TODAY

It hasn’t been easy, I must confess.
Going back to the very same place on the very same day exactly ten years after, was a touching experience.
First impression. That place today looks smaller, so that I could realize how close I was to Mark Sandman in 1999.
It’s a basketball field, with a couple of concrete terraces where I sat ten years ago, waiting to know more. Could still see myself there.

I arrive early. It’s raining. Someone at the bar tells me it is the first time in twenty years of “Nel Nome del Rock” festival that rains. It is not just a shower, it is an Italian summer thunderstorm lasting a couple of hours and threatening the entire show.

I feel impatient, standing under a tent, looking at the sky and talking to some American guys who I have already met in London. They are shooting a documentary about Mark’s life.

The band is somewhere in town, nowhere close. Dana Colley and family, Jerome Deupree (the first Morphine drummer) and Jeremy Lyons whom, in few hours, is going to have the role of the musician replacing Mark Sandman. He will be playing Mark’s songs in Mark’s band, on the stage where Mark died. I reckon you need a total dedication to music and very strong nerves.

Bill Conway the second Morphine drummer couldn’t come. He was the one drumming that night in Palestrina in 1999. Dana Colley tonight is the only who was on stage ten years ago.
I finally manage to introduce myself to him while eating a very Italian pasta in the backstage. He, as always, is in a positive mood. I have never been a fan(atic) but greeting Dana and realizing he knows who I am is fulfilling.

Rain stops, Members of Morphine with Jeremy Lyons are definitely going to walk the stage.

Morphine new recorded music stopped with The Night, Morphine CDs didn’t.

The following years saw some interesting releases.
Bootleg Detroit, is a live album. Basically an official bootleg registered on tape by a fan at a gig in Detroit.
It sounds as lo-fi as possible, but it preserves the intimacy of one of their live shows.
I wouldn’t suggest it to get in touch with the band but would definitely if you love this demo-tape approach to music.

What is a key collection for anyone wanting to get to know Morphine without wanting to buy 5 albums, is their Best of. It comes with a couple of unpublished tracks but truly contains the very best of the band. An album that was always on my CD pouch when travelling with my portable CD player in the pre-iPod era.
Important suggestion, get the European edition which is complete and includes tracks from any of their five albums.
The American version, instead, called Best of 1992-1995, stops at Yes.
This is because of a Label conflict. in USA Dreamwork issued their last two albums, while on EU they are all distributed by Rykodisc.

To complete Morphine discography there is an album B-Sides and Otherwise released in 1997. The kind of product aimed to fans wanting everything. It contains every other thing the band has been recording which is not on the albums.

There have been rumours of a Morphine box for a long time, I guess the Dreamwork-Rykodisc dispute as well as the recent Rykodisc merge into something else has slowed down the release.

Having my press pass is my bit of pride of the night. Ten years and I am finally beyond the barrier.

When Members of Morphine come on stage it is very emotional. All the memories came back to surface, as it was yesterday.
The same plastic sunflowers decorate the stage as in the past.

Dana Colley stands on the left, on what was Mark’s spot. Jeremy Lyons stands on the right and Jerome Deupree has his drum kit behind a big hand painted sunflower. It is titled The Morphine Family and contains a lot of writings from the band’s friends. It goes without saying the deepest is:

“Sono triste di lasciare Palestrina ma il mio cuore rimarrà sempre con voi”
Da Mark e Sabine

which translate something as:

“I am sad to leave Palestrina, but my heart will always be with you”
From Mark and Sabine (which was Mark’s girlfriend).

The shock following Mark’s death didn’t stop the other guys being involved with music.
For about a year they toured the music of Morphine with a big band called, Orchestra Morphine. Among the musicians there was a girl, Laurie Sargent.

Orchestra Morphine project naturally merged into Twinemen.
Dana Colley and Bill Conway brought Laurie Sargent into this band.
Coincidentally I was in Boston in summer 2002. Browsing record shops in search of Morphine rarities, I stumbled upon the Twinemen self titled first album, just issued.
It has a Mark Sandman drawing on the cover.

The music, mixes reminiscence of Morphine jazz-ish songs with some more atmospheric lounge sound. It’s different and, I must admit, not as good.
This didn’t prevent me, now a UK resident, to buy a ticket for their gig at the Camden Underworld in London few years ago.
Once there all I found was a sign on the door saying “Tonight’s concert has been cancelled”. I will discover not enough tickets were sold.

Twinemen released another couple of albums on Hi-N-Dry. The record label founded by Mark Sandman, today managed by the three Twinemen themselves.

The concert opens with Have a Lucky Day, which I couldn’t take only as a good wish. I knew I should expect something like this, but it is not easy, is it?

Claire follows and I have to stop taking pictures to listen. I realize how much I love and I miss this music.
Scratch, Sheila… the magic music of Morphine is permeating Palestrina’s humid air, again.
The atmosphere is relaxed, there is no three songs rule for photographers and I stay there to finish my films with no rush. I choose my favourite angles with the eyes, while the ears are pleased by Dana baritone’s sax.

Jeremy Lyons plays a 2 string slide bass, it is not Mark’s bass but manages to get a sound which is quite close. The voice is not, obviously, but when he uses that retro mic Mark used gives goosebumps.

In the middle of the show, just after Thursday (or was it before?), Dana makes a speech to the crowd.
First in English, then in Italian.
He thanks the people of Palestrina for being friend and always being close to them.
He says how happy it was to come back here with his family.
He thanks Mark Sandman and states that place is almost sacred to them.
It’s touching, Dana is almost moved to tears, with bright eyes he takes back is big sax and plays out loud. The big trees vibrate, silent witnesses.

At this point Hi-N-Dry seems to be the key activity to Dana and Bill, but they never stopped playing music. Last year, surfing the ever revealing waves of internet, I discovered another project.

A.K.A.C.O.D., clearly not the best name you want to call a band, (it stands for “As Known As Colley, Ortiz and Dersch”) is Dana Colley playing with Monique Ortiz on bass and Larry Dersch on drums.
Another Morphine-like line-up. Ortiz occasionally plays slide bass and when it happens music gets as close as it has ever been to Morphine since 1999.
The Happiness album is good. A low-rock feel a dark atmosphere someway reminescent of Nick Cave but the desire to sound like Morphine reveals its impossibility without Mark Sandman songwriting.

In the middle of the gig there is a break with few songs that the three wrote recently. Jeremy Lyons moves to guitar. It’s not Morphine for a while, nostalgia leaves space to something different which pleases the part of the audience unaware of the bands legacy and leave the fans in wait of more hits. We are all here for a celebration.

All Wrong, Buena, Honey White arrive towards the end, and retain the magic. Dana doesn’t play neither other saxes nor two saxes at the same time but his groove is still there, as catchy as always.
Jerome has a different drumming than Bill Conway. He seems more comfortable with the songs he recorded on the first 2 albums than with Bill material. I guess very few people would even notice the difference.

So what has happened during these 10 years on Mark Sandman name?

Quite a few things.
He got a square to his name in Boston.
His apartment became the Hi-N-Dry recording studio and, I have been told in a comment, his bass is proudly hanging on one of the walls.

A Memorial Fund has been created after his death. Mark Sandman Music Education Fund is a no-profit organization that aims to help children in the Boston area to learn how to play music.
If you have money to give or want to get involved, monitor the Hi-N-Dry website and join their newsletter.

Music wise, Hi-n-Dry has released a beautiful package. 2CDs and 1DVD of Mark Sandman related projects. It’s called Sandbox. There is not Morphine music in it (usual copyrights stuff, I guess) but this wonderful box, must not be read as a fans-only item.
It shows how good Mark Sandman was as songwriter with Threat Her Right and some solo things. There are terrific tunes in there, tunes for which much bigger artists would sell the soul to the devil to write.

The Palestrina encore is with the unmissable Cure for Pain. French Fries With Pepper has the addition of a trio of women on back vocals.

Concerts ends in a party mood. Dana Colley is touched by people response, his entire family is here. He calls his children on stage more then once, it looks he needs them to give him strength.

It is a celebration of Music, no space left for sadness.
I am very happy to have flown back here from UK. Now my memories will not be linked only to a dramatic moment but to a great show that existed because of it.

There is always a way out of darkness, Morphine music is one, and Members of Morphine lesson is another.
I don’t know if I ever listen to Morphine music live again, but driving back home I couldn’t avoid to play that Best of Morphine CD. It’s on my i-Pod now.

<<< PART1

Photo Tip

I didn’t want to put a photo tip on this 2-parts special issue on Morphine, but after what happened I feel I have to.

As I wrote previously, a big poster with my picture of Mark was to be on stage. You haven’t seen it, because It was not. A sad but well precedented concert photographer’s situation.

Few months ago I sent to the organizers my photos of Morphine last gig, they loved them so much that they started to use their favourite to paint a big panel (did they?) and proposed me to do an exhibition at the festival.

When I was told, at the condition the use was related only to the promotion of the festival which is a no-profit charity institution, I agreed to give the rights for free in change of just credits.
I didn’t want to exploit neither the low budget I know they have nor, most important, Mark Sandman’s night.

They got so happy with the result to came back to me saying they were going to print T-Shirts and limited edition posters with the drawing derived from my image. I was very happy too, of course.
But at that point, being the merchandise sold for a profit, I asked for a percentage.
Being the one who supplied the image for the artwork I think it is fair enough to be acknowledged.

I got no answer. I insisted and received a reply which was at the same time arrogant, defensive and devaluating.
They wrote that being the image a drawing inspired from my picture, it wasn’t my image anymore and I shouldn’t have any right on it.
I said I wasn’t sure that it was such a case and asked to see the artwork to verify.
It is here below, next to my original photo.

Crystal clear isn’t it? This is not an artwork inspired by whatever. This is my image transformed in B&W with a 30 seconds photoshop intervention and a writing added to the bottom. I stood for my request, I got no answer since.

Once in Palestrina, I understand neither posters nor T-shirts have been printed with my picture.
Most interesting there was not even the big poster decorating the backstage.
The only pictures of Morphine last gig, that everyone wanted there because “Mark would have loved them” simply haven’t been used.

The organizer didn’t even manage to approach me, “it’s very busy”. When I insisted to meet him he went like “Oh hello, you are Valerio” and walked away.

The official reason I was given, by someone else who I asked, is that they didn’t have time to print the material. Which is not very believable.

This is what we, as music photographers, pass through regularly.
Either we give pictures for free or we don’t have pictures used or published.

I will always stand against it, not because I want to make money out of live music photography, which is an illusion, but to protect the dignity of photographers that instead of people working for the sake of music are seen as some sort of virtual sources of images, with no rights.
Unfortunately for one that resists there are 10 out there to give away photographs.

In this unique occasion, being the only one having pictures of Morphine last gig, there was no one else so no Morphine related merchandise at the Morphine celebration gig.
The fans couldn’t get their Mark Sandman T-Shirt, the organizers didn’t make easy money selling them and I haven’t got a big poster on the backstage. It is an all-lose situation. Silly isn’t it?

10 YEARS AGO

MARK SANDMAN (1952-1999)

When I started Live on 35mm, almost 2 years and 100 bands ago, I didn’t have a clue where I was going with this site, but I knew that if it lasted until the 3rd of July 2009 I had one band to publish. That day has come.

That band is Morphine.
This article is dedicated to the memory of their leader: Mark Sandman.

This is a unique post on several levels and very personal.
It contains the only pictures available (as far as I am aware) of the Morphine last concert, taken literally minutes before Mark Sandman collapsed on stage, dying of a heart attack.
Sandman life and the career of one of my favourite bands abruptly terminated exactly 10 years ago, in front of me on the stage of a small Italian festival.

These are my memories of that night.
Yes, I was there and I had my beloved camera with me.
Not yet a music photographer, after that night I decided I would try to be.
Already a live music lover, after that night I promised to myself I wouldn’t stop going to concerts.
There are defining moments in everyone’s story. This was clearly one of mine.

I drove from Rome for the short journey to Palestrina well in advance. I was in an iper-excited mood. A free small festival on a summer night and Morphine, that I have been looking forward to seeing live for at least the previous three years, were headlining.
(Not counting that a newly formed band, born from the ashes of Kyuss and bizarrely named Queens of the Stone Age, was playing the day after!).

Morphine are the most peculiar and underrated band to have ever appeared in the music scene. Fact. Take the word “music” in the widest sense.

During the eighties Mark Sandman and his tritar (a sort of three strings guitar), was leading the Boston outfit Treat Her Rights with Dave Champagne on (a proper) guitar, Jim Fitting on harmonica and Bill Conway (later with Morphine too) on drums.

Unfortunately Treat Her Right blues-rock project never managed to break beyond the Boston scene. After the third brilliant album, What’s Good For You, the band dismantled.
Many lo-fi blues bands still owe a lot to them. The sound of Detroit contemporary blues rotating around Jack White, just to name one, with bands as Soledad Brothers, Cut in The Hill Gang are deeply rooted into Treat Her Right music.

In 1989 Mark Sandman recruited saxophonist Dana Colley from another Boston band, Three Colors, and drummer Jeromee Dupree.
Morphine were just born.

Dana Colley saxes replace Jim Fitting harmonica complementing the low sound of Morphine with a dark, jazzy edge. The union of Sandman bass and Colley sax works so well that nothing will match since.

Sandman is almost permanently on a 2 strings slide bass, Colley privileges the baritone among his saxophones collection (he often plays two at the same time). The clever drumming of Dupree thickens the mix.
The band naturally has a deep sound that fits Sandman voice, often filtered through his retro-sounding microphones.
If low-rock is a genre, Morphine are the ones who invented it. No other band depicts the smoky club atmosphere as Morphine did.

A trio formed by a bass player, a drummer and a sax is an oddity that should generate the curiosity of music lovers.
The only other band I know on such a line-up is John Zorn grindcore jazz trio Painkiller. Zorn sax is joined on bass by dub master Bill Laswell and Napalm Death’s Mick Harris on drums. Both bands formed at the beginning of the 90s but they position themselves at the very extremes of the audible music spectrum.

When I arrived to Palestrina there was quite a big crowd. Morphine, thanks to Radio Rock, were quite known in Rome. I had to fight a bit to get to the front but nothing would stop me at that time. I wanted to be there, see their eyes, feel the breath, enjoy the music. I wanted to photograph them.

The concert started. They played few songs, don’t know how many. I sincerely cannot recall how long the concert lasted. I’d love to know, but I really can’t. I was shocked.

Sandman at a first impression reminded me of Lou Reed. Dana had his long hair cut. Bill is on drums at the back surrounded by flowers. Everything looks perfect.

I started to take pictures as soon as they came on stage, a security guy stopped me once. I wasn’t an official photographer.
I timidly restarted taking some pictures after a while, you expect Italian rules are loose. Not that night, he came back threatening to take my camera. I told myself, OK wait few minutes, he will calm down I’ll snap towards the end.
There will not be an end, I regret having listened to him since.

There was another photographer there. An official photographer. He was in the pit, beyond the barrier. My usual place nowadays, not at that time. I envied him.
I have never seen those pictures anywhere, though. I wonder what happened.

Morphine first record, Good, was released in 1991 on a local label and attracted the attention of Rykodisk who signed them and re-released the album the following year.
Despite it won’t go much beyond the Boston Area, it is a brilliant album that contains some of the defining Morphine songs. Have a Lucky Day, You Look Like Rain and The Saddest Song are in it.

Cure For Pain, apart from the fact of being the greatest title you can give to an album if you play in a band called Morphine, is a masterpiece.
It’s 1993. The sounds of the debut matures, the original drummer Jeremee Dupree still records most of tracks but can’t continue for some personal problems. Bill Conway, from Treat her Rights, will replace him on drums from now on.
The songs get a more defined structure, the album is more accessible. I really find difficult to choose the best tracks out of those thirteen pearls. I am listening to it now after 15 years and they retain all their fascination. Buena, Thursday, All Wrong, Cure For Pain, Sheila and the instrumental tribute Miles Davis Funeral won’t be left out in my personal “Best of” compilation.

The peak is yet to come. Yes follows a couple of years later and is another masterpiece!
I mean, you don’t become the most underrated band ever with just 2 singles, do you? These three albums are awesome.
On Yes, Morphine are on top form and on a variable mood, in a positive sense.
The album is assorted, multi flavour. From the opening Honey White with its saxophone catchy riff to the most beautiful sad song ever written, Gone For Good, which closes it, Yes doesn’t fail throughout its length.
In addition to the two above Whisper, Yes and Supersex are Morphine at their peak. The world starts noticing.

I will never forget that moment.
Mark Sandman said hello to the people of Palestrina, announced Supersex and just started sliding his two strings. A couple of notes into, music stopped, he was on the ground.

I firstly thought of a staged act, a sort of fake drama that would fit his humour. I had not seen Morphine live. It’s 1999 internet was very young and Youtube wasn’t even born. I didn’t really know what to expect from them live beyond the music.

I understand that something went wrong moments after. Dana Colley got rid of his sax literally throwing it to the ground and jumped on Mark’s body. That was an impulsive act of terror and desperation.
Dana knew what Mark used to do on stage and that wasn’t expected. Bill followed and in few seconds all their crew was around Mark body.
Thinking at the silence of the crowd, the silence of the stage, still makes me shiver.
That feeling you get when you perceive something wrong happened, something very serious but you don’t want to believe and start magic thinking.

Audience thought it was a temporary accident and asked when the concert was going to restart. I had a bad feeling.
Minutes passed before someone made clear that the concert was not going to restart. Mark went with an ambulance.
No one knew what happened. I had a bad feeling.
I am not good at “living without knowing”. I sat on some concrete terraces on the side of the field, waiting to know.

Like Swimming was the latest album Morphine issued when they were touring. It came out in 1997 on Dreamwork, a new label.
After three masterpieces this had to be the one to send Morphine into orbit. The one to give them success beyond the circle of devotees.
Unfortunately it failed to deliver, despite it is not a bad album and contains at least a couple of beautiful song as French Fries With Pepper and Early To Bed, it is less accessible without being intriguing.
I never managed to get into it completely, some songs sound classic Morphine tunes, other go somewhere without really knowing where.
It sits in the middle between an exhausted past and a future lacking a clear direction.

Following what just happened in front of me, I thought that was their last album. Hopefully it was not.
Morphine had just finished recording The Night before coming to Italy. It will come out posthumous at the beginning of 2000.
It is a much more convincing piece of work than Like Swimming and, most important, this time it gives a taste of where Morphine were about to going. It is not yet fully mature but is sophisticate and sign of a transition in progress are evident. Their instruments palette is expanded, several musicians joined the recording sessions. Strings, organ, guitars hot up the arrangements. The Night, the title track opening the album, is one of my favourite Morphine tracks and one of the most sensual songs I have ever heard.

After a long time, much longer than the concert, I found the strength to approach the people dismantling the stage and ask.
No one was willing to answer. I insisted until a guy made a gesture with his hands. His body language was indisputable. Mark was dead.
It felt so unbelievable I didn’t have tears to cry. Years waiting to see Morphine live I ended up seeing Morphine’s death. It was unfair.

I sat down on the concrete floor. I saw Mark’s bass being put back into its case. Someone put one of the flowers on stage into it. It closed in front of me, as a coffin’.
I felt tears coming down. I wonder where that bass is today.

In the next couple of hours I drove back home, walked straight in the darkroom, rewind the unfinished film, developed the negatives and printed the photos.
A scene that reminds of Antonioni’s Blowup. I desperately needed to see that I got something. I wanted to see Mark playing again. I needed to have something physical to handle.

