, I won’t. Some mention are obliged.
Honey Bunny’s sunny mood brings happyness. Lust 4 life brings that vintage west coast 60s sound so in fashion in the last five years to have started a surf-revival. None of the other bands in the league, Best Coast, Drums, Cults, Tennis… are any close to be half as good.

The epic new single, Vomit, beyond the unpleasant title is a touching ballad interlaced with one of the most cracking guitar sound I heard this year. If you wanted the proof Stephen O’Malley has been studied well beyond is experimental niche, you are served.

Despite all of this and more, my best moment of the night goes to Die. Without doubts among my favourite songs of the year. A riff for which Ritchie Blackmore would have killed for. A song that annihilate anything hard rock and psychedelia have tried to put into a trip song since Deep Purple’s Highway Star.

I was left awestruck in admiration, in front of 5 guys playing so naturally the best set of the year.

Girls is a band at his peak. It is touring its greatest hits 25 years before their reunion.
With three albums scoring a 9+ mark over Pitchfork database (I don’t think anyone else can claim such a record), there’s no need of more of my words to convince you to chase them.

Girls don’t seem to have an official website but they are quite active on social networks, find them on [facebook] [twitter] [myspace]

Photo tip

Can’t remember if I said something about white balance in my 160+ tips on concert photography, but I want to say something related.
Actually, I’d like to know what fellow photographers do.

Concert lights are coloured. Everyone knows.
If the photographer doesn’t opt for a B&W set, there will be lot of colourful pictures in your flow.

There will also be a lot of colour dominants. Like all-red, all-blue, all-magenta. Now, this is what the camera records assuming what is white and what is not.
If you shoot raw (instead of jpeg which you should never use), it is possible to reverse that with a wide margin.

With any post-editing software you pick a “should be white” area (I find the eye of a performer is the best when available, but there’s always some white/grey/black in a frame) and you revert it deciding what should have been really a grey area despite the coloured spot.

Now, this is not a faithful representation of the reality.
That magenta light, was indeed magenta. A white guitar becomes magenta during that song.
Making it white (and changing every other tint accordingly) changes the mood of the image. It creates something that didn’t exist.
Extrapolating the concept, something the band didn’t want to be like that.

Point it that often it it looks more balanced, more real in a word: better.

So what’s your professional ethic? Do you change white balance cheating on the original light scheme to achieve a better composed colour spectrum?

This is Emmy then. Shot on B&W 35mm film. I never published this shots anywhere, never even scanned until today.

She hadn’t published any album too, at that time.
She wasn’t very much known, surely I hadn’t heard of her.
But I never forgot such a “bold” name. I misread it as desire of an ambitious future, which is not, it intrigued me.

What I remember of that short set, was that Emmy was… erm… great. Great, cheerful and funny. Very funny.

I loved the self-confident, brave attitude of a twenty-something girl, alone on stage, strumming her acoustic guitar and telling funny stories in front of an audience that hadn’t heard of her.
I remember of going online to know more, finding some photos or videos or something (can’t remember now) with kitten. I love cats, so that bound me to her.

Not too tight, really. It took until 2011 before our paths crossed again. I wanted to see her own, solo live show.

In the years Emmy kept playing, touring and recording. She made two albums and found her place in the crowded London singer-songwriter area.

First Love, her debut, made the Top Ten album of New York Times, which is an achievement for an English young artist.
Virtue, her sophomore LP out for a few months now, confirmed the many virtues of this young artist.

…and this is Emmy today.

She finally arrived at the tiny, yet sold-out, Junction2 in Cambridge.
The situation is different now. People come to listen to her.
Thanks to its renowned Folk Festival, Cambridge is a kind of UK capital of acoustic and folk music. Audience is demanding and the setting is important.

Emmy (Lee-Moss, her real name) knows. She arrives on the big stage elegantly dressed. Backed by her full band. The audience is in a cavity in the stalls so that, for a change, the all-seated area is below the stage level.

