Brisbane alt-country-folk supergroup Dead Set Love, featuring members of Texas Tea, Horrortones, Vegas Kings, Mean Streaks and Shiskin & Choomby recorded some demos on a Saturday afternoon back in February at Urban Humm Studios in West End.  By the time I arrived at 2pm they were already a bottle of tequila down…

I should have known better than to not bring a flash or any lighting, as once again it was a tiny, cramped, hot room, with no natural light, lit by a single low watt bulb.  I’m starting to think that stylish, sparse wooden panelled rooms, overlooked from the control room through big glass windows only happen in the movies…

Having been in Mildura when Brisbane’s Andy Warhol exhibition at GoMA started in December, with a set of Velvet Underground covers by Robert Forester, I was able to make the closing night show, which featured a 45 minute set by Wolfmother.

Times have changed since I first photographed Wolfmother back in May 2004 at The Hopetoun in Sydney. Back then they were the opening band on a bill with The Ross Orbit Stack and Vanlustbader headlining. This was their fifth ever gig and the first gig that I photographed in Australia, using a single roll of HP4 for the whole gig and only taking 6 or 7 shots of Wolfmother… Before there were afros, ipod adverts, double-neck Gibsons and Grammy Awards they looked like this:

As with any gig at The Hopetoun no one battered an eyelid at me taking photos; this time there was a contract to sign, the bottom of which was torn off and was given to the photographers as a receipt. One of the clauses was that I had to provide any photos that I might have taken if the band’s management requested me to do so. No mention of payment or anything. Based on recent experience, it feels like this is becoming a standard clause on concert photography contracts.

Although the $20 included entry to the exhibition, which closed off just before the band started, the place seemed fairly empty until the last half an hour. By the time they came on stage the place was packed. The set included some new songs, which made a bit of a change considering they have been playing the same set for much of the last four years. Although Andrew Stockdale has apparently been recording demos with Resin Dogs’ drummer Dave Atkins it hasn’t heralded a move away from a 1970s rock sound into hip-hop… The song definitely remains the same…

The fact that this was their first gig in 9 months really showed. They were pretty ragged, especially Andrew Stockdale’s voice, which was all over the place and coming nowhere near hitting the high notes. Still, the crowd lapped it up as you’d expect, even a pretty woeful cover of Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day‘, with Mick Ronson’s string arrangement replaced by widdly-widdly guitar playing…

There was a photo pit at the front but it was very crowded, with about ten photographers and four or five burly security guys. Additionally, lighting didn’t seem as good as when I photographed Buck 65 at one of the first ‘Up Late’ gigs. And on top of that I just seemed to be having one of those nights when my timing kept being off…

More photos on flickr.

I have been recently drafting a blog for future publication about some of my favourite music photographers. However, I saw that one of the biggest influences on my photography, Steve Gullick, has got an exhibition on at the moment in the Rough Trade East shop in London.

As such, there are quite a few recent articles about it on the internet, best of which is the downloadable podcast on The Quietus, a great new music website with loads of old UK music paper writers from back when the UK music papers were a good read. Although they’ve put playable sound clips throughout the article, they’ve been taken from the full interview, so I recommend you just download the whole 32MB, 46 minute podcast. You get to hear all about photographing David Yow’s rectum and what he really thinks about Anthony Kiedis and Lars Ulrich…

I guess I was lucky to grow up in an age when at various times he was photographing for Sounds, NME and Melody Maker. It’s hard to believe it when you look at his work and you look at NME (the only weekly music paper left in the UK) now.

After leaving the mainstream music press he struck out with former Melody Maker writer Everett True and together they started their own music magazine, ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives‘.

What I love about CTCL is the thinking – you could almost call it a manifesto – that lay behind their intentions; to bring down the UK music press with twelve issues of a bi-monthly magazine that counted down from 12 to 1 and then ended.

In the final issue Everett True wrote:

Don’t mourn for us. We set out what we intended to do. Exist for 12 issues, and stop. Prove that it’s possible to put together a great magazine with few resources, aside from enthusiasm and talent and a passion for music. Cover the music we love in a manner we felt was befitting – words unhampered by thoughts of shifting units, photography that never once resorted to gimmickry, illustrations that burned with a desire to communicate. Our design was clear and bold, rooted in the belief that we were proud of our words and photography and illustrations, and that we had no desire to hide them behind ‘sexy’ layouts and lurid headlines. No press photos. No ringtone adverts. No full-stand displays in WH Smiths. No consideration for content beyond that we were listening to, and moved by at the time.

So we didn’t bring down the UK music press.

We still fervently believe we’re right.

This whole approach strikes a huge chord with me.