I printed two copies of those pictures that same night. One for me, I posted the other to the band. Then I couldn’t cope with them for years, I didn’t want to earn money out of them, I haven’t even looked at them.

Now they are here, for you.
If even just one of the readers discovers how great Morphine are, I reached my goal.

I have never been to Palestrina since. Emotionally distraught I couldn’t cope.
I missed the Queens of The Stone Age the day after and all the other “Nel Nome Del Rock” festival editions in the following years.

I am flying back to Palestrina this year, though. It is the 20th festival and on the midnight of the 2nd of July Dana Colley, Bill Conway and Jeromee Dupree will walk back to that stage joined by Jeremy Lyons to play a special gig to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Mark’s dead with Morphine’s music.

My picture of Mark on top here has been printed in a giant poster and decorates the back of the stage.
You’ll get a full reportage of this event next on Live on 35mm and you will discover how Mark Sandman legacy is being kept alive.

Part 2 >>>

I’ll repeat myself. Risking to look repetitive, banal and even snooty. The Dead Weather debut in front of a real crowd in London (they played a warm up show in a tiny ballroom the day before) it was another of those not-to-be-missed night of this exciting summer.

If I can’t use once again the excuse that I struggled to get through this photopass until literally few minutes before the start, I can witness that there are photographers tonight who postponed the Glastonbury departure to cover this show.

Nevermind. Most important is to point out, for the few who missed it, that the hype around The Dead Weather is due to the fact that they are another Jack White creature.
They materialized (virtually) few months ago on any music website as soon as the news spread, then (physically) on the Forum stage tonight.

I missed the early White Stripes. I was living in Italy at that time, a country where new music is at least three albums old. What I did not miss is John Peel’s famous quote: “White Stripes, Most exciting thing since Jimi Hendrix”.

Now, if you are into “Italian classicism paranoia” you know that the dogma is that something historical cannot be compared to contemporary. So speak to any Italian journalist, music lover and they will discard such a quote as Peel’s first sign of dementia.
Then I moved to UK, got to listen and read more about the man and experience a different approach to modern music. It becomes easy to know what the man meant and to agree that he was damn right.

You have to listen the White Stripes live to understand John Peel. He was not comparing music forty years apart, which would be indeed silly, he was comparing an attitude to music and he was spot on.
When Jack White plays he is totally transported by an unconditional passion for his guitar, an attitude which actually hasn’t been that common since, erm… Jimi Hendrix. History tells John Peel was right.

On the contrary, I was in UK and inside the Astoria for the first Raconteurs gig. Jack White first side project and half-super group with Brendan Benson created huge expectations.

The idea of Jack White playing guitar supported by a full band got me quite excited. Anyone who knew what he can achieve on his own in the White Stripes fantasized about what could do with a full band.
History tells that despite the Raconteurs were great and their shows got much better with time, they haven’t really moved rock history towards any new direction.

This long intro to say that I am standing in front of the Forum, with neither ticket nor photopass confirmation, too curious to see this third project of Jack White.

He put together Alison Mosshart, the Kills vocalist, Dean Fertita the Queens of the Stone Age (and Raconteurs) Keyboardists and Jack Lawrence, the Raconteurs bassist.
This is indeed a supergroup, with a surprise. Jack White is on drums.

The music press insists in calling it side-side project. In fact Jack White doesn’t care. He does what he loves, plays the music he likes, when he likes, together with whom he likes.

He is the rock icon of this closing first decade of the Millennium. Find me another one if you can, but please don’t quote Pete Doherty if you don’t want me to ban you!

Before the concert the roadies check cables and tuning instruments as usual. Difference is that they are dressed in dark suits, ties and Borsalino hats. Instead of the usual chubby guy with black tape coming out of a multipocket army shorts and an old, worn festival T-Shirts, they seem to come out straight out of a Vogue photoset.

When the Dead Weather enter the stage, the aura of coolness that permeates the Forum reaches its climax.
Dressed in black from tip to toe, with glossy white vintage instruments and a huge curtain lowered down from the ceiling, it is image design perfection. After all he is a White Stripe, isn’t he?
Very coooool, but this can also be a diverting trick. Let’s see.

To dispel all doubts is Dean Fertita. He opens the set introducing a bluesy guitar riff that repeats throughout the verses of 60 feet tall. A regular, obsessive, relentless, magnetic riff. Jack White to get warm limit himself to beat the 4/4 with his other Jack friend.
Alison Mosshart takes 30 seconds to seduce the entire audience with his murky voice and sensual moves.
The Dead Weather lo-fi blues evolve into a noisy solo where Fertita can show off his guitar skills.

Treat Me Like Your Mother follows. The blues is left a bit aside, Fertita takes the keys and let more noise in. White starts showing off his talent on drums.

He clearly doesn’t have the same skills he has on guitar. His drumming is simpler nevertheless it is potent, big, serves the songs and retains his trademark unexpected, flamboyant attitude.
He follows and fulfill the music. All of a sudden his drumming can become a machine gun that burst into steady fire or get a muffled twist with timpani mallets.

So what do they sound like? It sounds banal but the obvious one is the right answer.
Their sound meets exactly at the crossroads between White Stripes’ reinterpretation of the blues of the hills, The Kills vision of lo-fi noise rock plus some killer interventions offered by Queens of The Stone Age circa Rated R era.
If you can think at something saucier, I cannot.

What doesn’t fit into this mix is the Raconteurs classic rock.
The approach is more experimental, Jack Lawrence doesn’t seem appalled at all.

So if Jack is the humble superstar, Alison the hypnotic beauty, the other Jack the cool image (and the bass groove), Dean is the big surprise.

I wouldn’t have predicted that he is the sound and the hearth, the mind and the noise of the Dead Weather. He is the one that cut a blues riff and then moves into a sonic intervention at the keys before returning to the guitar for a shoegaze break. He is the spine spine on which all the rest holds on.

Alison Mosshart has quickly found her place without James Hince on her side… or because of it.
She offers one of her wild, sweating, energetic performances that infuse sex at any move. In the shadow, in a trance-hypnotic state, her eyes staring at the void.
The ones faraway could think at a forced theatrical setting but looking at her from 30cm it is clear she’s not playing a part. She is body and mind into it. Isn’t it, Juliette Lewis?

If she had a more solid voice she would be one of the greatest female rockstar around, so far PJ Harvey throne is still in place. The three help her on back vocal, Jack White takes lead duties at times with his mic plugged to a strong effect.

What seemed clever with the Raconteurs, to provide Jack White with a full backing band, turned out to be not so effective. The winning move of The Dead Weather is to put White on drums. An intuition that caught the world by surprise, I wonder what Meg thinks.

Shifting a guitar hero on drums balanced the supergroup music and image. adding up his modesty and a desire to challenge himself constantly, gave sense to the whole idea.

Just think at the same band with Jack White on guitar. His explosive personality, his fiery style would act as a locomotive running on its track and pulling three passive carriages.
It be difficult to see such a thing as a real band and not a solo project.

My impression becomes visible when he leaves his drum kit and puts on is loved electric axe.
Will There Be Enough Water starts as a sexy ballad which see him duetting with Alison Mosshart. It’s not long before the love for the guitar takes over the attraction for the girl.
That is the time Jack gets possessed and plays a stellar guitar solo that reminds anyone why he is the rock icon of the decade.

Musically it’s one of the peaks of the night, palpably everything else is dimmed. Fertita supports the lack of bass with a simple organ loop, Lawrence on drums follow quietly and Alison is left alone dancing with her microphone stand.
An entire concert like this would have been a guitar show off. Credit to Jack White to step back for the sake of the band.

As soon as they leave the stage the crowd goes mad. A guy next to me says “they’re stomping them out”. Indeed. The Forum shakes to the clapping and the quartet can’t let them wait more and quickly comes back.

The heavy riff of Forever My Queen by the american heavy metal pioneers, Pentagram, shakes the theatre and fades into their debut singles, Hang You From The Heavens.
The closure is for Bob Dylan’s New Pony which is different enough from the original that I recognisse it because I read it was played at previous shows.

If it is true Jack White is quick enough to form a group, record an album and organize a world tour in the time Kevin Shield wakes up and thinks what to have for breakfast, even more true is that he gathered first class musicians for this project. He is well tuned with Lawrence and Fertita thanks to the Raconteurs extensive touring, Mosshart seems to be at ease as long as a cool guy dating a supermodel is next to her.

There are still a few things to set up, from Alison singing to Jack’s own drumming but impression is very positive.
Some songs leave a slightly sharp aftertaste but that is just to remind anyone that the fruit needs some time to ripe to perfecion.

Apparently the Dead Weather don’t have a myspace official page so I leave you with the official [website] and the very unofficial [youtube] of this very concert. The frantic photographer appearing on 60 feet tall is actually me. Enjoy (the songs not me).

Photo tip

A quick one to get this occasion and give you some ideas to photograph a supergroup.
Namely a band made of superstars.

Before the show you have a likely problem.
TO fight to get in, million of photographers applying. You may also have to sign a contract which I suggest you read carefully.

In the pit it is likely to find a lot of people and you have to follow the politically correct policy.

Image-wise the main problem is to have all the stars in the same frame, which is quite impossible unless they play on a very tiny stage, which wasn’t the Forum’s case.

The easy options is to shoot one by one but you loose the key point. Catching the magic of them appearing together.

The other option is to couple them in pair.
ONe next to the other, one in the front the other in the back, as long as they are recognizable it’s fine.

Priority one should go to the most famous with the second most famous and so on.
Theoretically it sounds logic. When your superstar is sitting on drum until the last song, and photographers have been kicked out from the pit a long time since, you don’t have the priority one available and you have to opt for different solutions.

While shooting keep an eye at what happens on stage, look for the right angles where you can include to spots and, most important, put attention at what is in the back.
The success of the image is not on the main subject but in the combination of the artist you have in the front with the one (or more) you compose carefully in the back.
It’s another step more difficult, have I ever said it is an easy profession?

You don’t want me to review Katy Perry gig, do you?

A real music critic with the Observer authority, Alice Fisher, went to this same gig and wrote a very positive review of this show (despite the online version uses a photo from another date, ah).
It is not the world going mad for a pop girl, it’s just me being the usual arty-depressed-literate indie-kid (yes for indie, once upon a time for kid) that can’t get fun out of pop music magic. I never did, I fear I never will, whatever. For normal human beings Katy show is fun.

I think it is better for you to enjoy the pictures (where else can you get Katy Perry live shot on B&W film?) while reading one of my aspiring* essays in poor English trying to rationalize the irrational. Come on, I see you are looking forward to this.

(*meaningless)

Katy Perry came to a worldwide success with the catchiest song since Rihanna’s Umbrella. Difference is that I Kissed a Girl is a better song and she is a better singer.
Katy is not a plastic baby doll but a real baby doll and her lyrics are so cleverly written to instantly appeal to a worldwide audience that spans from very young girls to (im)mature boys.

Most important, the lyrics are perfectly written to make anyone angry from gay communities to radical feminists, from conservative religious group to her favourite target: dull, self-centred boyfriends.

“This was never the way I planned, not my intention
I got so brave, drink in hand, lost my discretion
It’s not what I’m used to, just wanna try you on
I’m curious for you caught my attention

I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chapstick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it

It felt so wrong, it felt so right
Don’t mean I’m in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it

…

Us girls we are so magical
Soft skin, red lips, so kissable
Hard to resist, so touchable
Too good to deny it
It ain’t no big deal, it’s innocent”
[I Kissed a Girl - Katy Perry]

Axiom is simple: boyfriends are selfish, mindless creatures. Katy remembers this to “her girls” every 3 songs. I look around and I am almost convinced she has a point. They not only paid a ticket to get 90 minutes of insults, but have also to look very happy standing next to their euphoric girlfriends. Then I think again.

Self-harm? Not at all. Just teenager love on springtime hormonal peak.
They know the after show is worth a thousands slurs. When sex occupies 95% of your mind(less) space there’s nothing cheaper to get a dose of insolence then having your girlfriend on a cheery mood on the way back home.

Manic Street Preachers hit If You Tolerate This Your Children Will (May!) Be Next has quite an interesting, unexpected, alternative meaning here.

Boyfriends tonight jump and dance, simulate fun to a single Ur So Gay, written to offend. Is the song that infuriated the biggest crowd.

It’s a gem. Not only because it starts with the best affront since Jagged Little Pill and ends with the most forbidden word to put in a girl’s mouth.
These verses contains some pearls, I haven’t read anything so amusing in years.

“I hope you hang yourself with your H&M scarf
While jacking off listening to mozart
You bitch and moan about LA
Wishing you were in the rain reading Hemingway
You don’t eat meat
And drive electrical cars
You’re so indie rock it’s almost an art
You need SPF 45 just to stay alive

…

You’re so sad maybe you should buy a happy meal
You’re so skinny you should really Super Size the deal
Secretly you’re so amused
That nobody understands you
I’m so mean cause I cannot get you outta your head
I’m so angry cause you’d rather MySpace instead
I can’t believe I fell in love with someone that wears more makeup than

…

You’re so gay and you don’t even like boys
No you don’t even like
No you don’t even like
No you don’t even like… penis”
[Ur So Gay - Katy Perry]

Now, achieving the result of making legions of people angry about something as innocent as a very well written pop song is marvellous. She has my esteem despite I belong to the “you’re so indie-rock” bunch.

It brought enough media coverage to start collecting records (not albums, awards). Accordingly I Kiss a Girl is USA 1000th number one hit since Billboard and Bill Haley.

No, I won’t start a rant about the decline of USA empire, don’t worry!
Reading about her interesting past has been much more interesting and very instructive.

In a “previous” pious life, Katy Perry was a gospel singer, daughter of two protestant pastors who even recorded a Christian album as Katy Hudson.

Her parents once banned rock music at home. Her lovely daughter became a massive worldwide popstar.
If nothing else, this is useful evidence that the best way to aspire people emancipation is to grew them up in a strong religious set of “moral values”.
A lesson worth a thousand “how to raise your kid” manuals.

There is more. The same parents, as far as google goes, now seem to approve the daughter pop career, proving how an angelical baby turning into a material girl, as long as earn millions, gets lubricated enough to slip through the very immaterial gate of heaven.

The reaction of an “Evangelical Christian community” (Planetwisdom.com) is a wonderful icing on the cake: “What a sad picture of a lost child who has been swept away by the carnal pleasures of the world. We need to be lifting this gal up in prayer. While we’re at it, let’s toss up a prayer for her parents, too. Not to mention the countless young girls who will buy into this lesbian chic message.”

Finished praying? Good.

Now, in addition to highlight the negative meaning given to a positive adjective “pleasure”, isn’t it wonderful how this “communities” denigrate their own members?
They are convinced that a few lyrics are enough to hijack their young girls’ souls. What opinion of them do they have?
The scary bit is that the same mechanism (and the same opinion) is what drives them to try to “buy into” their bigot boring message the very same young girls. There is not even carnal pleasure in this alternative package.

It’s a weird world with a sure aftermath: more popstars to come.

Katy Perry music contains nothing even remotely dangerous in the satanic sense that evangelicals see even in jam jars. Her pop recipe is a cleverly balanced mix of light feminism, rants about boyfriends, female sympathy versus male dumbness, lipstick flavours, fat cats and corporate merchandise.

On the first row I cannot count a single girl without a kind of cat tattooed on her hand, whiskers painted both sides of her nose, fake cat ears on their head and a cherry lipstick ready in hands.

A cat mask is for sale at the merchandising stall for the outrageous sum of 15£.

Along with the mask a variety of items that ridicule Accessorize.
Starting from 5£ (cherry lipstick, stickers, posters) 20£ (I counted at least 7 different T-shirts) 35£ (double sided “hot and cold” T-shirt) to 50£ (fifty pounds for a hoody!) you’ll definitely get your pink thing to think pink.

My social(ist) attitude is annoyed by the combination of Katy Perry items sold to kids at such ridiculously inflated prices and her attack on stage to the tube strikers for having hold up the fans on the journey to the gig.
People fighting for their job versus a popstar worring for the comfort of her fans.

Isn’t this a worse propaganda of wrong values than singing pretty innocent verses, my dear evangelic communities?

Despite the 3 hours I needed to get to Shepherds Bush and 3 more to get back home, I will always be sympathetic with strikes.

The gig. In opposition to the Observer critic, I found that with just one album out, the gig suffered lack of hits. Midway through the set I realize that it wasn’t just me yawning.
It is not Miss Perry’s fault. She did well. She has at least three catchy pop songs out of just one album, which is well above today’s average. She prepared half a dozen of sagacious chats to entertain in between songs, she steps down to joke with the first row overjoyed fans which makes her look more pop less star.

A giant inflatable lipstick and a lovely fat cat join the pink flamingos on stage for the big final.

At the end of the day, considering that Britney Spears‘ Circus is live tonight at the O2 Arena (even accessible via the Jubilee line which is working!), my admiration goes to all the girls who were “bought into this lesbian chic message”, painted their own posters, challenged the strike, ignored the Spears and convinced their insipid boyfriends to change their mind and join them.

Katy Perry, in contrast to her rival, has the voice to sing her songs, live.
On stage men, despite silly pink suits, play real instruments and are not used as fake slaves to simulate sex domination.

“You change your mind like a girl changes clothes
Yeah, you change your mind like a girl I would know
And you always think, always speak cryptically
I should know that you’re no good for me”
[Hot 'N' Cold - Katy Perry]

If you are curious enough know more about Katy Perry. Her official places [myspace] and [website] are a click away.

Photo Tip

You may have noticed I don’t shoot many pop acts.
Photography-wise one of the reason is that they are usually staged in big arenas where tenths of photographers are relegated miles away from the stage forced to use huge telephotos from the soundboard. Distance doesn’t work for me, I need to be close.

The Shepherds Bush Empire allows us on the pit, which is why I decided to go.
Apparently not just me. A dozen of photographers plus three security guys stand in the narrow line between the barrier and the stage waiting for the start!
There is not space to move. Fact.

What to do when there are many of us in a small place?

Get there early, find a good spot and don’t leave it. It is a bit as when there is no-pit.
My favourite place is central but slightly on a side. Which side is up to your intuition.
Do the homework, check online photos to know how the stage looks like to know what to expect.

Be polite with other photographers, because in such a packed situation you can easily put yourself between the artist and someone else lens. We already have the bloody microphone in the middle, let’s not complicate things!

Be patient. Artists move on stage but in this conditions you can’t follow them. When they are far, simply wait. Running after them will only let you lose your place to get annoyed when realizing they just stop 20 seconds later where you were an instant before.

Kneel down, change lens, look at details for some unusual angles.
Photographing photographers (with the artist) is usually a winner since deliver quite different images. Well a baby doll helps, I give you that!

The endless number of e-mail and phone calls I had to go through to sort out the photo pass is just a significative evidence. That The Horrors gig was one of the picks of London June’s scene had been clear from the speed it sold out.

Since I arrive to the Electric Ballroom, to the moment I am actully in it, many minutes pass to help the girl at the guestlists-box to find my Italian weird name in an endless list of VIP and press.

The London that count, the people who check the state of the music business were all present for the arrive of The Horrors‘ tour in the capital. A cult band that, as any cult band, doesn’t sell many albums but it is always on the news. The only band who managed a NME cover before issuing the debut.