The show opens with Eastern Maria, follows with Dinosaur Sex and goes on for a while without speaking a word outside the lyrics.
I thought something changed in the years. That young girls became a woman, that jaunty cheerful attitude I remembered got lost in the smokes of success.

I was wrong. Emmy only needed to break the ice (maybe this is an Italian only expression? Whatever).
Few songs melted it. The chats, the jokes and funny anecdotes arrived to complete the night and made the show as entertaining as I remembered. More.

Emmy surprised me with her music. Her songwriting is bright, the songs tell simple stories but are beautifully written.

The apparently frivolous Dinosaur Sex, the opening song in Virtue isn’t as light as its lullaby suggests. I think “…and dinosaur sex led to nothing” is a brilliant verse.

As everyone is emotional about first love, but few managed to talk about it so candidly “Now the thought of you is burnt on my body from the first time you did rewind that line from Hallelujah. The original Leonard Cohen version.” It seems to be in that room. To hear that Cohen line.

Emmy words are never banal. Plus Emmy the Great music has melody. Songs are arranged and sophisticated and her guitarist does a superlative work on guitar to move away from clichés.

Cliché? Yes, because the music press easily confined (and confused) Emmy as a member of the anti-folk (alt.folk, whatever.folk) scene. A mistake. It doesn’t always work as: a girl plays acoustic guitar, the Guardian loves it, bang! It is alt.folk stuff. No, it’s not.

Emmy goes beyond. She may start from somewhere close to Jony Mitchell or Martha Wainwright but she goes further. The declared love for Weezers, which reads ‘the alternative american scene of late eighties early nineties so crucial to rock history’ permeates the soul of her music. And is in the chords of her band.

Emmy was born in Hong Kong and grew up in London. Out of this exotic cocktail the songs come as juicy and unpredictable as picking Dim Sums at random from a menu written in Chinese. They are all different, they all taste good.

There is no reason to compare Emmy the Great to Laura Marling (who is much less original in her songs’ structure) or Lily Allen (whose lyrics may be as direct but talks about a different world). Emmy Lee-Moss is a different artist.

In a bright balance between sensuality and feminism her voice knows how to reach unexpected height, as when the band leaves her singing an almost a-cappella version of Trellick Tower. Intense to the point of being touching. A rarity.

She left her most autobiographical song for the encore.

We Almost Had a Baby is a girl manifesto. Simple as a manifesto must be, not banal as such arguments risk to be.

And this is Emmy best virtue. She sounds a very down-to-heart person, as a girl and for the stories she sings, but she is never obvious in the way she does it.

“well you didn’t stop, when I told you to stop
and there was a month when I wasn’t sure
if the next time I saw you out on the road
I’d have something to say, other than pay
all of the money that you owe.
and I would have liked to have something above you
to have something to hold
and know I could choose to let it grow
and I would have called you and I’d have said hey
you know I’m in control and I’ll let you know
if you have to come and choose a name
and I will think of you now that we are apart
I put my hand across my gut I plan to feed it with a heart
I ‘m not the girl that you remember from the start
I was only a baby now I am what you made me
and once you left me in the spring
and twice you left in fall
and once I tried to make a life
to keep myself in yours
do you think of me when you are playing the one and five in four
is country music what your life is for?
We Almost Had a Baby”

It doesn’t happen often that I buy a CD after a gig; it rarely happened that I have bought two. This was the very first time I got out of the venue only after Emmy signed both of my copies.

If live music was always so good on surprising me I’d go to a concert a night.

Emmy The Great is an avid [twitterer] follow her. She is also on [facebook] [myspace] [website]  plenty of way to be in touch.

Photo tip

This was a bit unusual.
It is normal that a stage is elevated compared to the audience, but it is not normal that this happens because the stalls are below the theatre level.

When the Junction 2 ‘The Shed’ is set into its all-seated option, this is what happens.
From the audience, the perspective doesn’t really change much, from the photographer it does a lot.

I was on the same level of the stage, which is good to have a non tilted perspective, but I couldn’t stand central without blocking audience’s view.
With the addition of the delicate, almost acoustic sound of Emmy’s music, the situation gets trickier.