As does Steve Gullick’s photography. It’s beautiful, emotive, evocative, gritty, dirty, passionate, vibrant, compelling, strong, iconic; it’s everything photography should be and what I strive to do with my own photography. It’s an antidote to the throwaway images in the mainstream music papers that are just tomorrow’s chip papers. When you look at something like Getty Images’ music photos, it’s just pretty horrible stuff; are there really photographers whose goal in life is to be a Getty photographer? It would bore me to death; if photographic blandness could kill, photo agencies like Getty would be the prime suspects.

If you’ve liked what you’ve seen so far of Steve Gullick’s work, I thoroughly recommend his book ‘Showtime’. If you’re cheap (like me…) you can get it from www.oldies.com for a bargain price of US$3.95 (+P&P…)

Quickly following on from last week’s JAMC show, there was another blast of seminal 1980s proper indie noise this week courtesy of ex-Spaceman 3 co-frontman Sonic Boom in his Spectrum guise. Until I moved to Brisbane my most seen live band was Spiritualized (8 times) – the band formed and fronted by Sonic’s ex-Spaceman 3 bandmate, Jason Pierce. However, despite that achievement, I had never actually seen Sonic before. (Incidentally, my current record for most seen live band is probably a close tussle between Sixfthick and tonight’s opening support band, Butcher Birds. Although I don’t have the advantage of being able to see Spiritualized every week at Ric’s…)

Straight from the start of the set there were technical issues from the tangle of leads and power supply units, resulting in signals not getting out from the table of instruments and effects.

When he told the audience that this was as good as it got it was hard to tell if he was joking or not, but the continuing self-deprecating comments and the look on his face told you he wasn’t having the best of times. On stage sound issues weren’t helping things (the front of house sound wasn’t too hot either, played at a really low volume, prompting one member of the audience to shout “turn the PA on…I mean up”) and resulted in before-song, after-song and even during-song vitriol emanating from the stage in the direction of the soundman for the duration of the gig. Sonic got support band Dimmer back on stage for a run through of the Spaceman 3 track ‘Suicide’. At the end of the song, whilst the last notes were still reverberating the soundman started up the background cd over the PA system…. A revenge of sorts, I guess.

Personally, I thought the crowd reaction was pleasing; people seemed to be willing him to pull the show out from the flames during his set and there was no shortage of people wanting to shake his hand and say thanks for coming at the end even though it was a real train-wreck of a gig. Despite all the setbacks, there was a degree of redemption at the end, with ‘Suicide’ giving everyone a glimpse of what the whole show might have been like on another night. Hopefully he has more luck with his Sydney and Melbourne shows (with reports of those gigs indicating that that was the case) and that Brisbane will get another chance of seeing the show that everyone was hoping for in the future.

It was pretty dark, with only a couple of lights (both red…), plus some light from the OHP being used to create the psychedelic backdrop effect. The photos aren’t that great, but I’ve put a few more photos on flickr.

Benjamin Franklin once remarked that “in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes”. Whilst there is not much of an upside to death (depending on whether you believe all that mumbo-jumbo about the utopian afterlife…), the unfortunate certainty of paying taxes does provide an occasional upside; the income tax refund.

Sure, not paying the tax in the first place would be the ideal situation, but the uplifting feeling experienced from an unexpected large lump sum tax return is so much more satisfying. And thanks the double whammy of a combined UK and Australian tax refund (the UK tax office is not renown for its hasty payments; this was for the 2005/06 tax year) I ended up with the equivalent of an extra month’s salary that I wasn’t expecting. I left the money sitting in my account for months whilst I worked out how to make the best use of this unexpected windfall. In the end I spent a large chunk of it on some home decorations.

Spot the difference.

My front room before:

My front room after:

This is the difference, just in case you couldn’t spot it.

Have been trying to fit in a few evenings of doing test shots to try out some lighting set-ups in amongst all the gigs and it’s been exciting and fun having my own studio set up to play with.

I also bought a cheap background set, although am regretting taking the cheaper option of fabric backgrounds a bit as they need a bit of post-work to get rid of some of the creases, especially those on the floor for the full length shots. Nothing too major though and I guess I’ll have to live with it for now. And it’s not a problem on half-length shots.

The test shots have just been a case of quickly setting up the background and lights, getting my girlfriend to stand there for a couple of minutes, running between the lights tweaking the power and direction and getting a few shots. Then changing the whole set-up and trying a different combination of lights, modifiers until we got bored. This is what the first tests looked like.

Full length portrait (although I managed to miss a few creases on the floor…)

Half-length portrait = no problems

The lighting set-up was one light with a reflector to the left-hand side onto the background to blow it out and a shoot through umbrella on the balcony slightly to the right-hand side of the camera as the key light. This key light was probably about 14 or 15 feet above floor level. I really need to start keeping a journal of the set-ups so that I can note the position and power settings for next time….

I did a photoshoot over the weekend with The Holy Bible so I’ll probably blog about that and put some pictures up over the next week or two.