Unsurprisingly the merchandising stall has the classic items you expect for a cult following. Not only T-Shirts but many more paraphernalia: limited edition posters, football-fan-like scarf, pins series to collect, obscure singles remix on 10” vinyls and even a Moleskine notepad personalized with “The Horrors” on the cover.

I don’t buy anything instead I decide to start the crossing of the sea of people that divide me from the pit well in advance. An intense and interesting social journey among black eyeliner, weird haircuts, girls in awe and skinny boys in dark clothes. In the pit more photographers of most of the gig I ever been at the Electric Ballroom.

Three songs later I am discussing with the security guy who wanted to kick me out of the venue. I have to convince him that the pink wristband isn’t from a Katy Perry past gig but someone put it on to let me stay in for the rest of the show.
Victorious, I spot some oxygen molecules still vibrating free next to the Bar and decide to spend the rest of the gig there, sharing that air with Bobby Gillespie.
The presence of either Bobby Gillespie or Kate Moss (both would be the apex) at a gig is the final proof that I am at “The Concert”. The place to be.

Gillespie, narcisistic as any real rockstar must be, spends the night with an eye on the stage and the other looking around to check if people recognises him. He tries to look uninterested to anyone sharing his hands, but in depth is desiring everyone comes forward to praise him.
While he is busy chatting about something (the music?) with other guys clearly part of the showbiz, I opt to listen to the concert.

The Horrors with Primary Colours, their second album managed the impossible.
They distracted all the sceptics and got out of the narrow alley where they were trapped since Strange House, the debut. An alley that, literally, lead them to a graveyard. you know, one of those churchyards with Celts graves on the grass.

Their artistic journey has been on the verge to end up in a Gothic BBQ in fancy dress, with guitars strumming among the tombs, crows singing under a full moon.
Something in the middle of a parody of Rocky Horror Picture Show and a pantomime of the Birthday Party.

How did The Horrors get from there to one of the most anticipated and hottest ticket in town? Soon explained in a simple three parts recipe.

First you need good ingredients: the songs.
Primary Colours is not a single plus some fillers but it is a complete album, strong from the start to the end.

Then you need a master chef: Geoff Barrow.
A Portishead with quite an experience in production (including Primal Scream, if you needed a hint) who took possession of the sound board in the studio and materialize the revolution.
Barrow wiped up the cobwebs, removed the zombies’ masks and let the good stuff emerge from under a thickening layer of dust.

Third, the fresh dish needs a good presentation: the musicians.
Indie music rejects solos and technique and as a consequence rarely the critics attention is on single musicians. Which is a common error, because even when they do not play solos, musicians’ personality influence the bands’ sound.

This intro to say that inverting the bassist (Tom Furse) with the keyboardist (Spider Webb, just!) the Horrors changed dramatically their sound.

The concert is obviously focused on the new album and, as the album, opens with Mirror’s Image and closes with the beautiful suite Sea Within a Sea.
In the middle the music is solid and clean. Feedback, electronic, melody and distorsion find the perfect balance in the quintessential example of Brit music that in the 80s would have been called New Wave.

One of the chef secret was to move the melody on to Faris Badwan voice. He gives up his primal screams and now sings, and he does surprisingly well.
When he doesn’t sing he lets himself go in a sort of shamanic dance in the darkness of the backstage which is full of character and pleases the tenths of teens squeezed to the front row barrier.

Keyboards borrow 80s riff to make it cool, but what comes out clearly is the impetous of guitarist (Joshua Tird). Emancipated from any tying duty, he is free to play around with his effects and produce crackling sounds reminding me of My Bloody Valentine.

Drum and bass pay their eternal debt that these genre will ever owe to Joy Division.
A band (Joy Division) that is second only to Velvet Underground for number of inspirers over the number of albums issued.

The other barrier The Horrors knocked down, in the album and live tonight, is the 3 minutes lenght of a song.
Fifty years ago it was bound to the maximum duration of a 78 rpm vinyl, today to the desire to be broadcasted.
Being highly umprobable that someone will ever press a Horrors 78 rpm and even less likely that a Radio will air their entire album, the boys enjoed themselves with several tracks of double length.
Live these songs become even longer avoiding the frustration that transpire when too many ideas (and they appear to have loads) have to be contained in a three minutes timeframe.

Not only Sea Within a Sea but even Mirror’s Image and Scarlet’s Field breathe outside an oppressive scheme. The music expands, becomes airy, vibrant.

To lose the prize for best gig of the year, in June, it comes the encore.
Funnily enough a negative note is the definitive proof that the Horrors have a bright future ahead.

Bass and keyboard go back to their original owners materializing the band that I saw few times a couple of years ago and always managed to be boring despite their notoriously very short gigs.
Faris Badwan is back screaming and forgets singing. To emulate Nick Cave circa 1980 without having around him neither the same Camden Town, nor the same amount of drugs nor, most important, a music genius as Mick Harvey is pointless.

Count in Five, Sheena is a Parasite and Gloves, three of the hit singles from the Horrors debut album, Strange house, don’t get enough of the revamp of the new direction and result to me pale compared to the music I just experienced.
I understand they are indebted with early fans which, must be said, appreciated much more than me this slice of the gig, but the maneuver to get out of the “Strange House’s garage” its all in Primary Colours music.

A triumphant concert that will give all the VIPs present a lot to chat about.
This guys now rank high on the chance to deliver a third album that could easily become a classic. There is a desperate need of such a thing.

PS: Apparently I have been cancelled from The Horrors myspace friends and blocked as a user by them. That must be for some sort of negative review I must have written in the past, I can’t remember. If so The Horrors concept of freedom of expression would fit them well in a Berlusconi Villa party in Sardinia, be sure to bring along your female teenager fans, guys, the host would appreciate and give you free distribution in Italy!

By the way, you can listen to them on [myspace] and [website]

Photo tip

It’s a while I wanted to talk about something linked to photographer’s creativity. The photographer’s interpretation of a subject.

Something that arises from the combination of our personal sensitivity, the setting in front of us and the emotion that this combination generates.

Some bands are better than other on this.
The Horrors from their name to their dark look invite to shoot pictures that emphasize an atmosphere made of deep shadows and strong lights.
They brought me to highly contrasted, (clearly) black and white images, blurred as their last cover, with a small focus that drives all the attention out of an undefined composition.
Some of you may go for the strong white backlights and someone else could challenge the cliché and go for colourful images. It’s personal.

Tonight spotlights selectively (not sure how much purposely) focused on particulars of the band, leaving all the rest in an unidentified shadow. There was a nice spotlight used by the singer throughout the show to light the audience, that let me with the best picture ever stamped on my mind. It happened beyond the bloody third song.

A bit of emphasis on contrast does the rest. Easy, a couple of clicks away with photoshop a couple of filter grade up in the darkroom.

Never forget that the nice bit of photography is its versatility. A subject may be the same but the pictures will never be, follow your instinct, don’t shoot all bands the same way, interpret them.

After missing one of My Latest Novel gigs happening literally within walking distance from my house, due to a simultaneous concert of the Akron/Family happening at the faraway London ICA, I got to the conclusion that for the sake of my quality sleep and bank balance it was time to organize better my agenda and cut the journey to London down to essential.

The sacrifice lasted less than a week. Point is that the option to miss My Latest Novel’s Death & Entrance album launch party at the glamorous Bush Hall promoted by the friends of The Line of Best Fit would be in a simple word: immoral.

Bella Union, My Latest Novel label, seems to be doing things in the Indie world as they should be done.
Capitalizing on Fleet Foxes platin success, the guys at the label are spotting and signing the best realities of contemporary music and promoting them with beautiful events that deserve, as this night was, to be picked by Time Out as “critic’s choice”.

Before My Latest Novel took the stage, three more bands pleased the audience (at the cost of a takeaway curry, must be underlined).

I usually focus each review on Live on 35mm on a single artist but I want to give to It Hugs Back’s dreamy-noise-pop a short praise. These four guys played a striking set with the songs infiltrated with “shoegaze intermezzos” kindly offered by the 2 square meters of Matthew’s (something) guitar effects. I promised myself to double check their future gigs since on stage they sounded much wilder and juicer than I would expect listening to their latest album.

My Latest Novel rich line-up, five boys and one girl, is characterized not only by the violin, an instrument nowadays more frequent in rock bands than the bass, but by the presence of two guitars that often become three when the beardy singer (photos below, sorry I can’t find any hint to assign names with faces) catches is black guitar to derail the band’s sound beyond the trail of their sophisticate songwriting.

These are among the most interesting bits of a superb gig. With the violinist that goes “Miles Davis” way, turns her back to the audience to follow the drumming and join the bands in the instrumental passages that decorate some of the most adventurous songs.

If I had to play the game british music press loves, My Latest Novel would meet at the crossroads of Arcade Fire’s folk-rock and The National erudite songwriting.

What I don’t like of this game is that, if useful to help people unaware of the music to classify bands into a genre (another all-British mania) and drive shopping, it also devaluates the band reviewed.
If there is one thing My Latest Novel don’t deserve is any sort of devaluation.

So if it is right that the new album title they played live tonight, Death & Entrance, is inspired by Dylan Thomas, it must also be said it is a band’s choice to choose it. As well as it is undeniable that the bass voice of one of the singer (this other guy here below!) may remind you of Matt Berninger voice but, beyond the Scottish accent, he is not him and on top of that most of the members of this band sing giving to the songs a variety of different tones.

The same way, it is true that MLN harmonies gets often quite complex jamming together violin guitar and drums on uneven improvisations, yet it is still not enough to apply for Canadian citizenship.

Fact is that with an album so full of ideas, with lyrics, harmonies and melodies so sharply crafted into each song, to give credits to someone else is unfair.
This is a pure My Latest Novel album, a CD which is perfectly inserted in the British music of our times and contains songs that will be able to go well beyond our times.

I can’t even decide tonight which songs I like most. If on the singing side I prefer the bass voice going along acoustic guitar as for the album opening All in All in All is All or Lacklustre it would be criminal to not give credits to the perfection of a sumptuous piece as A Dear Green Place or even to the short apocalyptic instrumental of Man Against the Argument.

Without a setlist it is difficult to me to name the songs played. I am attracted enough by a couple of tracks played at the grand piano by the beardy guy (with no name) to buy him the CD after the gig. The rest of the band kept playing on stage.

Retrospectively I would say one was Re-Appopriation of the Meme, but whatewer the song was they donated the audience a moment of rare intensity.

If Wolves was one of the best debut of recent years, with Death & Entrance My Latest Novel moved a step further.
Personally I think that getting rid of some of those choruses, I am thinking of Learning Lego, The Job Mr Kurtz Done, Sister Sneaker Sister Soul, if could let the audience without sing-along gave the song a maturity that is rare at this stage of a band career.

This gives raise to another of my considerations. A suggestions to all the bands (and labels) out there that taking a lot of time to tour the debut and even more to write and record the key second album can be economically hard to cope with, but in the end pays back.

The night closes with the band announcing that will not go away to comeback for a prearranged encore but will keep playing the songs altogether.
I love when this happens. It may be because from my position I can often read the setlists before the gig, but I am bored by the unemotional ritual of simulating the end of a gig, saying hello to the audience, then simulate a comeback by popular acclamation (which often doesn’t even happens) to play two songs that were written on that list before the start.

I am convinced enough to buy the CD and leave the Bush Hall to rush towards the tube under one of the rare rainfall of this warm spring, perfect setting after a Scottish act. Once in the train I am happy to unwrap the CD, read the lyrics and… to realize for the very first time what pleasure we are missing shifting from our bulky old fashioned portable CD players to tiny cool mp3 players.

Get in touch with My Latest Novel amazing music from their [myspace] and [website]

Photo tip

The Bush Hall isn’t what you’d define a central venue in London, but it is, for sure, one of the more suggestive.

Originally a large dance hall, if seen through the perspective of rock theatres, it is small and cosy.
Red velvet curtains, chandeliers, red carpets create the atmosphere.
No barriers (and no photographer’s pit) let people as close as possible to the artist.

It is not the best place to see a sold-out gig. With a low stage a flat floor and being quite long if you stand on the back you are limited to listening unless you are a NBA player. I experienced this many years ago for a special Alanis Morissette show in here.

Tonight with a grand piano in front of the stage, round tables decorating the room allowing guests to taste a beer enjoying the gig sitting comfortably, is wonderful.

Lighting is not the best a photographer could dream of tonight. There are fixed colour spots both sides of the stage and overall it is quite dark but bouncing a flash on the ceiling or the walls (both white) could be a potential option. I avoided to respect the bands and because I rarely like my flash photos and tend to cut it to a minimum.

The absence of the pit and the small stage have the advantage that is possible (as a photographer) to go side of the stage to take some shots from an unusual angle. Useful especially with My Latest Novel that, fully immersed into the music, tend to turn often away from the crowd.

In brief a highly suggested place for intimate live music in London, as long as it doesn’t get too congested or too energetic.

If you scroll through the entire list of artists reviewed on Live on 35mm, you will not come across an Irish one until today. Hope the glamorous Imelda May starts a new trend.

It can be a coincidence, it can be failed photopasses (isn’t it Pogues‘ PR?). It can’t be my taste (I don’t discriminate by country!) and I love Irish music.
One thing is evident, Ireland and his music has visibly been away from the radar for a while. Why?

Today I can’t see no sign of the folk heritage, no bag pipes, tin whistles. No one following Pogues and Waterboys path.

There is no sign of the Irish blues-rock since Rory Gallagher, John Fogerty, Thin Lizzy kind of stuff.

The female voices so big in the nineties, vanished.
Last time I heard of Sinead O’Connor, after 73 farewell to the music scene, came back to go reggae. Enya must be busy doing something with the royalties of 70+ million albums she sold and Cranberries are back being just a sharp red berry good to go with roasted turkey.

The best known of all of them, U2, despite a massive (and outrageous) marketing campaign which tried to sell a mediocre album as a masterpiece, “pressing all the press” over 5 continents, did not manage to make No Line on The Horizon sell half the copies of the previous, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Fact.
More important, no band seem to follow on the path of who once was the pride of the country. U2 haven’t been cool for a while. The closest thing to U2 I have listened recently is the Airborne Toxic Event single. A band from Los Angeles!

Summing up, I can’t recall any recent Irish artist apart from Snow Patrol, which I doubt are doing Irish music heritage a big favour.

To confirm my theory, Ireland arrives on Live on 35mm after 85 artists from somewhere else without bearing any of the music clichés you would expect from an artist grown-up in Dublin.

What materialised on stage tonight is a pin-up body with a great voice backed by a vintage jazz band playing a nice mixture of rockabilly, blues, skiffles, jazz ballads in a sort of burlesque cabaret setting.

How it comes that such influences, you expect to see in a downtown Vegas hotel in the middle of the fifties opposed to Elvis playing the Caesar Palace, landed in Dublin in 2009 is my unanswered question of tonight’s show.

I can use globalization, risking to become repetitive, I can ponder about the heritage of Irish people moving to USA then coming back, risking to over interpret the reality. I won’t.

Imelda May comes on stage with her distinctive hair cut, a sexy red dress and a very good, professional ensemble of musicians who supports her singing with brilliant arrangements.

The band, driven by a funny-looking bass player on the left and her husband, rockabilly guitarist Darrel Higham, standing on her right work hard to impress and manage to conquer even the ones brought here by some friend.

Imelda May has been playing American Music for years in several bands before getting to be noticed by the media. She knows how to handle these songs, she has a huge repertoire of covers which she interprets very well and she is very experienced to sing them at the right moment of the show to keep the audience up and dancing throughout.

Concert open with Feel me, from her breakthrough album, Love Tattoo but the girl conquers me with the second tune.

Anyone who brings to a stage Little Walter’s My Babe in 2009 has guaranteed my eternal love and respect.
From the audience’s cheering reception, I doubt how many of them know the origin of the song, I am even more convinced that there is nothing but the 12 bar blues to be The eternal music genre.
Having the Devil on your side clearly helps.

A couple of her songs than Patsy Cline country-ish Walking After Midnight highlights her skills in interpretating standards.
Pat Cupp’s Don’t Do Me No Wrong (thanks Wiki!) which is an homage to a Rockabilly father whom her and husband clearly adore.

I prefer when she sings jazz ballads and early blues more than rock’n’roll and skiffles but I guess this is because it fits my taste more than because of the quality of her music.

Another few less known songs before the mid gig big breakthrough.
Her rendition of The Beatles’ Oh Darling had appeared already on a tribute album and Abbey Road session, but tonight she sang it better then ever.

If you want to conquer an English audience, using the Beatles card is the way to go but you also must be very careful. It is like touching God, so respect and innovation have to find a balance. She clearly achieved that.

Now everyone’s is at her feet and another rockabilly digression is accepted with no harm.

While the concert continues, I get caught by a sort of sensual Arabic influenced song, an inspirational allusion to some belly dancing in a burlesque outfit, highlight a guitar duetting with a trumpet. Not quite the same, but I think of Dizzy Gillespie’s bringing African influences into his be-bop. A surprisingly tasty jam.

Next to hit my sensitivity is her self penned ballad Falling In Love With You Again, a love song touching romantic souls, and it appears is plenty of them tonight, singing along the candid lyrics.

“We’ve been together but it seems like forever
But I’m falling in love with you again
…
You’re my lover, my best friend, but I can’t believe what’s happening
‘Cause I’m falling in love with you again
…
When you put your hand in mine
Send shivers up and down my spine
Your lips taste soft once more…”

Johnny Got a Boom Boom has the only memorable double bass riff I can think of and closes the main set leaving the entire crowd dancing to its bouncy rhytm.

I am not a fan of encores, they are mostly staged and not spontaneous as they are supposed to be, and it is not exception tonight with two songs alreardy on the setlist from the beginning, but I believe Imelda May must have come out even to improvise something if she didn’t want the entire crowd going to chase her in the dressing room.

She does come back, to please the audience with two huge hits, Tainted Love and then back to the Blues closing with Rollin’ and Tumblin’. Such a classic I don’t think has ever existed a blues musician that hasn’t played it.

Discover Imelda May singing from her [myspace] and [website]

Photo tip

It is probably the place where I shot most concerts, so it is time to speak out my admiration for it.
The Junction is Cambridge second biggest venue, but coming to the amount of music they play in here is clearly the first rock venue in town.

Taking pictures here is perfect. Small enough to have a cosy feeling, big enough to host a photographer’s pit which is easy to reach.
The small stage put you within touching distant with the artists and allows to mount on cameras the wide-angle lenses I prefer.
I rarely use my 85mm or 135mm lens at the Junction, and if I do is to take close portraits of artists’ face.

On the negative side (yes there is one, guys!), the pit has the stickiest floor I ever came across. You almost can’t walk without leaving your shoes stuck to it. Consequences of years of throwing pints.
Don’t leave your bag or jacket on the floor (or even on the barriers). To claim them back from the strong-glue effect that keep them there is going to be tough!

The photopass usually permits to stay in for the entire gig which is a plus getting rare in London. I appreciate it even more because of the moderately elevated platform mixer at the back.
That is a perfect place to keep taking photos of the entire stage with the crowd. (if they let you do which is up to the act management so ask before jumping on that!). It is usually the place where I spend further 10 minutes to finish my last frames of the roll.
Considering that most act playing much bigger London venues comes here to play intimate as well, you should not be surprised to know why I kept it this photographer’s heaven almost as far from central London as Brixton Academy is, for so long.