What to do?

Stand on one side. Choose in advance, I mean before the show starts, the best. It’s not nice to walk in front of the artist while she’s on playing. Don’t.
With a right handed guitarist, usually the left side (looking at the stage) is better.
Luckily enough I was allowed to shoot for the entire show, so I waited for the encore to change side. Just in case, the last couple of songs were taken from the right.

Bring your long telephoto. Being close doesn’t always translate in wide-angle. Actually I used my 70-200mm most of the set. It is a good lens for solo artists, when single portraits are more important that full band shots.

Wait for the loud moments. First important rule of concert photography, one that amateur often miss is: Best photos are not happening during the best songs. There is no correlation at all. Second the most annoying photographer is the one shooting in the quiet moments. You disturb everyone, from the artist to the audience. Theatre’s acoustic amplify every sound, the shutter become an irritating automatic weapon. For a couple of songs can be acceptable, but when staying there for the entire show it’s e no.
Wait for the louder bits and snap during those moments.
You may miss some good shots but surely you gain the respect of the musicians and their fans. Which is more important than any concert picture.

Despite they already hinted at a more accessible sound with her sophomore album, Primary Colours, it is Skying that brought the Southend band into serious contender for the best UK art-rock group in years.

When the Horrors appeared first time they were an image/fashion kind of phenomenon. Dressed as character from a comedy horror B-movie, they gained the cover of NME after just a single: Sheena is a parasite.
Something no other band had ever achieved.

Before the debut album arrived, the Horrors toured with the NME Awards tour. It is where I first caught them live. It was February 2007. It was the worst line-up NME ever put together: Mumm-Ra (disbanded), The View (forgotten) and headlined by the Automatic (who? Indeed).

‘No surprise I was surprised’ by the Horrors despite a dark, dirty and very short set.

Not in a completely positive way yet there was something interesting beyond the photogenic image NME was trying to sell to angry and depressed teenagers.
I always doubted of bands getting into Birthday Party territory, can’t name a single one succeeding. The Horrors, if visually were close to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, musically were, more than any other bands in recent years, into Birthday Party punk screaming about death, night and (literally) Jack the ripper.

Strange House, the debut, came out those days. I guess I am one of the few owners of the special edition with a bonus DVD. I can’t remember what sort of sale I found but, listened in a new light 5 years later to write this post, it doesn’t sound as the greatest album ever but hints are in it of a band that, once dismissed the costumes, could make some very good things.

Incessantly touring, I met the (same) Horrors again supporting Jesus and Mary Chain at the end of 2007.

The breakthrough happened about 2 years later when the Horrors released, to the surprise of literally everyone, Primary Colours.
From a NME sensation, no one was expecting such an album. The screams disappeared, the keyboards arrived. The sound got bigger with inluences of all the post Velvet Underground bands from Spacemen 3 to psychedelia and shoegaze.

A brave album. It keeps the dark shadows of the beginning but starts showing hints of lights. Which also helped to get me some decent photos of a band that the previous two occasions was un-photographable.

Produced by Geoff Barrow of Portishead, Primary Colours debuted live at an Electric Ballroom gig in 2009. The venue was packed, guestlist full of Musicbiz VIP. When you meet at the same show Jim Sclavonus and Bobby Gillespie be sure you are in the right place.

The third album is notoriously a band “live or die” moment. Maybe in this produce/consume/die era the key milestone for a band comes before, yet for the Horrors this third album was long awaited.

Skying arrived July 2011 and turned out to be the album of the affirmation.

There are bands that make astonishing debuts and then have to struggle to keep the pace, easily falling at a certain point of their path (Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, Tori Amos or Alanis Morissette to name the first four coming to my mind) then there are bands that start slow, build up a cult following which causes the avalanche effect.

In this category fall most of the commercially successful artists who kept delivering consistent quality piece of works. Manic Street Preachers, Bruce Springsteen, REM and even U2 started slow to become universal stars.