The Jesus and Mary Chain were a band that I never quite got at the time. I got ‘Psychocandy’ and it was OK but didn’t blow me away. I picked up ‘Automatic’ cheaply in Woolworths (I think I might have paid £1.99 for it) and again it was quite good but not enough to make me understand why they were so acclaimed and why they were such a written about group in the music press during the 1980s. A few years down the track I bought the ‘I Hate Rock ‘N’ Roll’ and ‘Sometimes Always’ singles on 10” vinyl as I really liked the songs. But the overall impression was OK, but not that good.

I retrospect one of my biggest musical regrets is that I didn’t go with my housemate and see the Rollercoaster Tour when it hit the exotic heights of the Whitley Bay Ice Rink back in March 1992. The tour was a four band affair; Blur, My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr and headlined by the JAMC. Essentially I didn’t go because it was too expensive at a whole £12.50 to go see four bands that I just wasn’t that into. This was at a similar time to when I was paying £6 to see Nirvana, £3.50 to see the Smashing Pumpkins and £4 to see Pearl Jam. So £12.50 WAS a pretty big deal. But you live, you learn. Having seen Blur plenty of times, I finally got to see and photograph Dinosaur Jr last year and made up for lost time by seeing the JAMC twice in three days… So now I’m just waiting on MBV to complete the set….

The V fest set on the Sunday was good, although not enough volume, not enough reverb and not enough feedback. Ultimately, I don’t think JAMC are a festival band, and especially not a late-afternoon festival band at the most corporate festival around. After having gone to both the Sydney and V Festivals last year, this year was a real disappointment. I was glad to have bought half price tickets on eBay. And glad I wore boots so I could point and laugh at the people in flip-flops walking around (and even rolling around) in sewage…

The Tuesday night show at The Arena was a lot more like I had expected, with near ear bleeding volume. One disappointment was that the set was very similar to the one played at V and they didn’t play for much longer at their own sideshow; about 65 minutes.

Photographing them was a challenge; none of the front lights were on, with only strong back and some side-lighting being used. I knew that most of what I would end up with would be very silhouetted so I tried to work with that, shooting into the light for much of the three songs I was allowed to photograph for. Ultimately I was trying for a strong shot of both brothers and I think, considering the conditions, that I got a couple of half decent photos and a few good ones of William. Whereas William was stood near to some lights, photographing Jim, who was facing front with no light on his face, was much more problematic.

More on flickr.

If you’re male, a long-time music fan and somewhere between your mid-30s and early 40s you’ll probably have a large and varied record collection.  But I can almost guarantee that somewhere in that collection, possibly hidden towards the back, is a copy of ’1987′ by Whitesnake.  

I can remember back to my first year at university in 1990 and having the six guys in the flat below ours (the much missed ‘Breville House’ – so called because they had a Breville sandwich toaster hanging out of their letter box…) each playing it in perfect synchronicity; 1980′s hair metal in heptaphonic sound, if you will.   

Truly, despite it’s un-coolness (even at the time), the sound of a generation… 

And that’s without mentioning the ‘1987’-era video clips, which were indelibly imprinted in the minds of every teenage boy at the time…

The 2008 version of Whitesnake bares little resemblance to the 1987 version; singer David Coverdale plus a group of hired guns, although there hasn’t been what you might call a stable line-up through their whole history, with Coverdale being the only ever-present. 

At 57, Coverdale, is trim and looking in really good shape (and really tall), although looks his age in his face. One thing that hasn’t diminished in the adjourning years is his voice; whilst other male singers of his age seem to lose lost power and range from their vocal repertoire, he was in really, really good voice.  One thing I never realised about him is how frightfully well spoken he is; he sounded something like Terry Thomas…  Although having found a recent interview with him here, he sounds a lot more Yorkshire, so maybe he was just putting on the uber-posh English accent.

As seems to be a regular event in recent times, the attendance wasn’t that good; the balcony section was closed off and even the downstairs was nowhere near capacity. The whole audience probably could have squeezed into The Zoo. The cost of the tickets was high, something like $107, and there have been a lot of expensive festivals and major concerts over the summer months. Obviously gig-going punters can only afford the time and the money for so much, and you’re going to have to be a pretty die-hard fan to pay $107 to see Whitesnake, as opposed to a more casual fan who might pay $50 or $60 to see them.

It’s a shame as it was a really enjoyable show; as with the recent Toto show it’s good to see a band with a really good collection of songs, really enjoying themselves, not taking themselves too seriously and being really well appreciated from a small but loyal audience. As you would expect, the set-list was heavy on the ‘1987’ songs with a few of the earlier, classic singles, when the band were a lot more of the 1970s blues/rock band they started out as, as opposed to the more mid/late-1980s sounding rock band they became, and a couple of songs from the soon-to-be-released new album, ’Good to Be Bad’. The new stuff was nothing special and unlikely to take them back to those heady days of the late 1980s. However, their current tour takes them back to the UK for a double-header arena tour with Def Leppard so I might yet be proved wrong…

More photos, as ever, on Flickr.