Last but not least the staff is friendly and always helpful which is useful when the PRs forget to put me on the list, a classic.

I am going to be banal.

Juliette Lewis a “Natural Born Killer” tonight wished to be a natural born rocker. Achieved, from an acting perspective, though.
I doubt she has ever killed anyone (just guessing) and she can’t truly rock (witnessed).

The banal observation is that an actress, moving from acting to become a rockstar, in reality still looks an actress personifying the role of a rockstar.
Juliette Lewis symbolizes a rockstar because she is a professional actress that has achieved her dream: to be a rock singer.

Is there a problem to this?
Well, the problem arises when you see her aspiration to be part of the alternative rock circuit. The stress is all on the “alternative”.

History of Rock is plenty of fake music acts, the Kiss and most of Glam-Metal, the Spice Girls and majority of chart-topping glossy-pop. These marketing products are intentionally adulterated. Theatre and rock-show merge into one thing and this is perfectly accepted by the fans (and the musicians).

Alternative, indie, call-it-however-you-like, works differently.
It developed and blossomed on strict unwritten rules to react to all excesses of pop and rock.
I have to acknowledge Wendy Fonarow’s to have written those rules on her wonderful book, Empire of Dirt, to emphasize authenticity. Authenticity is everything in this small world.

The moment a performer looks forged, the moment the show looks staged, the moment the moves look prepared, that moment the performance implodes. Becomes unconvincing and fails to deliver.
Being credible is more important than being a good singer or a talented musician.

I can’t stop thinking at the Akron/Family concert I witnessed just few days after Juliette Lewis gig. A band so immersed in what they were playing, communicating their emotions to the audience through the music.
There is no need of a magic touch to spot it, when such an integrity is present is perceivable. For the “indie-rock” fans it is paramount.

For Juliette Lewis, Paramount is still an Hollywood motion picture company, and her performance tonight has the feeling of a very good Hollywood number.

She came to Koko for a special club NME night with her new band, The New Romantiques.
The Licks, her previous companions, had been sacked in order to get her music a new “groove”.
She repeats this “groove-groovy-groovier” words at any interview, press release and concert which builds up the sensation of “prearranged” i have.

The change of the name from the Licks to the New Romantiques, the bucolic cover picture and the press release suggest a mellower sound, a drift towards more comfortable beaches. Not really, not tonight. Wrong speculation.

In reality Juliette arrives on a super energetic grrrrrrriot girl mood and carries on for an adrenalized hour working really hard to impress… impress herself, before the fans.

From the first moment she looked to overplay a role. The rock singer role.
Running, screaming, jumping, flirting, waving her hair, swearing.
A rebelliousness that appeared exaggerated hence out of place.

Terra incognita, The New Romantiques upcoming album, due in the next months, it’s highly talked also because a “big name” of the emerging alternative circuit, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez by Mars Volta, signs the production credits.

Listening to the tracks availble on myspace, Rodriguez-Lopez touch is pronounced. Arrangments are carefully curated, instruments are recognizable, keyboards, guitars, scattered drums emerge clear and distinct. When I listened to that, before the gig, I was expecting something similar, which is quite good.
Wrong speculation again.

The band joining her on stage, is very quickly eclipsed by Lewis orbit.
They rock hard to support her uncontrollable fury to the point that “Mars-Volta” recorded accuracy is lost in translation.

Terra incognita (the song) opens the show and indicates what we are going to get tonight. The title should suggest a move towards “unknown land” (that is what the Italian/Latin title means) but this land appear to be next door to the one “licked” in the past.

Purgatory Blues follows, it is a track from the Licks latest album. A classic-rock track that opens with a Led Zeppelen-ish riff and has a chorus that is perfect to stage Juliette fury.

Sticky Honey another stereotyped title for another stereotyped song from the same, Four on the Floor album with the Licks.
Here the riff seems to emerge from a Rolling Stones lost session of the 80s when Mick Jagger was attempting (and failing) to bring Keith Richard into popland.

Two more songs on the same rock’n'roll’n'riot theme and the apex of the gigs happen. In any sense.

The middle of the set is for Hard Loving Woman.
A Deep Purple borrowed title, another rock-blues seventies style, the guitar forged on Led Zeppelin’s Since I’ve Been Loving You and Juliette Lewis apeing and singing as she was Janis Joplin circa Summertime. Jackpot!

One (the actress) and one (Janis Joplin) inexorably makes two. This song became an audition.

There will ever be a selection to choose the role of Janis Joplin in a movie, Juliette Lewis has the moves, the voice, the experience all on her side. She is clearly far too pretty for Janis’role but Hollywood make-up can make miracles, can’t it.
The part is hers, I am sorry for the singer wannabe actress, Alanis Morissette, but there is no contest here.
Mr Oliver Stone take note, please.

Another couple of old tracks, Hot Kiss and You’re Speaking my language, to warm up the fans and introduce the new single, Suicide Dive Bombers.
A slide guitar and a more sensual voice dissociate her from the riot mood, but the same feeling of watching an actress performing a rockstar stays.

Everything from the title of the songs, that don’t show a minimal effort of imagination, to the music, shaped on cliched 70s rock-blues with hints of nineties guitars, to a costume, ready for the Janis Joplin role (I am willing to be written), I haven’t seen a lot of signs of initiative through the night.

Who performed tonight is a very talented actress with the voice to sing live and fit enough to keep jumping for an hour entertaining her dedicated fans. If they are devoted to the rockstar or the filmstar, remains unanswered.

Make up your own mind listening to some of her new stuff on [myspace] (you won’t believe there is even a song called Romeo!) or the older stuff on [The Licks myspace]. If you are curious of Hard Loving Woman, you can search for it on [youtube] despite the sound is as horrible as youtube standards. (Sorry, for some reasons WordPress doesn’t allow me linking the video).

Photo tip

Photographing an actress on stage has its own advantage.
She is not bothered by photograhers, she is used to them.

Despite the late night show, It’s plenty of us in the pit tonight. Not a short guestlist.
We had decent lights. We are not distracted by the rest of the band, because it stayed on the back. It is pretty clear who is the subject here.

I debate the theory who states photography is a representation of reality. Not only because digital photography is easily manipulated, but because you modify the reality in the moment you decide what to frame and what to leave out.
An actress helps you to tell the story you want, because an actress doesn’t stand still, has different moves, different face expressions, doesn’t repeat herself.

To freeze Juliette Lewis was possible only using flash which, guess what, was allowed.
A Hollywood star knows how to please photographers and I was very pleased to photograph her.

If only the music…

It is not an easy task to review The Airborne Toxic Event.

Have a go at Google and you will find two factions.

On one side there is Pitchfork notorious 1.6/10 review which caused such a rare thing as a band replying with an open letter to the reviewer.
On the other side there is an excessive number of stars falling from the sky to decorate their debut album.

A split on the music press as clear as the Red Sea waters parted in front of Moses.

The negative reviews point the finger on a lack of inspiration and a lot of imitation.
The positive reviews emphasize the capability of writing melodies that are catchy and easy.
Both tend to be emotional overreactions colluding one against the other.

I reckon the truth is in the usual place: the middle, but it is the perspective that needs to be changed.

Approaching TATE (I love this acronym) it’d be wise to put apart prejudices and indie-radicalism.
Better to stop thinking that pureness means not being derivative, not being catchy, It goes without saying, being “commercial”.

TATE are at the same time indie, catchy, derivative and commercial enough to be aired beyond Radio1 and MTV2. Sacrilege!

On a sold out Koko, five people come on stage. Four blokes and a girl. Their passports say: Los Angeles, California.
Deducing from their pale skin, dark hair, black suits, black ties I would have guessed somewhere around the Midlands, UK. Blame the globalization.

Consequence is that the independent Californian scene is blossoming. From a state that historically didn’t go much beyond hardcore and the Pavement it’s good news.
The alternative scene there has been deafened by the decibel and crushed by the stadium crowds of Californian “heroes”. Guns’n’Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tool, Rage Against The Machine.

In California small indie bands have always been the exception, not the rule.
Until today. Film School’s shoegaze, No Age noise and now The Airborn Toxic Event indie-pop are among the many leading the alternative Californian scene.

A guitarist of clear Asiatic origins, who has been studying all the cool music of the last two decades, purposely avoiding James Iha.
The bassist reminded me of the Maccabees guitarist, the girl on violin and synths looks alike Dandy Warhols’ Zia. A drummer sit on the back and the singer looks exactly as the person that would come to your mind if someone asks to imagine the opposite of a Californian rockstar.

Nevermind the look doesn’t count, does it?

Since I listened to the album, I knew this was going to be the equivalent of a pub quiz night. They play a song, you guess who inspired them. Cool ain’t it? Let’s play this.

It opens with This Is Nowhere. First question is always an easy one. Jangly guitar, deep low voice it is the Editors they were listening while writing this.
Papilllon follows, both the audience and the bassist get very excited.
The guitar riff marks out a song which, if came out from Julian Casablanca pen and ended up on Albert Hammond Jr six strings, would guarantee the Strokes were still among us.

Gasoline closes the photoset and opens my series of reflections.
The Airborn Toxic Event songs works well, but are extremely predictable. The bass enters, drums follow, the first guitar strums some chords and the second turns up to counterpoint. A choral bridge, the voice breaks in. You play it safe folks.
No space for that inventive moment able to turn a simple song in a memorable one.

Happiness is overrated slows the concert down. Back to deep voice, melancholic lyrics even the title would be perfect on the next National album. Again the song lacks an edge, a “punctum” as Roland Barthes would write. Nevertheless it works to the point that thousand people are singing along “sorry I really lost my head”. Why not in the end? The expected choice for the new single.

The snap of the setlist I got before the start, says Echo Park. No idea where this song comes from.
Something New instead must originate from a night listening to the early Coral stuff. The guitar is there directing the traffig. A light traffic and absolutely nothing new in it.

This Losing induces the second consideration. I realize all the songs tonight are played very much like they sound on CD. Not sure if this is a merit, a burden or just my impression but I wonder if the lack of full flavor is because I am eating a precooked ready meal. I yawn (but I am not sleepy).

Sensibly this is the right moment to hold the trump card and cheer up the crowd. Sometime Around Midnight is the single that made them famous. It has a title that reminds me of the entire history of jazz but it sounds as the best song U2 missed to write since Joshua Tree. Audience knows it by heart risking to transform this live rendition in an embarrassing karaoke.

Goodbye Horses and Georgia either are B-sides or new songs. They don’t introduce them so I can’t help (probably you do?). They live on the previous single income and are here as fillers before the grand final.

When Wishing Well starts I perceive The Edge’s ghost kidnapped from his 360º tour reharsal and brought back on stage to supply something similar to the guitar intro of Where The Streets Have No Name . Transposed on to the synth, though.

Innoncence is the last song and, for God’s sake, the band finally shows its face and remember they are playing a live gig not a CD.
Guitar and violin start harmoniously as two good friends, then begin to bother each other. Drums crescendo is indicating they haven’t forgotten Arcade Fire on the list of favourite bands, but the jam that follows is by far the most adventourous bit of the night. Seven minutes on the CD, probably something more here, a sign they got nerves, if only they used them.
It closes in a clapping that follows the rhythm, goes on while the band leaves the stage and don’t stop until they come back.

The encore gave us Does This Mean You’re Moving On. If they gave it to Carl Barat instead, the Dirty Pretty Things will still be among us.
The Girls in Their Summer Dresses, voice, music and title is the missing homage to the Smiths without Moz on vocal, which we may agree it is not a tiny detail.

The concert closes with Missy. This goes on as a kind of spaghetti western tempo that I am sure reminds me of something else but I am too tired to think whoever this is. Discover it yourselves and if you get it, please let me know.
The quiz night is over, the concert too.

Frankly I didn’t come out dissatisfied. This slipped in my mind a third, ample (and last) thought.
Is it a problem to be openly inspired to the music you love to write your own songs? If, in the end, you are creative enough to come up with some good tunes, who cares? (… beyond Pitchfork and the purists of indie of course).

The Airborne Toxic Event will never be the band to indicate the music of the next decade but they clearly make good use of the music of the past two decades to write songs which are catchy, easy, light.

Theirs is not the music for a conceptual rock night, not the music to show off to your friends, not the music to write essays on.
It is simply a bunch of songs to play in the background, to put on the i-pod gym playlist, to listen while involved in something else as taking pictures and videos of the band on stage with your mobile. A thousand people have been doing nothing more for the entire gig.

Make upyour mind wiht TATE on [myspace] and [website]and decide which side are you.

Photo tip

I will never stop to stress the importance of requesting and always bringing with you the e-mail that confirms your photopass. Best if there is a telephone (mobile!) number of the PR person printed on it. Why so much hassle?
Read this:

Read? Well that is not always enough.
The tip today is to write another e-mail to confirm that you are going to shoot the gig a couple of day before it, specially if you were okayed the photopass quite in advance.
Something like this one:

Which gave a quick positive answer:

If only… When I arrived at Koko the sadistic guy at the guestlists box (the same that with a similar procedure didn’t want to let me enter at the Rakes ) told me uncaring

“I am sorry, you are not on the list I can’t help, you can’t enter you have to sort it out yourself”.

That is the time to pick up the e-mail and call the number on it.

I passed the phone to the guy, they talked, ten minutes wait and I was finally sorted.
Without it I would have travelled 2 hours to get there and 2 more to get back home without pictures.

I finally have the right occasion to take a look back at this rock decade from a wider perspective.
The decade it’s over in few months and, as any decade, opens and close a music era.

I am not off topic, the Rakes are part of what I am about to writing.
The music of this millennium, the noughties decade (00s), among other stuff is identified by the so-called (or call it whatever you want) “indie-fashion”.

I am talking about a genre started about 10 years ago. Due to the “globalized” world for the first time it blossomed simultaneously in 3 continents.
North America put the big names: The Strokes, White Stripes, Interpol. Old europe hooked to its punk past: The Hives, The Libertines. Australia contributed with the “hard-ish-rockers”: The Vines, Jet.
These folks quickly ruled the charts and indicate the path to most bands. Even U2, in search of inspiration after the failed attempt of following trip-hop-dance with Pop, went garage-rock for All That You Can’t Leave Behind.
You can argue all these groups are different, I agree, but if we step back and have a retrospective look from a higher perspective they are all part of a big family.

The bands are mostly guitar based with 3 to 5 members. They play less-then-3-minutes songs, immediate and direct. The sound is characterized by jangling guitars, often offered by a Fender Telecaster and fast, upbeat tempos. Lyrics tend to focus on their middle-class lives around love and beer, sex and night clubs.
There is a more selfish attention to themselves than to the world around.

Classic rock cliches are rejected: from guitar solos to long hair, from weird instruments to political consciousness.
They are part of myspace generation, they are all on the web but also quite proud of their local origins.

Their image has an addictive attention to fashion, their fashion. Clothes, shoes, haircut and a general coolness are carefully picked. Think at the Strokes or Pete Doherty. Their fans quickly adapt to the point that rock fans nowadays are recognizable by their ipod model instead of long hair and worn out clothes.

Such a success generated at the same time both wannabe rockstar and labels eager to sign someone and enter a “me-too” competition. Hence countless followers blossomed, especially in UK where this music, supported by NME, exploded.

In few years the indie family had its baby boom and the tree grew its branches.
Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs, Arctic Monkes, Maximo Park, Futurheads, Art Brut, Kasabian, Editors, the Subways and tonight headliners, The Rakes, fits with it.

If the first generation have released 4 or 5 albums, the second is at the difficult turning point of the third LP.
It hasn’t stopped. New bands develop. The tree is getting overloaded.
The Enemy, Maccabees, Mistery Jets, The View just to cite few not forgetting the Libertines’ follow ups: Babyshambles and Dirty Pretty Things.

If new bands add up, music stays more or less the same so that the space for creativity becomes tiny and overcrowded.
We are reaching the point that it is difficult to differentiate one band from the other. Few people today can recognize the difference between a 12 songs album of a single band from a 12 songs compilation made out of 12 different bands.

So, as we are approaching the turn of the decade, the vein seem exhausted and rock music will explore new lands.
Why am I so sure? Let’s go through these bands’ fate and it’ll be clearer.

Some dissolved or disappeared. For now or forever has yet to be established: The White Stripes, The Libertines, Dirty Pretty Things, Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong.
Some are on a sort of hiatus, their members distracted by side projects: The Strokes, Babyshambles, Arctic Monkeys, Interpol.
Some are still on but struggling on the way down of their experience:
Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, Futurheads, Hives, Kasabian, Maximo Park, Subways. All of them do not play the same big venues they used to. Even Franz Ferdinand one of the biggest among these names give signs of slowing down and The Rakes played this sold out night in the cosy Koko but not a long ago used to sell out the massive Brixton Academy.

What about the youngest?
Good point, some are actually still around finding a way through the credit crunch, the difficulty of being innovative or the search for new directions.

Which ones?
The few that managed to build up a cult following which guarantees faithful fans: Art Brut, Mistery Jets.
The few that understood live music is where money are and concentrate on live shows as The View and The Enemy.
The few that have been clever to move their musical taste towards more fashionable places. As British Sea Power last year and Maccabees’ second album. Both hint at Canadian soundscapes.

There is one band left that can disprove my theory: Arctic Monkeys.
In few months we shall know which lesson they have learnt at Josh Homme’s desert studios.
I am a fan and I have high expectations from Alex Turner and his friends. I dream of a change of direction, one of those seminal turns that set a path to follow. A move that only great bands can do.

There is one exception and it is not by coincidence.

Bands fronted by women.

Have you had enough of boring, bland, chiming guitars?
Can’t you bear miserable guys standing still in front of microphones?
Are you unable to listen useless songs played by the umpteenth hopeless band as Scouting for girls, Hoosiers, Joe Lean?

Well there is a reaction: move away. To get what?
Easy. Precisely the opposite!

Girls on vocals (in place of boys) and synth (in place of guitars).

Welcome to the sunrise of a new musical decade. The “10s”. The revenge of synth-pop will displace the last two decades of guiar-driven rock.
Quite similarly as 80s electronica stormed away 60s epic and 70s prog.

Let’s have a deeper look. Most bands with a female singer adapted and survived.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Gossip and Noisettes are the first examples to come to my mind.
Some took a decisive U-Turn, abandoning garage-rock for a glossy-magazine-pop that, even when preserves a “indie” feeling, is miles away from its origins.

Watch MTV, read the charts. You’ll find Lady Gaga, The Ting Tings, Bat for Lashes and Lily Allen .
A wave of pop bands fronted by women, or women fronting pop bands.
More acts are arriving, Florence and the Machine, La Roux, St. Vincent and counting.

Teenagers and music lovers are enjoying pop. Girls power is doing the rest.
History repeats. As for the 80s, a difficult economic period move people’s free time towards lighthearted, carefree entertainment. There is no space to worry and think with music, when you have to worry everyday.

The few die-hard fans of rock, the ones which can’t digest a synth (i.e. myself) have niche alternative on some literate songwriting, folk revival, symphonic rock or all of them together.
Some will grow old (i.e. not myself) and stop listening to music until NME, in one of its future issues, around 2020, will announce: “The White Stripe to reform!”. I would bet on that.

I owe some words to review this gig.
The Rakes are part of this. They come from the New Bohemian, arty, East london scene as The Libertines .
They have a love for Eastern Europe which someway links them to Franz Ferdinand.
They clearly fit the “fashion bit”, just think singer Alan Donohoe was the face of Fred Perry campaign.