When the success comes slowly it means the band has the key factors needed.
It’s motivated, it believes in what it does, it’s tenacious and, more important, it’s creative. If you have ideas you can’t be boring.

The Horrors have made three albums that preserve their identity but haven’t stopped on the same idea since. They moved from fast post-punk to keyboards psychedelia to the guitar anthems of Skying that reminded the world Simple Minds had been also a great band.

Cleverly those teenagers in 2006 are now graduating. The shift from grrrr-days to artistic phase helps keeping those early followers while recruiting new ones.

In no more than 5 years, with about two hours of recorded music and 30ish songs, the Horrors went from Jack The Ripper to Oceans Burning.

Try this exercise. Go to iTunes/Spotify/whatever library containing Horrors’ three albums.
Make a playlist with only two songs: their first, Jack The Ripper, followed by their last, Oceans Burning. Play it to a friend who doesn’t know them. (S)he will tell they are two different bands.

Then add to the playlist Sheena is a Parasite, Mirror’s Image, the epic Sea Within a Sea and latest Changing the Rain. Your friend and yourself will be amazed on how the passage feels gradual. The sound grows without loosing its way.

There are not many discographies where you can play the same game with such a consistent output.

I shot the Horrors for the fourth time at the Field Day festival in London last August.
Apart of a showcase, this was the first time for Skying live in London, ahead of the proper headlining UK tour happening this week. It was the most awaited set of the day and, despite the tight line-up, the tent was overtly packed.

Centred on the latest album I saw a band at the peak of its self-confidence.
No need anymore to hide behind a clever dress-up.
All the Horrors needed to play a wonderful set was their instruments.

They have the songs, they have the skills, they have the faithful fans (a UK rarity). Nothing can stop them now and for few years ahead.
Faris Badwan in three albums moved from screamer to singer to undisputed frontman. Easy to recognise his silhouette among many bands.
Keys and guitars build up the vintage 80s sound that today instantly transforms any band into an art-(the east London way)-rock act.

The Horrors are one of the few bands who I am not worried about next album. Actually I’m already impatient to know what will come out of their hat.

PS: They don’t wear hats either.

Discover the Horrors on the web [website] [myspace] [facebook] [twitter] [spotify]

Photo tip

Backlights throughout isn’t the easier for concert photography but with a bit of luck and if in control of the camera, it can deliver some out of the ordinary shots.

As the Horrors changed their style during the years, I have greatly changed mine. Not only technically but dogmatically I started to challenge my convictions.
One of my Cartier-Bresson-era legacy was the absolute intransigence in cropping negatives. With the added complicacy of using prime lenses, my film shots used to be a continuous struggle to avoid messy tangled cables on stage.

I don’t know if I got lazier or wiser. I know I am now using zoom lenses and also came to the conclusion that some cropping can make a good picture better.

Sometimes is unavoidable, as when they sent me shooting Thom Yorke from the balcony without telling I’d needed a 600mm f4. Some others it just makes photos clearer.

One position I haven’t changed in years: Selected photos have to be good photos, the very best of the set.
To be a severe judge of myself is paramount. I prefer not to publish rather than delivering mediocre images.

Cropping helps. It helps more at concerts because stages are full of crap. Crap doesn’t add anything to the image. Reframing a picture leaving out useless elements doesn’t contradict the integrity of the image, doesn’t send a false message, doesn’t hurt. It’s what studio photographers do everyday. It’s what concert photographers are not allowed to do but would like.
(Ever dreamt of moving that mic pole away from the view?)

There’s no way to make a bad image good through cropping but there are no reason to not reframe a good image to make it better.
Your ethic will decrease a bit, which is not always a bad thing. You have a reason to bring it back up.

“Swans are Dead”.
This is the title of Swans’ 1998 double live album. It documents fifteen years of the band’s history recorded in what was (supposed to be) their last world tour.
At the turn of the millennium Michael Gira’s band passed away.
Michael Gira, instead, passed from the brutal soniscapes of his creature to the melodic, gentle approaches of a new band: Angel of Lights.
He will play and record seven albums with them in the following ten years.

