Technology-wise, things didn’t go quite to plan, with the house we were staying in having no mobile reception for me to use my phone as a modem and upload some photos yesterday morning.  Saturday morning’s blog post was made by parking my car on the top of the nearest big hill and uploading from the front seat, but I didn’t have time to do that again yesterday, with editing going really slowly (despite my 6am alarm) and I didn’t have the time to go in search of an internet cafe either.  Onsite there were more technology glitches, with mobile connection being unreliable so tweeting was in fits and starts when I could get connected, meaning I had to revert to the old ways and use a pen and paper to jot some notes down.

So here, somewhat belatedly, are a few photos from Saturday.  More on Flickr, more on their way

Bloc Party
 

Happy Mondays

Sarah Blasko
 

The Living End

The Specials

Little Birdy
 

Birds Of Tokyo
 

You Am I
 

Bluejuice
 

Dappled Cities
 

Bridezilla

Yves Klein Blue
 

Leader Cheetah

Manchester Orchestra

The closing hours of Thursday bring with them rumours that Jane’s Addiction – of all the bands on the 2009 Splendour bill, the one that I most what to see and the one that I most want to photograph – have cancelled their whole Australian tour. Friday morning brings confirmation of this, with Stephen Perkins hospitalised in LA with an elbow infection. The misery is further compounded almost instantly with news that the organisers have drafted in The Living End to replace them. Of all Australian bands, The Living End.

In theory you would think that it just couldn’t get any worse and yet there’s a nagging feeling that this isn’t rock bottom. There are a number of occurrences that would make the current situation even worse than they already are: Firstly, The Living End will inevitably either include a Jane’s Addiction cover or at the very least segue one or two of their own songs into JA songs for a few bars. And this will more than likely want me to start throwing things at the band. Heavy inanimate objects, small sharp implements, anything close to hand; the choice is endless. Secondly, if JA reschedule their shows it will either be when I’m out of the country or I’ll be put forward to photograph them and they’ll whip out their current rights-grabbing contract five minutes before they’re due on stage and I’ll have to walk away. It just doesn’t feel that this story that has a happy ending.

I’m not sure how the news has been taken by Splendour’s paying punters. Part of me can’t help but think that the majority of Splendour’s main demographic will be delighted at the changes to the line-up, especially as I’ve experienced similar Jane’s Addiction ambivalence before. At the Leeds Festival in 2002 Jane’s Addiction played on the main stage at the same time The Vines were playing one of the smaller tent stages. You could have walked straight up to the barrier without many problems and watched Perry Farrell etc from the very front if you wanted, whereas you couldn’t even get anywhere near getting into the tent to watch The Vines. Oh, how we laughed. And a similar thing happened a year later at an MTV2 gig at Brixton Academy when The Darkness, at the height of their fame, supported Jane’s Addiction. Half the audience left after The Darkness. What is wrong with these people?

The rest of Friday doesn’t really improve; despite being a day off I end up going to work to try and clear the backlog of overdue reports and proposals, which means I don’t leave Brisbane until 3:45pm, hit the Friday afternoon rush hour and take almost 3 hours to get down to New Brighton, just north of Brunswick Heads, where I’m staying for the weekend. And just as I leave the motorway, the heavens open to an extent that I can hardly see where I’m going, even with the windscreen wipers on their highest speed. It’s some sort of navigation miracle that I manage to find the house.

But here now and enjoying good company, good food and a few drinks. And it’s suddenly 12:30am and it all starts in less than 12 hours.

 

Another year, another Splendour. 

It’s been a hard few weeks, what with a combination of work, working weekends to make up for the days I’m having off to go to Splendour, gigs, next day photo deadlines and The Ashes, so instead of feeling well rested and full of energy for a hard weekend’s photographing I already feel exhausted.  And I wish people around me would stop being ill with flu; this sore throat I’ve been developing over the last couple of days is an ominous sign.

I’ve worked out my plan for the weekend, a combination of things I really want to see/photograph (Jane’s Addiction, Gutter Twins, Specials. Flaming Lips) things that I’ll go and check out (i.e. Doves, White Lies, Friendly Fires) and things that as I’m there I might as well photograph to fill in time and for something to do (i.e. Hilltop Hoods, Little Birdy, Bluejuice, Yves Klein Blue.  Actually, to be quite honest, about  half the bands I’ve put in my plan…). 

Saturday

Sunday

If there’s one upside it’s that my plan looks a lot less manic than last year’s Splendour, when I seemed to spend most of the weekend walking between the Big Top and the GW McLennan stage and ended up shooting 31 bands in total.  This year it looks like being 22 bands, although no doubt this will change by the time the weekend is over, with bands starting on time (or not) and ease of movement between stages playing a major role in what gets photographed.

Unlike last year, when I was stressing slightly about a poorly camera that was having exposure meter issues and using my old film camera as back-up, I’ve actually got my old digital camera as back up, so hopefully I won’t be worrying too much about my camera dying on me.

As last year, I will be tweeting from the site, something that was very useful last year as an aide memoire for when it came to writing the more detailed blogs, and I’ll also be trying to upload a few photos from the day before on Sunday and Monday mornings to my Flick account. 

I had planned to clear my backlog of blog posts and photos before this weekend but it wasn’t to be.  Actually it ended up being nowhere near close to happening, so posts about The Middle East, Ladytron, Flipper, Deerhunter, Wolf & Cub, Washington, the Incremental Records Launch, the Plus One Records Showcase, Philadelphia Grand Jury and Timothy Carroll will have to wait a few more weeks.

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

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

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

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

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

More photos on Flickr.

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

Supporting redsunband at @Newtown, Sydney – 4 September 2004

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

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

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

Pauhaus Festival, Brisbane – 9 June 2007

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

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

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

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

More photos on Flickr.