I’ve previously blogged that photographing big name acts at big venues just isn’t all that… and the artist formally know as John Cougar Mellencamp, i.e. John Mellencamp, supported by Sheryl Crow at the Brisbane Exhibition Centre was another one of those nights. 

I think I first heard John Mellencamp back in the mid-1980s on Entertainment USA or No Limits.  Whilst the music of the mid to late 1980s is unfairly derided, music coverage on mainstream TV in the UK was good,  with the likes of Snub TV and The Tube as well as the more mainstream shows like No Limits, The Chart Show and TOTP.  I wonder whatever happened to Entertainment USA and No Limits presenter Jonathan King… 

Although I was down to cover it, the confirmation call didn’t come through until 3pm on the day of the gig, with the warning that as there was no photo pit we would be 30 – 35m from the stage, i.e. the mixing desk, for John Mellencamp but that we could photograph from the side for Sheryl Crow. 

Anticipating that it might be a last minute confirmation I’d brought my camera bag with me and went there straight from work, getting there with plenty of time to spare before the 7:45pm meet-up time and ending up with an hour wait before Sheryl Crow was due to start at 8:10pm. 

I remember first hearing Sheryl Crow when she first broke into the big time back in 1994 when I was in the USA and driving around the country (NY to Seattle, Seattle- LA, LA to NY).  Every time you tuned into a different radio station it seemed to be playing ‘All I Wanna Do‘, and with my road trip taking me ever near LA, lyrics about the sun coming up over Santa Monica Boulevard started to take on slightly mythical properties.  In reality the Santa Monica Boulevard has all the romance of the Spaghetti Junction, but I guess that’s LA for you.  After 7 weeks driving and hearing the song on such heavy rotation I was over it.  However, worse was to come when I got back to the UK and the song broke over there, meaning another few months of it being played everywhere. 

Photographing from the side of the stage meant the aisle at the very side of the floor area, with a constant stream of people walking to and from their seats in front of us.  Our position wasn’t as far from the stage as the mixing desk but far enough and, as encountered with The Cure’s Robert Smith last year, she tended to play and sing facing away from where we would stood, so for the most part our view whilst she was singing was very side-on and you couldn’t really see her face. 

John Mellencamp was due on at 9:30pm so after Sheryl Crow’s three songs it was another hour wait before we were escorted back in.  Not only is the mixing desk at the BEC some way from the stage, but we were also positioned by the side of desk on the floor, as opposed to the slightly elevated desk level.  So when he came on (15 minutes late at 9:45pm) everyone stood up and we didn’t have a clear shot of him.  After the first song a fair number of the audience sat back down, which made it a bit easier but still not great.  The third song was a duet with Sheryl Crow which would have been good to photograph, except from our view John Mellencamp was singing stood behind his mic stand, meaning that again it was hard to get a clear shot and frustrating being stuck in a fixed position and unable to move slightly to the side to get a better angle.

Although I was exepecting to get booted from the venue after three songs, PR had a few spare complimentary tickets and I gave me one.  So although photographically it was ‘another one of those nights’, some good came from it by getting to see most of his set.

A few more 300mm wide-angle shots on flickr…

John Mellencamp

Sheryl Crow

 

Last week saw Steve Earle roll into town to play at The Tivoli, the last night of his Australian tour in support of his ‘Washington Square Serenade’ album.  For most of the set it was just him and his guitar.  However, later on in the set he was backed by a DJ, playing beats on a couple of turnstiles. Whilst it was hardly a Dylan-Judas type moment, it was startling how much the power of one man and a guitar can be diminished by something as innocuous as a simple drum track.  But like Dylan so much of the power is in the words, with the backing drum tracks causing the lyrics to be lost in mix to some extent, and the overall impression coming over as a lazy, gimmicky add-on; a musical no-man’s land between stripped-down guitar and vocals and a properly fleshed-out arrangement for a full band. 

Allison Moorer was the main support act, a pleasant enough voice, although her cover-heavy six song set didn’t provide much of real substance to mull over.  Based on her performance tonight, there are better female singer-songwriters in Brisbane, but being the seventh Mrs Steve Earle has its obvious advantages.