Rewind.
Since the early eighties Swans have been one of the most influential bands of the underground American scene. From post-punk to post-rock, Swans experimented any genre where loudness is the essential element. They target ears with the honest, candid aim of making them bleed to death.

More intellectual than Killing Joke, less mainstream than Sonic Youth (Thurston Moore used to play bass at their beginning) Swans are a reference to any group who sets the volume to 11 before plugging the instrument.

Wikipedia summarise, the history reads: 11 studio albums, 9 live albums, 7 compilation albums, 11 EPs, 3 singles and 4 videos.

Swans albums cover art are statements in their own. They contain a set of recurring images, graphic and symbols it would require a criminology or semiotic expert to interpret. Dollar-like, bunnies, crosses and more enigmatic signs to introduce to the music inside. How? I have no idea.

Put the record on and the music between the vinyls’ grooves takes possession of your mind. Turn up the volume and you are abducted.

The millennium started on 9/11 when the apocalyptic Hollywood visions became a reality. Technology made the world smaller. Medicine made life longer.

Wars never ended and life indeed still ends. Resurrection is neither achievable nor buyable. Not for human.
On the contrary, one of the breakthroughs of the millennium is the discovery that bands don’t die. Resurrection exists. It’s not perfect science. It’s perfect marketing.
Have a band? Tired of playing? Hybernate it, you’ll get it back when you feel the time has come to wake it up.

“Swans are dead”.
This is their myspace address. Truth is, Myspace is dying and Swans resurrected.

“Swans are not Dead”.
This was the MySpace status displayed by Michael Gira at the beginning of 2010.
The first hint of the return. The evidence that in rock music you can die, bury yourself, reincarnate, live an afterlife and then comeback in full shape. Handy, isn’t it?

Michael Gira is the responsible. He gave birth and he has resurrected Swans.
After 3 lustres a Swans album saw the light. My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky, was released in September 2010.
A monster tour followed and, about a year later these days, it still has to stop.

The album is a step forward from the past. It has Swans classic sound but also gentler songs that unveil the influence of the ten years spent with Angel of Lights.

You Fucking People Make Me Sick opens as a sweet melody, Michael Gira sings a “lullaby” with his little daughter:
“I love you. I need you. Oh, show me how to shine.
I love you. Your flower. Now give me what is mine.”
before the band irrupts with frightening noise. Norman Wetsberg guitars increase the tension to a point anxiety is unbearable.
Swans are back.

There’s a missing person in this story. Marketing, artistic choice, busy schedule… whatever the reason Swans came back without Jarboe.

Jarboe is the only person to have taken part to all Swans album but this. Her dark crepuscular contributions, her backing vocals has been essential to define the band. The more tense moments bear her presence.
It is as saying Dead Can Dance comeback without Lisa Gerrard, but Jarboe has never been mentioned since the come back. Michael Gira nowadays is the one and only Mr Swans.

I was on the photopass guestlist for what was Swans first gig in London in ages. It was at Koko, it was last October, I can still remember the day: Thursday the 28th.
I got a cold. I was in bed, 38.5° my temperature, I couldn’t go.
The same temperature reached inside Koko. Michael Gira wants the air-con switched off during concerts. Sweat, heat is part of the performance.

Since that day my mission has been to see and shoot Swans live.

I got another occasion at Primavera Sound in Barcellona. Swans set began with the sonic earthquake of No Words/No Thoughts. Distracted people walking by, stopped to understand what was happening.
The nine minutes recorded in the album opener expanded to over 20.

I “had to” leave after that.
The presence of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, one of my never-miss-this-for-no-reasons acts on an adjacent stage captured me and I skipped the Swans set just after Michael Gira preach. Supporting the “Indignados” that were occupying Plaja De Catalunja and other Spanish places, he went like:
“Thank you very much. Spanish people rise up!! Overthrow your government! now!! Rise up! Overthrow the capitalists! Long live socialism now!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you Spanish people”.