Unfortunatel they did not put on a great gig, which clicked my disquisition.
Despite people seemed to have a lot of fun, despite the band supplied a lot of energy, despite Alan Donohoe came on stage with red gloves (fashion) ignoring the warmth of the first spring to be seen in England in 5 years.
Despite everything a sensation of decay permeated me. The coolness of the glory days went to leave space to routine rock’n'roll.

The set-list didn’t disappoint. Most singles were there.
The concert started backward, opening with You’re In It first song from the last album, (the uninspired Klang), and ended with Strasbourg , their first single.

Fans loved the old stuff. 22 Grand Job and The World Was a Mess But His Hair Was Perfect had big reception.
Personally I couldn’t really pick a tune above the mediocrity of the whole.
I just realized 1989, the last single, sounds as a dull cover of The End Has No End by the Strokes. A title that says it all. The circle is closed. “Indie-fashion” is trapped inside.

Know more about The Rakes here on their [website] and [myspace]. Follow the links throughout the article to check all the other bands, most of them are on this site which you can browse by the index: artists on liveon35mm.com.

Photo Tip

I have been to Koko quite a few times and never talked about the place that became my favourite London middle-size venue since the Astoria was closed.
At the beginning of Camden High Street, next door to Mornington Crescent tube station, Koko can host about a thousands people on several levels.

Photography wise it is a fairly laid-back venue, which is great.
Once you get a photopass, you enter, get a beer, reach the front, jump into the pit.
Often during the support there is not security counting the three songs, so you can shoot the entire set.
When the main act arrives the guys and the three songs policy take place as usual.
After your photo set you have to jump over the barrier and the front row fans (literally) and you can stay to enjoy the gig.

The stage is average, not as low as Sheperds Bush. Lights are the crazy variable, quite often (as tonight) crap, but this is due more to the band than the venue.

From the audience perspective it is as good.
Quite posh, after the entrance a neon-lit tunnel brindgs the guests to this red carpeted, baroque (in its architecture and in its labyrinthic paths to the different levels) theatre.
It is nice to explore the different floors before the gig. There are many seating areas with sofas, tables, bar and TVs showing what is happening on stage. The acustic is horrible from there so plan in advance to get back to see the show.
The standing area is small enough to make you feel close to the band but big enough if you are planning to surfcrowd.

The Bar is more expensive than average, 3.90£ for a can of lager! If you plan to drink a lot it will easily double the cost of the concert ticket.

Polly Jean Harvey is an artist.
You may argue any musician in the rock circuit, especially in the “alternative” circus, can be considered an artist. Yes and no. It depends.
Let me explain this, or just enjoy the pictures.

When PJ started off, almost 20 years ago, she was a student at the prestigious Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London. She was studying sculpture and dreaming of becominng a rockstar.
Dry, her debut album, is a wonderful, direct, essential alternative rock album.

Today PJ is not (only) a rockstar, she is back being a pure Artist, as pure as the white of her dress. A performer that uses rock music as medium of expression. Which is quite different from being a rock musicians.

Art and Rock are put together quite often from the rock perspective, last month the entire issue of the Observer Music Monthly was about this.
They are instead quite separate if seen from the point of view of the posh, lofty, trendy world of contemporary art. Those magazines quite rarely show any info about rock music. I am talking about the art world, not its public.

You may argue ICA sponsors some cool rock music events but the perception is that they let you live it more as a favour. As if the doors of a higher culture temple allow some sort of “minor” creatures in. I am talking about the musicians, not the public.

On a counterpart quite often happens that when rock musicians move and effectively use visual art suddenly acquire an higher consideration throughout. The Stone Rose John Squire or Brian Eno himself are just two examples.

Using rock music as a medium for your art, implies using yourself. As with any performer, in PJ Harvey the artist as a person and the art as a piece of work, coincide.

She also produces physical objects, detached from her, as the CDs or LPs, but that is nothing more that the documentation of her performances; like buying a Marina Abramovich book (but also Picasso’s) you don’t experience her art but see a reproduction of the work.

PJ Harvey needs to be experienced live on stage (and probably in a studio, but this is usually not open to common people).
It is there that she performs herself. If this is happening in rock venues and festival instead of art galleries is just because rock happens there.

During the years she expressed through herself, music, lyrics and stage presence. Her nature, her temper, her character is all in her body of work.

From the rough, coarse sound of Dry and, even more, Rid Of Me to the experimental journey of Is This Desire? From the experimental dark gothic introspection condensed in To Bring You My Love to the challenge of writing pop songs and having a pop look for Stories From the City Stories From the Sea (which gave her the Mercury prize giving rise the question “why music press is so short viewed?”) and the need of returning to the guitar and the discomfort with Uh Uh Her, another wonderful album which need tenths of listenings to overcome the uneasiness and be appreciated.

In such an intricate alternating feelings, sounds and tours there are two chapters of PJ Harvey carreer that need to be analysed separately.

Dance Hall at Louse Point, 1996. Her first official collaboration with John Parish, a man who often appears in the sleeve notes but not in the “author” line. This is not her greatest album but it is the first example of PJ delegating the music to someone, to concentrate on the lyrics.

White Chalk, 2007, her last solo project. Once again she U-turns from her previous album.
Once again ignoring the rules of music market, she does what she feels (the artist), music is the medium.
She approaches the piano, learns how to play it and, most relevant for what is happening today, she works a lot on her voice leaving the Patty Smith-esque rants for a PJ Harvey falsetto style.

What is usual in the art world, it is less in rock world. As a fan, you feel ignored and fans want a sign they are considered. PJ Harvey is not writing songs that her audience would like. She doesn’t give you a product to make you feel emotional. She does a much more intimate act, she wants you to feel something through her emotions. She gives herself and it is up to you to take it or leave it.
No compromise. Art can’t be focused on achieving global reception, art must divide, art must look forward, art must go beyond. It must make your mind active, must make you think.

Tonight PJ is sharing Shepherds Bush Empire’s stage with John Parish to finally perform with her mentor. They have a new album out, A Woman a Man Walked By. As in their previous she wrote the lyrics and Parish composed the music.
Through the first 5 or 6 listening, I prefer this LP on their previous, but, as with any PJ album, I need time to let it settle.
I stay convinced that is more John Parish gaining from the collaboration then PJ, but I must be wrong. Such a perfect chemistry wouldn’t have worked out so long.

The presence of John Parish and the White Chalk experience let PJ abandon any instrument and concentrate on vocal. This is the media of her art and this is the fulcrum of the performance.

The fact that your body is your work it’s not a static concept. You can do endless things with it, you can play guitar, piano, dance or use the voice. Tonight PJ sang (and danced a bit) with awesome results.

After having worked on singing for the past 2 years (thesis), if you trust a man to direct your band (antithesis) the natural synthesis is these shows and the album.

For the (un)happiness of the ones expecting a greatest hits set, the gig rotates only around their two albums. One is just out, the previous missed by most.

Four men come on stage with Borsalino hat and dark suits and a woman with an elaborate hairstyle wears a white pearl dress and a red lipstick. PJ Harvey tonight looks like Whitesnow getting turning rockstar.

Black Hearted Love opens the album and the set. Being the new single and probably the best song of the album, it is the tune you want to use to close a show in style. Not her, from the beginning we have the first taste of self confidence and intransigence.

Sixteen-Fifteen-Fourteen follows. This is the one selected for the official merchandise T-Shirt.
80% of the lyrics are a countdown. Just the idea would irritate me if it was from anyone else, she manages to transform it into a great song. An oddity I haven’t heard since Space Oddity.

The middle of the set is dedicated to their first album, Dance Hall at Louse Point.
Rope Bridge Crossing shows everyone who is the star tonight, Urn with Dead Flowers in a Drained Pool is more upbeat and PJ enjoys playing maracas and attempt sensual dance moves, smiling. Yes, she smiles, which is a news to be reporeted.
Civil War Correspondent is one of those songs where Patti Smith ghost materializes too much.
The Soldier is a break from the past, probably because it title sits well next to Civil War Correspondent, who knows.
Two more tunes from Dance Hall…, Taut and Un Cercle Autour du Soleil close the chapter with the past and leave the present to the grandiose final. Her and the audience both had enough of the past.

The Chair opens. She sings of a son on a scattered drum beat. I am not aware she has a son (correct me if I am wrong), I remember an interview were she claimed her song are not autobiographical. In fact it fits my theory. She is the artist, the art piece is her. She is not a storyteller.

Leaving California is recognizable from the first syllable. Her falsetto, tested on White Chalk, abandoned the piano for an angelic/bucolic touch by Parish’s banjo.
If this is autobiographical I don’t know, but clearly it is an indirect ode to England singing about leaving California. She confesses a mistake. Living in California is not possible “California Killed Her”. What is “California” in PJ mind is open to debate, but more t-shirts are on sale with the “California killed me” verse on, so it must have been of a certain importance.

The title track, which are 2 songs joined, is the moment the band can show how good it is.
The first half A woman a man walked by is sort of spoken-word exercise have PJ Harvey ranting about “a woman man”, a friend that turned out to be something else, another confessed mistake. “Just stick it up your fucking ass” is repeated several times and it is the verse anyone will remember from the new album.
The anger live is not as resentful as it sounds on record. Singing about it must have calmed her down, music therapy.

What rose as a counterpart is John Parish in the second part, The Crow Knows Where All the Little Children Go. This is a splendid example of a sonic exploration into a band that can mix its dark, mature edge with a fury which is second only to Nick Cave’s Grinderman.

I come to a thought I had at this moment. If only PJ Harvey instead of meeting John Parish again after 13 years met Nick Cave, they would write the best music ever.
Today she has a much better singing, increased self-confidence. He is not obsessed with gothic murder ballads and is leaving a second youth.
If only they read me… please folks, give it another try.

Passionless, Pointless and Cracks on the Canvas embrace the melancholy bit of the night. The first is about the end of a love. The second another spoken start (with the organ reminding me of Glasvegas’ Stabbed, don’t tell her). The text face death with the most obvious questions “what’s next?” the fact that she is a brilliant writer makes it with a simple gem:

“How do we cope
With the days after a death?
Empty days, nothing left
Not even a funeral”

I would have closed the gig here. She decides to sing Pig Will Not that is probably the most excessive song on the album, in a negative way. A forced interpretation even in the live rendition. It reminds me of Uh Uh Her, bad timing.

The encore opens with “one of her favourite songs ever” which is False Fire. I haven’t understood if the author is Parish or someone else. For sure it is a his song tonight. He once again do the Bad Seeds thing and leads his band in a beautiful rendition, quite. If only he had a Warren Ellis.
The songs breaks in another PJ falsetto for the closure. April

“I don’t know what silence means.
It could mean anything.”

Mild and sweet as this London spring. It’s 20th of April, walk back to the tube reflecting about the meaning of silence.

You can get in touch with PJ Harvey from here [website] [myspace]
There is also space for John Parish [website] [myspace]

Photo tip

Polly Jean Harvey is an artist.
Let me explain why this statement permeates even the photo tip.

Artists wants things as they please, ignoring the rest of the world, even when this are human beings (i.e. the photographers).
Call it tantrum, artists always have explanations so it is useless to ask.

The problem exists when this couple with Shepherds Bush Empire’s policy, which in terms of bureaucracy is second only to Breznev USSR.

PJ wanted photographers divided in two groups. First could photograph just songs 4 and 5, second only songs 8 and 9. This is the tantrum.

Shephers Bush don’t let photographers in the stall so they have to wait outside.
Fine, what if I have a ticket to review the gig?

As “simple” as this: “Ok, Valerio do this…you stay in the venue for the first song and a half. At the end of the second song you meet me in this backdoor. We got the passes sorted (they hadn’t arrived yet) you listen to the 3rd song from the backdoor (without viewing it), then you enter for the 4th and the 5th. Someone will come to take you outside at the end of the 5th. You go back to the backstage, leave the cameras, get your number and go back in to see the gig from this other entrance. At the end of the gig, get out from the main entrance, walk all around the building, go to the outside backdoor (it is a different one) to claim your camera back.” Breathe. It is all true.

The night before I arrived at the Forum for Ben Harper, got the pass, entered the venue, shot the first three songs and stayed in to see and review the gig with no hassle at all.

Hopefully lights were great but I will try not to shoot at the Shepherds Bush again.

If my stubborness brought me to an appalling and useless Starsailor concert, my scepticism was making me miss Ben Harper London debut with his new band the Relentless7. That would have been a mistake.

The first time I saw Ben Harper was in 1996. Believe it or not he was supporting Alanis Morissette in Rome. At the time (with no much money in my pockets) that was quite an attractive double bill for an open air live gig in Rome. I had just bought Fight For your Mind and was quite stunned by that album.

Ben Harper played a slot sitting, on his own, with his odd looking Weissenborn slide guitar on his lap.
He was singing about Oppression, Power of the Gospel and having lonely days. A brilliant performance which hooked me to the man for the years to follow.

Second time, I was already a UK resident and Ben Harper, with his band of many years, the Innocent Criminals played a date (probably more) at the Brixton Academy in London. November 2003, if my memory doesn’t fail it was around Diamond from the Inside period.
A reggae pearl followed by a set of very good music.

Despite it still being a nice show I had the perception that the man was losing power, losing grip with his band. As if his fuel was running short.
I expected something as Live From Mars brilliant double live CD, but it didn’t get very close to that.

The next Ben Harper albums confirm my concern.
Two gospel digressions with the Blind Boys of Alabama turned out to be actually very good but this is more due to the ability of the Blind Boys themselves than to Harper contribution. More than Ben Harper with the boys, it should have presented as Blind Boys of Alabama with Ben Harper.
Marketing rules always put the best seller first.

Both sides of the Gun is a massive 18 songs double CD which would have sound more solid if it was cut down to nine.
I didn’t bother to listen to Lifeline in depth. His 2007 last fatigue with the innocent Criminals is still a good soul album (Ben Harper never released a bad album) nevertheless my fear that the man was walking in a blind alley was becoming evident.

From all of this came my scepticism about this 2009 tour with a new band.
I was trying to answer the question: “Can Ben Harper still deliver? Is he out from the limbo where he got trapped?”. Hopefully internet age has got advantages unthinkable just few years ago.

A quick google search, few youtube/myspace browsing and I came in touch with the new sound. The four songs on the Relentless7 myspace proved to be my ticket insurance for the gig. With a cover of Led Zeppelin’s Good Times Bad Times and a soulful rendition of Prince’s Purple Rain with the voice duetting with a warm guitar, Ben Harper seems to have understood that his “soul mine” was exhausted and opted for a twist toward an honest classic rock sound with a bluesy edge. A U-turn to get out of the dead end.
I was seduced to go.

Despite the name (before googleing, I was expecting a seven members sort of horns filled band) Relentless7 are a basic four members rock line-up.

In addition to Ben Harper, vocals and his guitars, the best bit on board is Jason Mozersky a young Austin guitarist, already appearing on Both Sides of the Gun.
Here he is promoted to lead, a brilliant Jimmy Page/Billy Gibbons inspired technique, he only needs to be contained to avoid overdoing and excessive show off.
Jesse Ingalls (bass)and Jordan Richardson (drums) are the powerful rhythm session that can comfortably support the fervour of those 2 guitars in their most vigorous moments.

This London date is the first ever of the proper tour, after just three USA appearances at different events.
From the setlist that I snap from the carpet, it is clear Harper is committed to a new phase of his career.

Concert opens with Better Way, from Both Side of the guns. Judging by the amount of guitar supplied anyone understood what the way is even before the concept of the night emerged from the lyrics:

“…what good is a man
Who won’t take a stand
What good is a cynic
With no better plan

…

Take your face out of your hands
And clear your eyes
You have a right to your dreams
And don’t be denied

I believe in a better way”

Than they had the courage to play, in almost the exact sequence (as read on Amazon pre-sale page), White Lies for Dark Times their upcoming album, in its entirety.

The first songs are a sort of electric storm that in some solos seems to go out of Ben Harper’s control. He is swallowed by the powerful trio and needs to fight to stay there, pushing hard and breaking strings on its eletric lap-steel.
Shimmer and Shine is the best tune out of this opening set.

When (finally?) the Gibson SG leaves space to a Firebird, Ben Harper can relax and embrace a 12 string acoustic to deliver the first ballad of the night.
Skin Thin sounds, in fact, quite a “thick” song. Surprisingly seeing him in a more familiar atmosphere is less exciting than the half hour of rapturous rock they just played.

Keep it together is without contest my pick of the night.
A song that already ranks high on the list of best classic rock song of the last 2 decades. A mixture of everything Ben Harper is.

It kicks off with the man on wah-wah-plugged lap-steel; just to kick away the Jimi’s ghost who is always dawdling around him. The band enters with a steady riff the remind me of Led Zeppelin Kashmir before Harper sings a couple of verses to bring the whole into a blues duet between the two guitars. He indeed “keeps it together”, everything is in a perfect balance, including Ben’s voice that up to this point didn’t have a lot of space to show off.

The main show moves back to another ballad The Word Suicide that calms the audience down to prepare them for the grand final.
Boots Like These signs the time for the drummer to show off. He pounds his cymbals with an impressive energy using cotton coated timpani mallets that deepen the sound even more. Ben standing as an orchestra director stops and restart this solemn pace, jamming with the rest of the band.

The four leave the stage in an ovation. Quite impressive considering no one had listened to any of these songs in advance.

There’s more. The encore opens with a song not appearing on the snap of the list.
Another Lonely day from Fight For your Mind is the wonderful proof that I am in front of the same guy singin along on a stage in Rome 13 years ago.

I was hoping for the Purple Rain cover when the bass riff introduces Under Pressure, ther Relentless7 rendition of Bowie/Queen’s hit.
English audience goes mad, expectedly, but Isincerely this was the low of the night.
Ben Harper voice is not suitable and the song has a pop edge that can’t fit with a hard-rock line-up. The melodic part midway through the song make me thing of The Killers which is not really what the rest of the concert appeared to be.

Up to you now closes a night that reassured me about Ben Harper’s future.
The new band sounds as an injection of life for a man that just a year ago sounded a bit lost.

If you want to start knowing the Relentless7 there is quite a lot to listen and learn on their official spaces [Website] [Relentless7 myspace] [Ben Harper myspace]

Photo Tip

You may have noticed this set of pictures is sharper, with not much blur and quite crisp details.
This set of pictures has also a wider dinamic range, which means many more shades of grey between the black and white for the pleasure of the eye.

This is not because I changed my cameras, lens, film.
This is not because I wasn’t drunk, I don’t drink while shooting.

This is for a much simpler event.
At this Ben Harper’s gig there was excellent lighting.

You can use whichever media you like to take photographs, digital, film, polaroid, kodak disk, lomo or large format sheets, there is one thing which will always be the basis of everything. One thing that determines the output. The Light.

Without light there is no photography. It is like a painter without colours. Light is our tool.
If a gig is played in the dark (= no light) and it is forbidden to use flash (= your personal source of light) the photographer’s chances are much more limited. Which doesn’t mean it is impossible to take pictures, otherwise 90% of the pics on this site will not exist, it means the options restricted.

When a clever artist and a professional light technician brings light on stage (at least for the three songs photographers are there) the image quality comes out better. (they can still be dull and obvious but technically you can’t argue they are better).