Krista Polvere opened the night, although again with only a really short set, this time only four songs, it was hard to form any real opinion. 

A few more photos on flickr.

Steve Earle

Allison Moorer

Krista Polvere

Love is like a bomb, baby, c’mon get it on
Livin’ like a lover with a radar phone
Lookin’ like a tramp, like a video vamp
Demolition woman, can I be your man?
Razzle ‘n’ a dazzle ‘n’ a flash a little light
Television lover, baby, go all night
Sometime, anytime, sugar me sweet
Little miss ah innocent sugar me, yeah

I did think about leaving it there for my review of the night, it’s all you really need to know.  Sure it ain’t Dylan but then Dylan isn’t as much fun.  Although I have Pyromania and Hysteria I was never that big Def Leppard fan back in my obligatory teenage metal years, much preferring Iron Maiden and Van Halen.  I would say it’s safe to say that I haven’t listened to them since the 1980s.  But despite the 20 year gap between listens, it’s amazing how rock music so unashamedly stupid (all things considered) can suddenly unlock the door to long lost memories and provide flashbacks to the summer of 1987, memories of six weeks in France, drinking cider with school mates and when life was a lot simpler.  Memory recall is made somewhat easier by the fact that Def Leppard look pretty much the same as they did in the late 1980s, in scarily good looking shape for a bunch of guys in their late 40s – early 50s.  There is obviously some sort of Def Leppard intensive fitness regime going on…  

Contracts reared their ugly heads once again, with the Def Leppard contract restricting usage to the named publication (with some conflict between saying portfolio usage was allowed but specifying that the photos couldn’t be anywhere on the internet other than the named publication.  Don’t they know that portfolio books are so 20th century…).  But at least the Def Leppard contract didn’t plumb the depths of the Cheap Trick contract, which was so bad that it resulted in the promoter not allowing photographers to sign it.

Thanks to the photo contract restrictions, the photos are up on Rave’s website.

And thanks to Stephen for the spare ticket, which was greatly appreciated and meant that I got to see Cheap Trick (although they weren’t that good) and the whole Def Leppard set, instead of being kicked out of the venue after the two songs I was allowed to photograph for.

Last time Tim Finn played in Brisbane it was with the reformed Split Enz at the 13,500-capcaity Entertainment Centre, so it was a real thrill to get the opportunity to see him play at 200-capcaity The Troubadour this week.  His 75 minute set included songs from his new album, ‘The Conversation‘, plus crowd-pleasing Split Enz favourites (‘I See Red‘, ‘Shark Attack‘, ‘My Mistake‘) and Crowded House Woodface-era classics (‘Chocolate Cake‘, ‘It’s Only Natural‘, ‘Weather With You‘).  If there was one disappointment it was that he didn’t play anything from either of the Finn Brothers’ albums (the first one, ‘Finn‘, is patchy but the second one, ‘Everyone Is Here‘ is fantastic).

It amused me that when SBS started doing their Classic Australian Albums series, they included ‘Woodface‘.  Looking at the bands that they covered in the first season of the program it seemed that they had chosen the records based on a New South Wales/Victoria/Queensland/Western Australia split.  So while Queensland and Western Australia were represented by The Saints‘ ‘(I’m) Stranded‘ and The Triffids‘ ‘Born Sand Devotional‘ respectively, the program makers couldn’t find a classic Sydney album and had to go to Newcastle to get the very dubious classic album choice of Silverchair‘s ‘Diorama‘ and they had get a New Zealand band to get classic Victorian album.

 As we all know, Australians are a bit on the precious side when it comes to its bands and music, so when it comes to justifying Crowded House as an Australian band the argument seems to go that they formed in Australia, had some Australian members and recorded albums in Australia.  Which is all well and good but becomes amusing when you point out that using similar logic makes Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds a British band!  And don’t get me started on AC/DC.  No one thinks of Fleetwood Mac as an English band, so the campaign to stop having AC/DC called an Australian band starts here…