Radical politic, the Michael Gira way, underlies all his art and couldn’t miss this occasion.

I knew I played it safe. It was public knowledge Swans were on the ATP I’ll Be Your Mirror line-up in London a couple of months later. I gambled I was going to shoot them there. Bet won, images from that gig on this post, including one of Michael Gira with a big hat wandering next to Alexandra Palace red doors. Was he thinking about bringing socialism to UK?

Surely he managed to bring volume to Alexandra palace. Gig was played at unbearable loudness. It’s their statement. It’s not a show-off there’s no other way to listen to them.

Swans don’t use volume as Boris to name another loud one. The Japanese band uses loudness to expose their audience to sound waves that become a physical experience. You feel it with your body, your organs.
Swans volume targets the ears. They want you to listen, then to not listen anything else.

It is a conceptual passage. “I am the Apocalypse, after me there’s nothing” it’s a quote I heard somewhere in Italian, don’t know who said but it fits the philosophy

Michael Gira is possessed during the performance. He falls on his knee with his BB King landmark Gibson Lucille. He spits, screams, eyes closed. He’s the first fan of his band. He loves it as a child and believes in what he does. More, he is what he does. The empathy with the band comes natural. Muscular musicians, two huge drummers, keyboards, guitars all at his service.

Swans continued touring the album during the summer and arrived, last week, in their New York. Actually Asbury Park in New Jersey. They played the American leg of the Portishead curated I’ll Be Your Mirror. The twin festival of this in London.

Same songs, different “indignados”. The movement is now occupying Wall Street. Uprising is blossoming even in USA cities. If anything, Swans comeback have pulled revolution from social networks and threw it back into the streets. Including USA. That is quite an achievement.

Gira addressed the American lazy crowd his way: “Stand up, you lard-ass Americans. Stand the fuck up and get some exercise. I am not your polite act.”

Musically there is another achievement. Swans have been recording new songs during the tour. New material is being played at recent gigs.

My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky, surely is one of my favourite albums of the last year. An amazing band back to life with a bunch of songs that seemed to resurrect the apocalyptic, missing spirit of the early Bad Seeds mixed with streams of radical noise.

What is in the next album is unknown. What is known is that it will be called The Seer and it has just been described on Facebook by Michael Gira as: “Half of the new album is severe and pummeling, but kinda groovy too. The other half is intentionally quite pretty. Pink is the new brown. Like putting lipstick on an anus”.

As The Quietus put it clear in a couple of reviews “Swans are the greatest rock band on this planet”, if it sounds a bit stretched, move your lard-ass and go judge yourself.

Swans are alive on the [website][myspace][facebook]

Photo tip

Every music photographer hates microphones. There’s no question about it. About 50% of music pictures are binned because a mic covering artists’ face and instruments.

If you happen to be in a pit of a large big stage, there’s another hurdle there to bother you. Stage Monitors.
Monitors are an essential part of a stage setting. Essential to musicians because, differently from the audience, they can’t properly listen to the other instruments from the main speakers. They need them in order to avoid disastrous out of tempo situations.
(how many time have you seen an artist indicating the soundboard up or down? He was asking to set the proper monitor’s volume)

If the stage is low is easy to avoid them, but when the stage is high, as in big concerts and festival, they are a problem.
As I often suggest in unavoidable situations you got to try to take advantage of them. It is not always possible, but sometime it is.

There is often a space between two monitors, a space that takes the shape of an arrow pointing a the musicians on the back. If you are lucky and ready for the right moment you can frame the image using the monitor as a indicator to the subject of the photo.
This way what was the obstacle become a key part of the photo, driving the viewer eyes straight to the point.

To do this you need to get close and use a wideangle that exaggerates the perspective giving the image both the right shape and that sense of presence that make the viewer feel part of the moment.

Remember, a good photo must have a main point. Roland Barthes called it fulcrum. A key element that keep viewers stuck to it.
All other factors must be complementary and help pushing the eyes to this fulcrum. When this is in place, you have a killer shot. Guaranteed.