In this particular show I was able, leaving ISO at my usual 800, to shoot with a speed between 1/60 and 1/250s, with an aperture between f/4 and f/5.6

I could think and play with the depth of field, focusing was easier and the mind can concentrate more on the photograph instead of how to impress the support with something. These are the results.

Apart from the usual bloody microphone in front of Ben Harper’s mouth.
That is still the biggest single unsolved problem of concert photography.

I am stubborn.
My friend advised me against it, reviews are not so positive, the latest album listened on (god bless) Spotify is not a great piece of music.
Nothing worked.
I took with me the helmet, my legendary spirit of contradiction and I went to this gig to see Starsailor live.
To see what’s left of the “next missed big thing” of Brit pop of the noughties.

Starsailor broke through the music scene more or less the same time of Coldplay. Both bands lead the neomelodic vein of music following the path draw by Travis. Whilst they were debuting in the small cosy venues band at first album tour, the music magazines started debating whether Starsailor or Coldplay were going to be huge in few here times.

Four album and eight years later, Starsailor arrive to Cambridge for one of the latest dates of a small tour. They are more or less touring venues the same size of 2001. Coldplay on the contrary sold out in few minutes, months in advance, two dates at the huge Wembley Stadium. Despite the recession, despite they have been touring the world and have already played UK several times in the last months.

Tonight’s stage is overlooked by the sunglassed kid appearing on their latest album cover. The logo-name on the drums is there to reinforce the message and remember the audience which ticket they bought.
Among the fans the feeling is the one of a quiet night out saved from the sofa-remote-telly triad.
Older than I thought, with few youngsters among them, the die-hard fans are the only one remained since the glory days.

When James Walsh drags the rest of the band on stage, what surprises me is the absence of the excitement that usually accompanies the light-off/spot-on sequence that defines the start of a show.
He has to “thank you Cambridge” to draw the attention from the queue for a second pint to the stage for the first song.

Concert starts from the beginning, Tie Up My Hands is the track opening their first album, Love is Here, and opens tonight’s gig.
It is a nice ballad but it is clearly not the song that will be capable, tonight, to turn up the excitement.
A song that perfectly fits the definition of sugary brit-pop band that Starsailor perfectly suit.

In The Crossfire follows. The songs that opens In the Outside, their third work. A shy electric guitar tries to wake up the night. It seems to work a bit, people’s heads start moving, following the 4/4 beat of the drum. It looks more as a duty, an automatic reflection than a real desire to be immersed by the music, but at least it is a reaction.

Time is set for a new song, All The Plans, the title track of latest album opens with a chords progression so shamelessly copied from Oasis that they could sue them for plagiarism if only there was the hint of a song instead of the four minutes of dullness that follow.

Fidelity fills the gap with a piece from the (yet) missing second album. As good rock employees, four songs have been carefully selected from the four albums.
Everyone has got their pick. Is everyone happy, though? Judging from the queue re-forming at the bar I doubt.

I am already quite bored. It is ok. I have never been a fan of predictable chord progressions even when they were put together by Sir Paul.
What surprises me is the boredom of the people that paid for the ticket. The look of the few hundreds people is the one of those who want to convince themself that are having fun but, in fact, if they could, instead of pleasing their girlfriends passion to see James Walsh live, would head to the pub just outside to watch Manchester United playing Porto.
Even more surprisingly is that Starsailor, if they could, would unplug their instruments and join their fans to watch the match.

On stage the atmosphere looks like that of a weary late work meeting between employees. I can’t accept it.
I believe that the moment rock embodies the frustration of a subordinate job, a trap you cannot escape, the duty, because you have the credit cards bills and the mortgage rate, well, that moment rock, as I see it, dies. Nevermind if the mortgage is to repay a Beverly Hills mansion.

The concert continues with this slow pace. New and old songs alternates.
Expectedly the older songs from the debut Poor Misguided Fool, Love Is Here, Alcoholic, stand out from the rest.

They also stress the evidence. The nostalgic feeling of a story that is living its final chapters emerges. A flower that inexorably is withering.
I wonder if it hasn’t already dried up after Love Is Here, their first and quite good album.
I cannot foresee the sign of any other Starsailor trace in British pop music.

Hopefully tonight’s set list saved us from The Thames a new songs that on the CD contains at the same time an embarrassing “kind of western” guitar part by Rolling Stone’s Ron Wood and one of the most ridiculous opening of rock history:

“Is love just a big mistake? Just a risk that we all take?”

Will you ever ask such a stupid question to someone you care? No you won’t!

Mediocrity rules to the point that I find myself thinking the unthinkable. Reflecting onto the never-ending Starsailor vs Coldplay comparison I must conclude the second come out as giants.
A statement in itself that I am scared to write.

Hopefuly this agony doesn’t last too much. The song that opens the new album, closes the main part of the show.
It is titled Tell Me It’s Not Over and put at this precise moment, after such a gig, in this time of their career it sounds as a desperate desire, one of those dreams that you know will never realize. I am quite sorry guys, but I feel it’s going to be over.

Three more songs during the encore please the fans and Good Souls finally closes this night.
I am sure they are good souls indeed, I don’t dispute that, what I cannot see is who feels the need of having Starsailor still around in 2009 if not even their public seem to be abit emotionally involved.

Nowadays a band that can count just a good debut album and nothing else afterward is destined to fade away at the first disappointing single. Starsailor got the last bus that keeps them on tour still because of that debut, despite three deluding LPs followed.

Some decency and the prevision that the mortgage is about to be paid off should be the driving force to declare this experience concluded. Getting bored twice, even to review a gig is a sensation that still hasn’t occurred to me.

If you want to know more about Starsailor you have their [website] and [myspace]. To question me there is the comment box below.

Photo tip

Having a fixed image on the backstage at the beginning looks as a great opportunity for your photo set. Something different from the usual backlights, long curtains or the dark messy structures that support the whole stage.
After a while it becomes more of a nuisance, because all the pictures end up having the same touch.

How to get the best out of it without being redundant?

It is a black or white situation, you don’t have a middle option.
Either you go for it, and include it to your shots or you find a way to leave it completely out.
Pictures showing just a part of it usually are unpleasant as if you cut the figure one of the musicians.

If you opt to include it, mount a mild a wideangle (unless it is a huge stage) and wait for the moment when the backstage is well lit and clear. If it has to appear in your image, it has to appear in the moment it is best visible.
Be sure there will be one of the three songs where the light technician will please you.

On the contrary, if you want to exclude or minimize it, you have to wait for the darkest moments.
When the light setting is dark or strong backlight point at you, it is the time to take the shots that will not show the image.

Move your zoom to a mild telephoto (or mount it if you are using primes) and try to cast musicians against the dark (or very bright) back. If you have fast lenses as a 85mm f1.4 or so, working wide open it is another way to blur the back enough to be indistinguishable.

The Fall are a legend of the British music scene.
Talking about legends is bloody difficult.

Some numbers.
68 line up changes over 30 years of activity, there is only one solid truth within this band: Mark E Smith.
He is the core, the founder, the mind.

In the years he has a role inspiring any other band that consider noise as part of their sound, from Sonic Youth to TV on the Radio.

The story wants that the day Mark E Smith saw the Sex Pistols he was inspired and exclaimed: “I can do better than this”. (I read this somewhere but I can’t recall which was the source, anyone can help?)
If he did it better, it is not me to tell, what I am sure he did more, much more.

More numbers.
27 studio LPs, 28 live albums, 5 part live-part studio, 11 EPs, 4 compilations and a 6 CDs 97 songs BBC sessions box (and few more stuff here and there) have been released under The Fall name since the late seventies until today, and it’s still counting. If you want to go through them in details, wikipedia is probably the place to start.

During the decades everything happened, including Mark E. Smith assaulting his band members and being arrested.
Some things remained constant. The love and dedication of John Peel for the band and the love and full dedication of Mark E. Smith to his crazy project.

To describe the band music could be seen as a very simple or quite a massive effort depending on the level of details you want. I am not among the ones who can guide you through the different stages of the process. Frankly, I can’t distinguish many of The Fall “periods”. I appreciate the bulk of their work as a whole, a huge piece of conceptual music with more bits continuously being added.

This “whole” is a mix of uncompromising, abrasive guitars (some keyboards) over which the voice rants incomprehensible verses.
I double checked with English-spoken people if it was me. They confirmed that understanding Mancunian broken accent of Mark E Smith is very difficult. “Very difficult” translates into “impossible” to my level of knowledge of the language.

The Fall recipe puts together the most experimental music of the seventies and the once emerging British punk scene. Dresses it up with a cynicism close to madness (the behavior not the band!) and sprinkles everywhere with literate spoken-word and video art.
It can be seen as pure genius or pure nonsense I am convinced the truth is quite possibly in the middle.

So what about the gig?
My thesis relator, a chemistry professor, when I was back in the lab during my university years, taught me a good tip:
“Valerio, if you can’t explain an experiment, simply describe it”

It is a wise advise and can be applied easily beyond a scientific experiment.
I will use the suggestion and limit to describe The Fall concert. I am not able and not into them enough to do more.

The support band ended its set at 21.15. I was told by the venue management that The Fall would have not turned up before 22.
45 minutes and a pint later, it’s ten o’clock. I am standing close to the front row. Waiting.

It will be until 22.30 before something happens. Waiting in a crowded place, for someone famous to not turn up quite often, is not a nice way to spend a night out.
Finally a sort of laptop-man arrives and activates the projectors. Retro videos of music stars, from classic orchestras conductors to Michael Jackson (Jackson 5 era); from Elvis to Boy George (before jail, Culture Club Karma Chameleon age) appear on the screen.
The soundtrack is an atonal scratchy sound that mixes with their songs as if they were being manipulated by a sound engineer on speed. It goes on like this for 30 more minutes. The first five are OK, then I get uncomfrotable. The crowd gets more and more upset as the show goes and start swearing at the band.
I am sure that was exactly the aim of the provocation.

Finally the band takes its place.
Mark E Smith arrives pushing himself on a wheelchair. He broke a rib and can’t stand properly.
Clumsy he moves around the stage. It is a slap in the face of his audience the way he shares his discomfort. That actually increases the charisma of the man.
When he reaches the microphone and starts to sing/speak those lyrics (see above) I understand why I am there.

Reading from paper sheets spread all over the floor, and chosen randomly, I wonder how the band knows what to do. Probably they don’t.
Without a setlist, he moves around (on the wheelchair) irregularly. Often he turns back to the audience the Miles Davis way. Miles used to conduct his band this way, though. Mark E Smith… I don’t know, does he?
He hides behind amplifiers to play around with the volume and effects. It is a music factory that produces the sound he is famous to have crafted for the last 3 decades.

I must admit all of this is charming. Mark E Smith absurdity finds some sort of equilibrium with the extravagant disorder played by the band and the music/words they produce are very powerful, make you feel part of an experience as only the best piece of art can do.

About half an hour later he leaves the stage. I don’t know if he came back.
I hope so for the faithful public which arrived to Cambridge from all over England for one of their rare performances and such a career can’t be compressed in a hour of music sectioned with some Boy George distorted videos.

I had to take the last train to London to be in town for the G20 demonstrations the morning after, but this is probably as related to this article as the Fall are related to symphonic music!

What is related to The Fall, instead, and will help you to orient among the urban jungle that is history are the following [website] [fanzine] [myspace].

Photo tip

Artist extravagance is something you must be prepared to face if you want to photograph rockstars.
When I asked for a photopass for this gig (missing the hot tipped Dananananaykroyd playing somewhere else) I was told by the PR that it was OK to them but “being The Fall you never know, they may say no to photographers at the last minute, so I’ll let you know closer the date”.

In the end it went fine, but extravagance has several facet.

Arriving at the gig quite early I discovered the weird habit of having a 45 minutes gap between the support and the main band.
Minutes that ended up being 75 before anything happened.

Another 30 minutes of videos made the interval 100 minutes long. With those videos being screened and the band not turning up I started photographing the big screen to keep myself busy.

In the meanwhile I even realized that the venue had no press pit on that night (which it usually has) making the perceived wait, standing in the front rows trying to push myself (and the cameras) to the to the barrier, substantially longer. My multi-pocket photographer’s vest makes me look more as a fisherman who lost his pond than a rock photographer, but tonight it was essential to conquer the front with my gear.
There is not acceptable concert photograph if there are the heads of the audience in the frame.

When (finally!) the band materializes on stage I am exhausted, and that is the moment the decisive fight starts. “When the going gets tough, the toughs get going”. I am not that tough, but I needed to get things going. Fans get excited and anyone start pushing to get ahead.
A nice way to convince (the nicer and most comprehensive of) the front row die-hard fans to let me through, is to tell them in a very apologizing, smiling, nice face that after three songs I would have walked away.

It mostly worked apart from a quite big and angry guy who got upset with me during the second song. I managed to find a compromise between him saying something and Mark E Smith playing hide and seek on his wheelchair with the help of the amplifiers. Hopefully lights were OK so, taken enough shots, I moved to finish the rolls on the side of the stage. I saw a nice spot to portray the man bent reading his papers with the band name projected on the background.

The next day taking pictures of the Royal Bank of Scotland broken windows in the middle of an anarchist’s riot was actually a much simpler task, believe it or not.

Just back from Salt Lake City.
Utah capital live music scene in the next days will offer Lily Allen, The Ting Tings and the one and only (quite enough to be fair) Britney Spears. You clearly can’t describe the place as leader for the USA live scene.

SLC is, instead, the Mormon Capital. Relax, I am not talking about Brandon Flowers again.
Follow me strolling around Temple Square, it is a very interesting experience.
Many girls (erm… sisters) approach you. They are very happy to answer all your curiosities about their religion. Excited?
What? You don’t care?

You non-believer! Before burning yourselves in the flames of Hell, have a look at them. Tenths of beautiful girls happy and available to talk with you! As soon as their smiles will catch your eyes, magically tons of mystical questions will reach your mind, be sure. Some religions use quite clever marketing, it must be pointed out.
If Catholic nuns were all like these, the Pope need not to rant around ridiculous issues to find some space on the news. Instead of travelling hot and dusty countries, facing hunger and poverty, he could relax sipping a drink on the border of the Vatican swimming pool while his sisters convert the sceptics.

If you convert to Mormons’ religion, you are allowed to baptize all your dead relatives, retrospectively. Clever, ain’t it?
This will let you leave your entire after life sharing your very own family star with all of your uncles.
If you were looking forward to get rid of them forever and wanted spend the eternity with your mates, think twice about those mermaids seducing you around Temple Square. You have read Homer Odyssey, haven’t you?

Because of this “Baptism for the Dead” thing (I am getting there!) Mormons are the most expert group in the world about family trees. If you want to know everything about your ancestors Salt Lake City has got the database you need.

All this introduction, was needed (probably not) to move to Detroit well equipped for a family tree analysis of the music in the motor city.

A city that, opposite to Salt Lake, has indeed a key role in the US music.

Ignoring the blues of John Lee Hooker, it was in the golden era of hippie-psich-rock years that Detroit abruptly emerged to gave a rebellious answer to peace and love happening in the west coast.
Garage (there must be plenty of in fact!) was born there. The names of the Stooges and MC5 should be enough to wake you up. If they do not, put on Raw Power or Kick out the Jams and you won’t need coffee for a while.

Let’s move on faster (I know you don’t believe me), Detroit after a silent period, in the last ten years resurrected to the splendour of the past.

The reason is, unsurprisingly, still garage. With car industry crisis, it was a fashion duo, The White Stripes, to start the renaissance.
Hosting the most original guitar sound to appear on the American scene since Tom Morello, kindly offer by Mr Jack White, his iper-activity has been responsible for producing a plethora of bands since.

Some of them have been outrageously undervalued. One were the garage blues rockers: Soledad Brothers.

I saw one of their concert 4 or 5 years ago and can still clearly remember the energy of warming up a UK student union bar with a couple of guitars and a relentless drumming.

Ben Swank was that drummer. He used to share his house with Jack White before he got a superstar. Curiously enough Meg White had a drumming part in their debut album (Anyone knows why?).

Johnny Walker was the Soledad Brothers lead guitarist and singer. He also is played slide on White Stripes debut album and has on his CV to have taught Jack White’s slide guitar.

Oliver Henry (was on sax and second guitar) completed the trio.

He came from that Ohio band called Greenhornes that no one has ever listened to but everyone knows for being an endless source of musicians.
Beyond Henry, Greenhornes rhythm section Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler moved to fame with the the Racounteurs, the Jack White side project with Brendan Benson.
The same Jack Lawrence, the straight hair, funny spectacles bass player, has also played in the alt.country Detroit ensemble Blanche, used to open for the White Stripes in their Elephant tour.
Not happy, Lawrence recently joined Jack White again to form The Dead Weather (his side side project with Alison Mosshart, alias VV, alias the Kills singer).

Confused? I told you the Mormon tree experience would have helped.
Don’t worry, the last couple of branches and I am there.

Soledad Brothers split in 2006 when they were just about to coming back to Europe to promote their fourth wonderful album, The Hardest Walk. Their blues roots in the CD meet with a more contemporary sound giving a powerful sound that reminded me of one of my best kept treasures: Boston’s Threat her Right. The band fronted by Mark Sandman before he formed Morphine.

Johnny Walker, Soledad’s singer/guitarist told me they split because of continuous arguing and fighting. Brothers?

He came recently to UK again with his new project, another 2 guitars bass-less trio misteriously called (to me at least) Cut In The Hill Gang.
The approach is similar, garage blues rock perfect set to fill up a sweaty back room of a pub.

The music is a bit different due to the different personalities.
The second guitarist enjoys soloing much more than his predecessor giving the sound a more pretentious, technical edge. But also acting as a perfect counterpart to Johnny Walker for duets.
The drummer despite doesn’t have the inventiveness of Ben Swank does a honest, precise work on keeping the rock’n'rolling.

As a result the sheer garage-ness of Soledad Brothers is a bit loss in translation to leave more space to blues’n'roll. Johnny Walker is very capable to “feel the show” and the audience mood.
He can clearly jump from a plain rock’n'roll to a boogie stomp, from a bit of blues to American roots.

Without pretending to write any new page of rock history these three guys know quite well how to put on a show, have fun and please the fans that come to see them, no matter how many.
The priceless value of alternative music.

At the end of the set I couldn’t avoid to buy Johnny Walker a copy of Cut In The Hill Gang debut CD, Cut Down. The album is rich and as a surprise contains a nice cover of White Stripes hit from their first album Sugar Never Tasted So Good that is indeed very good.

Discover Cut In The Hill Gang from their [myspace], you will not be disappointed.
Discover the Mormons on Mormonwiki.com you’ll be very disappointed.

Photo tip

Portland Arm, Cambridge or, generally, The Pub Backroom.

This is the place to start with gig photography if you want to learn.
And this is also the place to come back to have fun taking concert pictures without any stress.

In pubs backrooms atmosphere is relaxed, bands are so close to you that your 50mm is a very long telephoto and a 28mm is the normal lens.
Easy to get photopasses (or no need to have one); the three songs’ rule rarely applies, quite often being free to move around the stage. This is the place to get shots from any position, any angle at any time.
It sounds like paradise isn’t it?

Bands playing here are usually less pretentious, down to earth and eager to be photographed.
You can often use flash (I don;t like doing it, though) which can help with lights that often are not state-of-the-art.
You can get in touch with musicians after the show (don’t forget your visit cards) and chat with them about their music or your photos.

This is also the place to spot next big things. If you can smell success and you are lucky you’ll have in your portfolio early shots of very famous names. Every single band in the music business has started from a pub (or a bar) backroom.

The only rule to follow is common sense. Put musicians and audience first, respect them don’t be obtrusive, don’t get too close, don’t jump on stage, don’t stand in front of the audience too long, don’t push anyone to get to the front. You’ll be plenty of occasions during a full set.

Try to be as invisible as you can and get this occasion to put Robert Capa suggestion in practice: “If it is not a good photo, you were not close enough”.

This is going to be a sort of break from the usual Live on 35mm flow.

Edoardo Bennato is a very famous Italian songwriter. Together with (and behind) Pino Daniele he tops the Neapolitan tradition. He played recently a one off date at the Scala in London.
The gig gave rise to a discussion between me and my friend about his gig, not from a music perspective, but from the attitude some Italian artists have when they play London.

I apologize to the non Italian readers. Don’t despair, you are plenty of music to read about and more will be coming soon. Be patient, I will be back.

Sfruttare l’occasione di un concerto di Edoardo a Londra per parlare un po’ di cosa voglia dire essere un cantante pop in Italia e cosa sia invece fare musica in Inghilterra , può diventare un interessante riflessione: seguiteci.

Edoardo Bennato ha suonato il 2 Marzo a Scala. Il concerto fa parte della rassegna “Italian Attack” promossa da Virus Concerti che porta nella capitale inglese una selezione di cantanti italiani di primo piano tra cui Capossela, De Gregori e Marlene Kuntz. L’iniziativa é sicuramente meritevole e sarebbe interessante fare una chiacchierata con i responsabili per capire meglio le economie e la logica del tutto, cosa che prima o poi ci ripromettiamo di fare, sempre che, dopo questo, ci rivolgano ancora la parola. Ma torniamo a bomba.

Per chi non la conoscesse, Scala é una piccola sala da concerti attaccata alla stazione della metropolitana di King’s Cross. Potrebbe ricordare come dimensioni e atmosfera il vecchio Rototom di Spilimbergo: un palco basso e dismesso, un parterre poco più grande del palco, un grande drappo nero un po’ liso a coprire il muro dietro la postazione del mixerista. Lo scarto con gli ambienti che Bennato é abituato a frequentare in Italia é evidente ma, non bastasse la modestia della location a rivelare l’ importanza veramente relativa dell’evento rispetto alla vita musicale londinese, questa la si evince da un dettaglio: il nome del Nostro riportato sui volantini pubblicitari del locale come “Eduardo Benatto”.

Se il vostro orgoglio patrio si sente ferito, respirate forte e provate a pensare a quanto strano sarebbe se, chiamata, Londra rispondesse all’appello e di colpo impazzisse per l’Italian Rock. La scena live qui é tanto vivace quanto competitiva, soprattutto é anglocentrica: é difficilissimo per chi non ha l’inglese come prima lingua arrivare a buoni livelli. A memoria, Manu Chao é l’unico rocker riuscito ad infrangere la barriera di indifferenza che gli inglesi innalzano davanti a chiunque salga su un palco e non si esprima nella lingua della Regina Elisabetta e di Posh Spice. Tra gli Italiani, solo Paolo Conte e i propugnatori della lirica-lite alla Bocelli hanno un seguito costante. Si faticava a trovare un inglese perfino al concerto di Capossela, questo nonostante i dischi dell’immenso Vinicio abbiano sempre ottime recensioni sulla stampa nazionale, specialistica e non.

Che il concerto sarebbe stato invece un occasione per la comunitá degli Italiani a Londra per riunirsi e crogiolarsi per una sera nella nostalgia della patria lontana era cosa largamente prevedibile e chiarissima a tutti, promoter compresi. Questi hanno infatti pubblicizzato l’evento principalmente attraverso i canali della comunità degli expats, il sito web ItaliansOfLondon e l’Italian Bookshop di Cecil Court in primis. Facile da capire e prevedere, e chiaro a tutti si diceva, ma evidentemente non a Bennato.

Il buon Edo, ciccando clamorosamente, ha rinunciato a fare quello che sa fare meglio (cioé salire su un palco e cantare) e ha cercato invece di cogliere l’opportunitá della data Londinese per trasformare il concerto in una vetrina promozionale per una possibile produzione inglese del musical su Peter Pan che attualmente gira con successo nei teatri d’Italia.

Ora, se la questione fosse stata solo che l’uomo evidentemente non aveva capito quale sarebbe stato il suo ruolo per quella sera, questo ci puó anche stare e piú che compassione avremmo provato un filo di simpatia per lui. Quando però il tuo stesso show ti si rivolge contro in maniera spettacolare principalmente a causa del dilettantismo e dell’approssimazione della produzione, il beneficio del dubbio non lo si concede più. Il contrasto con la precisione cronometrica dei cambi di palco tra le band in una delle serate organizzate dal New Musical Express in cui vengono proposte band emergenti a cui avevamo assistito un paio di settimane prima non avrebbe potuto essere più grande: qua il dilettantismo non ha spazio se non tra i dilettanti. Bennato é un professionista.

Forse nel tentativo di proporre un show “multimediale”, ma più probabilmente solo per far arrivare con più forza il messaggio ad un ipotetico, fantomatico e sicuramente fantasmatico produttore di musical presente in sala, ogni canzone e ognuno dei lunghi monologhi con cui Bennato inframezza le sue canzoni erano supportati da proiezioni di spezzoni della versione Disney del cartone animato di Peter Pan e da presentazioni powerpoint sicuramente concepite e realizzate appositamente per l’occasione.

Bella idea, peccato che le traduzioni dei testi delle canzoni nelle slides risultassero approssimative e infarcite di errori di battitura, quando non proprio imbarazzanti (il motore dell’automobile è “engine”, non “motor”).
Non era stato nemmeno considerato il piccolo dettaglio che il proiettore aveva un obiettivo piú largo dello schermo e questo rendeva impossibile la lettura completa delle slides di cui sopra. Il laptop dell’operatore, poi, “crashando” sistematicamente ad ogni canzone, proiettava alle spalle di Bennato, invece dei testi, messaggi del tipo: “No signal”, “system initializing”, “wait… loading”, “LCD projector”.

Il fatto che l’Edo ci stesse dando dentro come un assatanato o meglio, come un disperato, aumentava in maniera esponenziale il valore comico del tutto. A chi fosse interessato, posso spedire una foto del rocker di Forcella che canta a squarciagola con sullo sfondo una schermata di desktop azurra completa di logo Windows XP.

La sala si é riempita solo per metá: ci saranno state in tutto 200 persone e gli Inglesi, come ampiamente previsto, li si poteva contare sulle dita di una mano. Di impresari, neanche l’ombra.

E il concerto? Lo spettacolo si apre con un quartetto d’archi che suona un pezzo di Vivaldi, e questa sezione della recensione si apre con una riflessione sull’Accademia.

La musica “bassa” in Italia ha un bisogno disperato dell’approvazione delle accademie: si deve sentire benvenuta nella casa dei parenti ricchi della musica “alta” e accettata come parte di quella famiglia. Facendo così si autoconfina però al ruolo del cugino di campagna: discorso lunghissimo e complesso, ma la nostra storia culturale questa é.

Quando riusciremo a capire che il rock e il pop sono forme d’arte perfettamente valide nella loro individualità e che quelle che in Italia, ma non in UK, vengono additate come debolezze (lo scarso tasso tecnico e la volatilità delle proposte, cioé il fatto che “non restano”) sono in realtà i suoi più grossi punti di forza (l’immediatezza espressiva e il fatto che ti permettono di tastare il polso dell’oggi), forse riusciremo a diventare grandi. Fino ad allora, saremo bamboccioni attaccati alle gonne di Mamma Accademia.

Ovviamente Bennato, che fa rock ma é diplomato al conservatorio, non la pensa così. Ha spiegato – testuali parole – che noi italiani “abbiamo gusti raffinati e a queste cose ormai non ci facciamo più caso”, ma che se ci fosse stato un inglese in platea e avesse visto il quartetto d’archi “sai come sarebbe rimasto colpito”.
[Pensa te, ’sta novitá assoluta degli archi nel rock! Alla facciazza de Forever Changes - NdR].

Ma il problema non è che Edoardo, per quanto portatore di un idea di rock alquanto peculiare, non sappia stare su un palco, non sappia cantare o non sappia suonare: queste sono tutte cose che sa fare molto bene. Il problema alla fine non è nemmeno il quartetto d’archi: se sai come funziona il pop in Italia (vedi sopra), magari non lo capisci ma una ragione te la fai. Il problema è quello che succede tra canzone e canzone.

Bennato sottopone il pubblico a lunghi monologhi deliranti che vorrebbero essere illuminanti ma elencano una serie di banalitá dozzinali (la nascita del rock’n’roll), ovvietá pseudoantropologiche (l’evoluzione della razza umana, la storia di come gli uomini hanno cambiato colore), tristissimi luoghi comuni (i politici che devi conoscere per poter sfondare). Le stilettate, ripetute una, due, tre, dieci, cento volte alla TV e ai media che, a sentir lui, lo ostracizzano. Il “Gomblotto”, insomma.

Dopo poche canzoni era chiarissimo che quello a cui stavamo assistendo era lo psicodramma di un uomo i cui odi, rancori e desideri di rivalsa – immensi – non riuscivano ad essere nascosti da quella maschera di simpatia scugnizza che si mette davanti. Lo show, lo spettacolo, a quel punto non erano più le canzoni. Era Bennato stesso che, strabordando, ha oscurato il suo stesso repertorio.
Repertorio che, piaccia o non piaccia, una discreta importanza nella storia della canzone italiana la ha.

Non bastasse questo, abbiamo assistito alla piú grande esibizione di incoerenza e disrispetto per il pubblico che ci sia capitata di vedere dal vivo in una vita di concerti.
Ad un’ora dall’inizio del concerto, Bennato fa accomodare il quartetto d’archi fuori dal palco e, chitarra acustica piú kazoo al collo e tamburino al piede, parte in una rivisitazione dei suoi classici. Bello, proprio bello, pensiamo, e infatti il pubblico risponde: si scalda, canta, balla e batte le mani.
Dieci minuti dopo ritorna il quartetto d’archi e Edo si lancia in un monologo piú sconclusionato del solito in cui parla di un ragazzo, Renzo Rosso da Vicenza, che ha fondato la Diesel ed é riuscito a realizzare il sogno impossibile di andare a vendere i jeans agli Americani. Se c’è riuscito Renzo Rosso, perchè lui, Bennato, non puó vendere un musical agli Inglesi? Non fa una grinza.

Per dare maggior enfasi al concetto, Edo imbraccia la chitarra e si lancia in una versione di L’isola che non c’è. In Inglese.

“Second star to the right, that is the way…”

Suona male pure a voi? Pensate ad un pubblico di emigranti italiani.
È stato zittito una prima volta dai fischi di quello stesso pubblico che due minuti prima lo osannava.
Ha fermato la canzone, ha mugugnato qualcosa e poi è ripartito una seconda volta, sempre in inglese, solo per essere sommerso ancora dal pubblico, che lo ha interrotto cantando all’unisono e a squarciagola la stessa canzone, ma in italiano.
La soap opera è finita solo quando ha chiesto di poter cantare i primi due versi in inglese, per poi concludere L’Isola Che Non C’é in italiano. Il pubblico capita la disperazione dell’ uomo ha ascoltato in silenzio e applaudito, stavolta di compassione.

Qualcuno si potrà chiedere dove sia la pietra dello scandalo.
Vista la serata, vista l’audience, visto il contesto e visto il preciso momento del concerto in cui questo è successo (dopo i quattro/cinque brani suoi piú conosciuti), cantare in inglese quello che è il suo brano piú famoso, quello che sai che il pubblico, quel pubblico, aspetta è stato un anticlimax di proporzioni terrificanti.

In secondo luogo, la reazione del pubblico era ampiamente prevedibile. E allora se Bennato, pur avendo capito che tipo di audience aveva davanti ha deciso, proprio in quel momento, di fare quello che ha fatto, ha dimostrato come minimo una mancanza di rispetto per il suo pubblico, quando non proprio arroganza.

Di piú, se ce ne fosse stato bisogno, un gesto del genere ti fa riconsiderare retrospettivamente quanto hai sentito fino ad allora. Non puoi andare avanti per un’ora a pontificare sullo stato che ti opprime, sui burattinai che manovrano ogni tuo passo, sui potenti che ti segano le gambe e poi, all’apice del concerto, diventare improvvisamente un seguace di Mammona.

Ecco, la cosa che veramente non ci è andata giú è la contraddizione di fondo – brutale – tra quello che predica questo performer e lo show stesso, show che voleva essere solo una bella oliata agli ingranaggi dell’industria. Peccato che quello sia un motore che hai appena dichiarato di voler far grippare.

E allora, Edo, verrebbe da dire, niente di male se vuoi trovare un impresario per il tuo musical, ma almeno non riempirmi prima di panzane sui Gatti e le Volpi. Se vuoi fare il predicatore, devi avere integritá. E se decidi di proporti come bandiera dell’onestá in musica, stai attento perchè oltre che tornaconti hai anche delle responsabilitá ben precise, in primis quella di essere coerente

E anche se, invece di cantare in quello che credi e credere in quello che canti, stai facendo uno show e interpretando un personaggio (e la cosa ci sta benissimo), la sospensione dell’incredulitá bisogna saperla portare fino in fondo altrimenti casca il palco.

Edoardo Bennato ha portato a Londra, Scala, una perfetta sintesi dell’italianitá vittimista, mammona e trasformista con cui l’Italiano é stereotipato in Inghilterra. E poi ci lamentiamo se ci pigliano per i fondelli.
Giudizio finale: Da far accapponare la pelle. Oppure bellissimo, se piace il genere gonzo.

Di Luca Bazzoli e Valerio Berdini

Even before arriving on stage, Patrick Wolf, has got a merit.

He draws to his gig a multitude of happy, colourful boys and girls. Teenagers who left those dark thoughts that distress their adolescence at home.

Patrick Wolf acts as the permission that set them free from inhibition. They leave the insecurities into their rooms. His audience is young, positive, upbeat, optimistic, relaxed. Supported by the charisma of their idol as well as by the power of the identification with a group, there are no sign of stress, resentfulness, rancor.

It doesn’t happen that often. Actually it does happen hardly ever.
Indie music two big themes are opposite.

One is about depression, feeling miserable, feeling powerless against the reality, inadequate in front of a world that looks too big. It gave rise to some of the best music, from Velvet Underground, Joy Division, Jesus and Mary Chain to Editors, Glasvegas or White Lies but too often transformed concerts (and its audience) into a sort of funeral with loud sound and a weird body language.

Alternatively rock music has epitomized anger. Rebellion to rules, refuse of the society both identified as your family or as a whole. Nihilism to the end point which meet the refuse of the changing self. Punk and hardcore, since Sex Pistols to Gallows helped to liberate those who couldn’t contain this anger. Concerts are often riots, a violent dance involving everyone with no rules and no distinction between the band and the fans.

It is not so surprising. Depression and anger are the feelings that as teenagers we all had and to a teenager identifying with a band that (gives the impression to) express the same disposition is cathartic.
Too young to perceive or simply to believe that it has all been carefully organised what it is important is not the truth but what to believe. They know that unconsciously, label managers very rationally.

This is why a Patrick Wolf gig is indeed surprising. He manages to gather the positive part of the teenage world.

The doors open late and the rainbow queue, instead of protesting, gets longer and happier.

The organizer told me the delay was due to a Patrick Wolf desire to decorate the stage with some mirroballs, that they hat to search in the basements of the venue.

Once inside I see the spotlights crash against the myriad of mirrors and breaks into a million of drops of light that project everywhere and transform the venue into an electric milk way.

When Patrick Wolf arrives on stage, the first thing I notice is his stage presence. It is not just because I expected him to be smaller, but because his body language is so spectacular that he would easily occupy on his own a 10 times bigger stage. His musicians are relegated to the edges leaving the entire scene to his majestic performance.

Feathers, cloak, black leather trousers, make up and platinum blonde hair, I am clearly in front of someone who believes in the role of the image being central to a show.

To me is quite difficult to disconnect his image to early Bowie’s impersonations. Fashion is different but the approach is the same. The public either don’t care or, likely, has never heard of Ziggy.

This short tour was set up to test his new album, The Bachelor, live. Due to come out in june it has both the perfect sound and the perfect timing to fill up festival stages and summer open air events.

Patrick Wolf musical taste has always been eclectic, he has songs exploring any facet between electronic beats to baroque pop.

He enjoys playing everything he likes, emancipated not only as a person but musically from genres and styles. His image is the magic glue that keeps things together and surprisingly uniform.

Tonight’s gig the strings were electrified enough to leave his more symphonic approach to his Canadian fellows and the show focused on a more upbeat intervention of synths and effects to free the electronic side. It is the fashion of 2009 after all.

Patrick Wolf is a clever guy. He knows that to be flexible, to be able to adapt to times that are changing so fast, it is vital to survive the stormy weather that often sink even good music ideas in less than a season.

His piano melodies, that remind me so much a simplification of Beethoven’s sonata adagios, tonight stay put in their hand.
Keyboards is used on a percussive way and design loops able to make those colourful people dance more and feel better.

He dances with them. Wrapped up in a tangled mixture of receivers and cables, the mic fixed next to his mouth, everything looks like a sort of meeting point between Science-Fiction and Britney Spears.
He is in fact free to perform.
Which is the thing he can do best.

If not all the songs are so entertaining, when he pulls off his repertoire of plastic poses, dresses, mythological masks and literate references any eye in the venue is caught on him.

Which such magnetism, success is guaranteed. He could sing children lullaby it wouldn’t make a difference.

It is so clear to Patrick Wolf as well that, in the middle of a set of new songs, he tells the band to jump his biggest hit, Magic Position, to keep going with the new tunes.

Cleverly Magic Position is moved to the bottom of the setlist and closes the concert guaranteeing the apotheosis and everyone’s joy. The Mirrorballs project million of lights onto the fans.

Patrick Wolf has been the first blossom of this delayed spring struggling to displace an endless winter.
As a snowdrop, he appeared in a cold scene with a smile and made anyone around him smile.

He reminded everyone that music can be at the same time, intense, optimistic and confident without decay into radio friendly pop and irritating choruses. Mika has been informed.

You can get more info about him on his [myspace] and [website]

Photo tip

That I hate microphones in front of singers mouth (and how to avoid them) I must have told you more than once.

So when I saw Patrick Wolf using a head worn microphone, I felt at the same time annoyed and relieved.

Annoyed because I had to do with it, whichever was the song and the moment.
Relieved for exactly the same reason. It was there and it was going to be there for all the time of the photos.

I used four different approaches. if you have more tips, please add them up to the comments.

Straightforward. You don’t care and include the microphone in the shot. You make it part of the image as much as it is part of the singer’s face. After all it is useless to deny it. It is there, everyone sees it.

The opposite. You choose the other side of the face, trying to hid it. Usually it is not difficult to make it less evident but it is quite impossible to hid it completely on a close-up. Even a clean portrait of the artist would reveal some kind of wires or bits popping out from his head. Try to avoid that but don’t get upset if you don’t manage to.

You move away from a close-up, go wide (angle) and shot the entire figure. Eventually from a low position, so that his head is away from you. This way the microphone is small enough to be not disturbing, if you are on the other side of it, it can be completely unidentifiable.

You go creative. Take a careful look at the situation and see what chances you have.

Shadows are quite good to swallow the small object in the dark to seem it has disappeared.
Cutting it out of the frame completely could make the composition quite harsh.
Using the artists’ own accessories, as Patrick Wolf wig has been useful to me to cover it up in some shots.

As long as you enjoy taking pictures, you will always find a way around any problem, don’t give up, keep trying.

This is going to be short, so you can enjoy the pictures and don’t get too bored with my nonsense.
Reason is I had a lot of fun photographing Friendly Fire lively set, but if you ask me to comment about their music I really don’t know where to start.

Friendly Fires, were just before Glasvegas on this year NME Shockwave tour, after Florence and White Lies. They are one of the most hyped band of the rising electro-pop scene, so expectedly they play a catchy electro-dance-pop! Even more expectedly I couldn’t avoid to put them on liveon35mm with they tour mates.

To be “electro” the sound is filled with synthesizers but there is also quite a lot of guitar to keep the indie-rock charm.
Think of My Bloody Valentine, born in the 80s fronted by an upbeat guy good at using today’s computers. Basically nothing to do with My Bloody Valentine. (Have I already written that I don’t know what to write?)

“Dance” requires heavy, steady rhythm and you’ve got loads of it.
The bass player even helps the drummers with further toms, so your foot can’t miss the 4/4, unless you are deaf. Which would happen towards the end of the set if you forgot your earplug. This is probably more My Bloody Valentine than the shoegaze bit that I read on Wiki.

“Pop” requires catchiness, radio friendly (fire) riffs, choruses and sing-along. All is there ready to have you happy for summer festival, rain or shine.
The pop-writing skills helped them on the commercial success.

If you like trivial stories, Friendly Fires can claim to be the only band to have the same song, On Board, used both for a Nintendo and a Playstation3 commercial. Another, White Diamonds, has been used on a never-heard-before American TV series Gossip Girl.

To definitely compromise my reputation, I must confess that just a couple of years ago I would have called a NME band playing this music: Nu-Rave.
Now, I don’t know whether it is me completely missing the point or is the failure of CSS second album, the disappearance of Klaxons after winning Mercury Prize and the dissolution of the rest of the nu-rave platoon to be read as increasing signs of the credit crunch.

A friend told me he saw Friendly Fires playing a full set as guest band in an exclusive party during the London Fashion Week. They appear to have escaped both the credit crunch and the un-coolness of second generation nu-rave inspires.

The light show supports the music (and the photography) transforming the entire venue in a sort of disco, where the only action you are expected to do is to dance incoherently to the rhythm, singing along the refrain. Easy fun.
Anyone can do, even I, for the fraction of time I resist in the hall between the photo shoot and my ear start bleeding for the loud volume.

To close and fit a couple of more pics, a bit of Wiki-ism for the lazy readers.
Friendly Fires formed a couple of years ago in St. Alban, few miles north of London.
A pretty plain indie-story. They published a bunch of EPs before the first single, the very originally titled, Paris. Being voted best of the week from several journals including NME and the Guardian the band started being noticed beyond their circle of faithful fans, which now sum up to 30.000 on myspace.
The homonymous album came out on September 2008 for XL recordings, a label who has on board anyone you can think from Adele to the White Stripe.

If you are interested to know something more interesting and listen these guys music here you have their [myspace] and [website]

Photo tip

There are a lot of annoying things on a stage to disrupt my photographic aesthetic and I have been complaining about them too often. Microphones, monitors, cables, unused instruments, towel, plastic bottles. Some of those are necessary so you can’t help, but what I don’t understand is when a band set up a stage in order to complicate our life even more.

I mean, Friendly Fire were not as bad as Nick Cave solo tour, when he put a piano on the other side of the stage (keyboard to the right, pianos are shaped to sit the player on the left) and the photographers on the back of the venue, on the left of course.
I couldn’t take any image from there but being Nick Cave the closest living person to my idea of God for the last 20 years, I have forgiven him.

Friendly Fires are too young for divinity so, guys, putting the keyboard orthogonal to the stage, is simply annoying.
Guitar(ist) on the left, drum(mer) on the right (?), bass(ist) on the back.
I don’t know, probably it fitted some sort of symmetry they had in mind, but a keyboard in the middle of the stage to the ones in front of it, simply slices it in two parts.

Apart from the frontman, either you shoot the guitarist, or you shoot the drummer. Or you put on a wideangle and shoot, raising your camera without looking in the viewfinder, the keyboards themselves. This is what I did.
No chances to get a full band shot with such a wall obstructing the view. This is why you don’t see it.

Next time please see if you can come out with another bizarre idea to make photographers’ life difficult. You know, we love being challenged to look for unusual angles.

Music Awards.
Sometimes they get it right. Let’s start from something I usually don’t consider.

Florence (the singer) and the Machine (her band) have been hyped since last summer Glastonbury appearance by any UK press as the hottest 2009 tip in music.

They have been in the BBC’s sound of 2009 list, had a cover of the Guardian’s Guide with just one single out and recently won the prestigious Critics Choice at the Brit awards.

Florence and the Machine have just finished touring the NME Shockwave 2009.
They opened the gigs ahead of three highly tipped bands.
White Lies (recently number one on the chart), Friendly Fires (nu-rave-electro-something coming next on liveon35mm), Glasvegas (months ago the next big thing today a very big thing).

I have been photographing the NME tour every year for a while now and it happened quite often that the opening band is the one destined to the biggest success. In the past editions appeared in this role names as Coldplay, The Coral, Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs and in 2008 the hugely successful Ting Tings.

Florence got the 2009 slot and be sure, she is going to maintain the tradition.

Her performance, I insist on the word performance, was by far the best of the night.
For a band who published just three singles (one being a cover by the Source, my ignorance, I never heard before) it is already an achievement.

With the debut album not coming out until summer this tour provided a road test for the unedited material. Eight songs have been played tonight to warm up the audience with a stunning half hour of sheer intensity which won’t be matched by the following bands.

For the fans (already quite a lot), the setlist was written down as:

Lungs
Coffin song
Girl With one eye
Howl
Ghosts
Kiss With a Fist
Dog Days
You Got the Love

For the curious, her music is one of those cases adding up so many opposite influences that the result is inevitably new. Good thing it is very refreshing too.

Florence openly loves the White Stripes. As any other band in love with the Detroit pair but unable to recruit Jack White, F&TM lack that guitar. They took from them that “garage coolness” that looks sincere and believable.

Florence openly loves Kate Bush as well. Despite her deep voice is much closer to Patty Smith; Kate Bush’s influence is present and gives the songs that “floating-in-the air” lightness that keep away Florence timbre from falling into depressive tunes.

This is supported by a hippie, floral, sunny look that generates a sense of happiness scattered along the stage. Flowers hanging from the instruments, empty bird cages on the floor. Colours.
The Machine are going to be the magicians to brings the sun at rainy British summer festivals.

As a counterpart there is a dark side.
Florence wears it. Black clothes, black make-up. She sings it.
The combination delivers much more than the sum of the parts.
Dark song titles and lyrics about boys building coffins don’t come everyday.

“My boy builds coffins he makes them all day
But it’s not just for work and it isn’t for play
He’s made one for himself
One for me too
One of these days he’ll make one for you”
[My Boy Build Coffin']

She must love PJ Harvey. Not just in a musical sense. In the artist’s approach.
Everyone into PJ knows how her dedication is fully committed to the final product: the music. As PJ doesn’t care of anything else than producing what she has in mind, uncompromisingly, Florence on stage showed the same attitude.

She gets so involved in her performance to look in a supernatural, mystic state that only being “into it” can give.
Glasvegas , 2 hours later, looked exactly the opposite. Bored to death of playing those songs and willing to end their headline as soon as possible. So soon their set was just one song longer than F&TM opening.

To Florence the band, the audience, the stage, the lights are all functional to her goal.
She is not performing, she is the performance. She is not singing songs, she is the music.

Better don’t get in her way. Girl With One Eye is a good metaphore (I hope it is!) for what you encounter hampering her path

“She told me not to step on the cracks
I told her not to fuss and relax
Well, her pretty little face stopped me in my tracks
But now she sleeps with one eye open
That’s the price she paid

I slipped my hand under her skirt
I said don’t worry, it’s not gonna hurt
Oh, my reputation’s kinda clouded with dirt
That’s why you sleep with one eye open
That’s the price you paid…”
[Girl With One Eye]

Obstinate rhythm dominates. Thanks to that, Kiss With a Fist has such a captivating refrain that the Ting Tings could kill for.
The plus is that here everything is played by living musicians and not by an Apple powerbook.
I know I sound retro but I still believe live music means real people playing real instruments.
Singing over a drum-machine/electro-noise base it is not live music it is called karaoke.

The Machine music is based on directness in the best indie tradition but beyond the classic guitar-bass-drum line up there are few interesting bits to spice things up.

A girl plays a synth and gives the songs the electric edge unavoidable these days, she has a good vibe.
A harp (it is the first time I see a man playing a harp) is responsible to bring the bucolic touch beyond the stage design into the music. It is not folk, we are not in the Arcade Fire space. We’re in London, Canada is thousands miles away.

Florence sings herself out, and I am pleased she does. With a voice and an energy unmatched at present days is good she does not distract playing any instrument. A floor-tom sporadically helps her keeping the beat, though.

The rough, straightforward, uncomplicated arrangements complement the most plain-spoken lyrics I heard since Jagged Little Pill.

“…you hit me once
I hit you back
you gave a kick
I gave a slap
you smashed a plate
over my head
then I set fire to our bed

broke your jaw once before spilt your blood upon the floor
you broke my leg with your touch
sit back and watch the bed burn
well love sticks sweat drips
break the lock if it don’t fit
a kick in the teeth is good for some
a kiss with a fist is better than none
a-woah a kiss woth a fist is better than none…”
[Kiss With a Fist]

She chose You Got the Love (The Source cover and latest single) to close the set in style. With a key verse that goes like:

“… Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air
I know I can count on you…”

Florence salutes the audience her style: jumping on them, crowd-surfing over their heads as long as the security required to get her back to the pit.

A star is born and it is worth you check her soon.
Florence and the Machine [myspace] and [website] are here to help.

Photo tip

I talked about art and “being into it”, let’s get a bit more philosophical.
Quite few Live on 35mm readers wrote to me asking why I shoot a lot of tilted images.
So here’s an answer to all of you.

First, obvious and most important, I like them, so why not?
I like unusual angles. I like giving my images a dynamism which, if taken either horizontal or vertical, don’t have.

Without getting to much into Kandinsky’s attempt to rationalize art rules and composition in his “Point and Line to Plane”, it is clear to anyone that a rectangle sitting on the long side “feels” more stable than the same rectangle sitting on the short side and definitely much different from a rectangle posed on its angle.

This sense of instability, to me, fits with the liveliness of concert photography.
The same way as blurred shots catch the energy of a moment more than the “sensation of security” that a razor-sharp image gives.

It is linked with disclosing, revealing.
The more details you give in a photo the less the viewer can fantasize about it.
Rock music is about dreaming, imagining, impersonificating with a star so, to me, better less then more.
Don’t disclose everything, keep a part of mistery.
(This also partially answer the other question I am always asked, why black and white).

Than there is a practical reason. I don’t like cropping the negative (which most of you don’t even handle), being the human figure linear, shot on a diagonal fits more of it.
A tilted frame leaves less empy space than a vertical/horizontal one, especially if a guitar goes with it.

It also comes handy that most of tilted frames look OK both displayed horizontal, which is much better for a computer/monitor use, and vertical which is what magazines tend to prefer.

In the end it is a personal thing and I change opinion depending on the bands.
I am mostly driven by my eye. I can feel if I got a good picture straight after taking it and, without having the chance to look at it on the LCD display on the back, it is very often confirmed when I see the developed negative.

When your age is well above the average of the people frequenting the gigs you go, it becomes normal to believe that the reason why you consider all the bands below the average isn’t due to them, poor boys, but to you, old man.

As a consequence of such a deep thought I started wondering if it was time to give up live guitars and flying pints to use that cosy sofa and listen to my collection of old blues and jazz classics sipping teas.

Apart from the marginal detail that the classic collection is on my shelves because I have been listening to early jazz and rural blues since my NME age, sometimes it is constructive to recognize the axiom is simply wrong.

Riding my scooter on a boring (but not freezing) thursday night, I am about to listening to the umpteenth brit guitar band for the unpteenth time. With my shopping under the scooter saddle, I had already planned to cook my italian dinner at home after the three songs for the photos. To my surprise I left the gig only after the very last note.

Realizing that it is still possible to enjoy a live gig with the only reason relying on the brilliant band on stage it is a wonderful confirmation for the sceptics (as me) of contemporary rock.
Music is not all the same. Bands are not all the same. Musicians are not all the same and even nights are not all the same. Fact, a very important one, to keep it in mind in miserable times.

The View, four Scottish guys from Dundee, are responsible for my rare moment of optimism, so carry on reading, you know it doesn’t happen often.

Cambridge gig ticked all the boxes. A hour of pure, sparkling third millennium brit-pop.

I have seen, photographed, met the View in the past several times. I had never been that impressed, to me they always sounded just another band filling the void left by the Libertines‘ split. The differences, a strong Scottish accent and Gibsons replacing Telecasters, were not enough.

The View first album, Hats Off to the Buskers, was a UK number one and Mercury nominated, people loved it but I was not one of them.

A couple of years spent touring and recording, festivals, cocaine penalties, and travelling the world have been important. The View still look (and are) very young but have clearly matured.

The second album, Which bitch? moves the inspiration from the title to the contents, which is a good thing. With the insertion of more articulate arrangements and different instruments (including the ubiquitous violins), it is not a masterpiece but a clear improvement from the weak start. Apart from the Scottish mate with an Italian name, Paolo Nutini who sings on a track, the additions were well worth if this is the final result.

As regularly happens when a band shift their sound, reviewers get confused and Which Bitch? reviews have been all over the place.
From the very negative (The Guardian) to the very positive (The Observer), the music press seems quite undecided, yet it is appalling to read opposite opinions coming from the same editor. But this is a Guardian’s problem.

Little radio airtime didn’t help the launch, nevertheless the album reached number 4 in the chart and, most important, judging from tonight audience response and online music blog-sphere it is becoming a favourite among fans. Which (Bitch?) is what count.

After too many disappointing second albums, almost any guitar band of the Brit rock circus recorded a poor follow-up, seeing someone showing a hint of an idea and the passion to play it, it’s as uplifting as a hot chocolate after a snowy scooter ride.

Tonight gig started a bit late. Apparently some problems with the set-list. 15 minutes waiting and the roadies replace the first sheets with a different list. Having photographed both, I can tell the 16 songs are roughly the same and in a very similar order.
I want to read it as a special care the View put on to the music they are about to playing.

As soon as the band walks on stage, it rains beer for a good minute. Bent on my cameras, I am soaked. The View, their heads covered with hoodies, were expecting such a sticky reception; my lenses didn’t look as happy.

A wall of guitars, heavy drumming, steady bass and steer energy is the response to the beers and set the field over which the songs develop. This is not going to be a light meal. There is matter and it matters.
A keyboards, to my fear, sits on the back but but it turns out to be complementary to their new sounds that remains heavily guitar-driven.

What impressed me was the musicality of the (new and old) songs. A melodic taste spiced up by riffs, short solos, quick change of tempos. The fast beat stops then starts again. Acoustic and electric guitars merge within the same song without suffocating each other.

Now and then I perceive the risk of falling into Arctic Monkeys zone, but with such a full charge of positive energy, desire of playing and chemistry with the audience (who is there for them and not as a surrogate for someone else) the risk isn’t that dangerous. Actually it is positive.

The View know that the Libertines’ lemon does not have any juice left so they are squeezing few drops from someone else’s fruit to dress their own salad. (I must be still thinking at my dinner).
The references from the past are frequent, these kids have studied the history lesson.

Realisation has a memory of a ska/reggae beat that recall the Clash and memories of early Brixton punks.
Comin’ down, who opens the debut, tonight has such a heavy guitar sound to sit comfortably at the crossroad where the QOTSA met the Stooges, including Kyle Falconer swallowing the mic in Iggy style. Born on my same day, seventeen years later (!!), the View singer is as young as it looks; as young as rock’n'roll will always be.

Among the rock riffs there is space for a new ballad, Covers. Luckily the live version doesn’t host Paolo Nutini cameo and sounds better. It catches my attention for the brilliant opening:

“I’ll pull my covers off my lady in the night,
To see the cold reaction when she realises actions I’ve taken,
To start conversation.”

The band members interchange instruments and roles smartly. They are very attent to the fans response and quickly keep quiet or accompain the audience chants. Many songs are ready for summer festivals. If in a small venue and with just few weeks to learn the choruses they generate massive sing-along I can imagine what is going to happen this summer.

Give Back The Sun is the perfect answer to this icy winter, its steady guitar riff delivers slices of warmth and almost takes the drum role.

The venue lights up to daylight for the early hit Superstar Tradesman. The entire crowd is back singing along with them but the closure is left to a new song, the second single, Shock Horror.
Another sign of confidence from a band ready for glory.

There is no encore and no need for it. As the Manic Street Preachers taught, there is no way to comeback on stage after a powerful performance to sing a couple of songs and retain the same energy. Better leave it.

I drive back home starving but amazed by the concert. The View today are a different band from those four guys aping the Libertines two years ago.
They are a solid rock band. With the Arctic Monkeys they join the exclusive club of Brit bands with a good second album. They have very good songs, a powerful line-up and they can only get better as long as playing live will be synonymous of having fun.

Curious to know what the crowd was singing along (I am difficult to catch Scottish accent, you know!) back home I google for the Superstar Tradesman lyrics to discover an early statement that they are quite clearly honouring.

“I don’t want money I want a thing called happiness
I don’t want cash you know I’d quite like memories
To keep us on track let’s never look back”

The View look very happy indeed, are far from being interested to money and clearly aren’t looking back. Their confindence is a boost on my confidence that “rock’n'roll will never die”.

Check them out on [myspace] and the exhaustive [website] and try to catch them live.

photo

Photo Tip

I must have written about protecting your gear ages ago, but repetita juvant. UK live scene is strictly linked with drinking beer. Punk-ish live scene frequented by people in their twenties is strictly linked with throwing beer on stage.

That funny custom happens mostly at the beginning of the concerts, exactly when you, music photographers, are dealing with your camera functions to have everything ready before the show begins.

Before

Take out of your bag only the things you need cameras, lenses and nothing more.
I still use those ridiculous multipocket photographer jackets that make me look like an explorer who lost his forest, but they work fine.

Put everything else back in your bag and hide your bag under the pit barrier, under the stage platform (if possible) or wherever you feel it is safe. It avoids it being walked on and beer-soaked

Stand, turn your back at the stage, look at the crowd before the start. You will see flying objects, smiling girls and have a chat.

During

Turn to the stage when the band enters and cover your cameras with your body anytime you can.

Put your lens hood on. Always. It protects from side lights and most important from beer, bottles, glasses, people. Even assuming you have wipes ready, you don’t want to waste the first song cleaning your front glass.

After

Get out of the pit, find a good spot and start cleaning your gear as quick as possible, before messing up with the pics. Having wipes with you is a good thing.
The more you leave sugary water onto your cameras the higher the risk of damaging the electronics.

PS-The option of going to gigs with waterproof cameras it is still open, you may look weirder than me and my Indiana Jones look.