Every time I see Sixfthick I make a conscious decision that I’m not going to photograph Gentle Ben as I’ve got a ridiculous amount of photos of him and would say he’s my most photographed person by a long, long way. By comparison I have hardly any photos of Dan, and even less of Tony and Fred, and always plan to spend my time concentrating on them. However, this decision, like tonight, usually lasts about 30 seconds before I’m adding more shots to the Gentle Ben archive, always aiming for that perfect image of him in full flight.

When you photograph a band a million times, like I have with Sixfthick, you start to wonder how you can get different looking photos and so with I played around with some of tonight’s photos using different actions in Photoshop, moving away from the standard editorial type photos. At first I really liked the effects in some of the finished photos but then on second thoughts decided they were a bit rubbish and not as good as I’d initially thought.

X are a disappointment tonight.  There’s no swagger, despite bassist Kevin McMahon and drummer Cathy Green’s efforts, and they seem very flat and tired, with much of this seeming to emanate from singer Steve Lucas, who, despite the very rock star attire, gives off the air of a man who doesn’t really want to be there.

After finally getting to see them play in Melbourne in 2008, really enjoying it and understanding why they;ve got the reputation they have in Australia, they don’t do justice to themselves tonight in front of a crowd that seems smaller than the one that was watching Sixfthick and which seems to empty the longer the night goes on. It’s a shame as they can do so much better.

A few more photos on Flickr.

X

Sixfthick
 

Another chance to catch up with DZ, this time away from the small stage of The Troubadour, supporting I Heart Hiroshima at The Zoo.  I had hoped that the larger venue, larger stage and better lighting might make it an improved photographic experience but it ends up being almost the opposite, with the band being swallowed up by the much bigger stage and the strobe light having much less of an impact in the smaller confines of The Troubadour.  So I stuck with shorter shutter speeds and didn’t really try to get any of the multiple exposures that I had done before when seeing them at two Troubadour shows, a headline 1am show and supporting Philadelphia Grand Jury.

Tonight’s show is the launch of ‘Shakeytown’, the first single from their second album, ‘The Rip’ and it’s a great little pop song and a really cool and clever video clip. 

However, the video highlights the most annoying thing about photographing the band, with Susie providing all the focus and Matthew and Cameron both shoegazing with their eyes shut most of the time. I did manage to finally get a few of Matthew giving some eye contact at the start of the last song but guess will have to wait for another time to get something from Cameron.

A few more photos on Flickr.

I Heart Hiroshima

DZ

Stemford Hiss

Waiting outside The Riverstage before the gates open you can’t but get a feeling that there’s a heavy cloud of middle-class liberal guilt in the air, watching the white, middle-aged masses gather with their rugs and picnic baskets to celebrate one of modern Australia’s protest singers. But I guess I am sat outside the gate to the expensive front sections of seating closest to the stage.

Crowd segregation is another one of the elements of modern concert-going that we could all do without. Instead of the front of concerts being for those committed enough to buy their tickets as soon as they go on sale and/or queue early and wait in place for hours to hold the best positions, it’s now all about how big your wallet is. It’s no longer about freedom of choice to choose to get the best position possible and all about how much you are willing to pay for the privilege. Cannot Buy My Soul? Maybe. But if you pay more you’ll get a much better view of it.

Photographing tonight is a less than ideal situation, only being allowed to photograph from the mixing desk lest we spoil anyone in the expensive seat’s view, until the finalé (From Little Things Big Things Grow) when we’re escorted to the front to photograph all the evening’s artists on the stage together. However, even then you can hear snide comments from those in the front row. There is no pit to speak of, instead it’s just the small gap between the front row and the stage, so there’s no room to move and wherever you end up is where you stay, whether you’ve got a decent vantage point to shoot from or not.

Reading some of the reviews for tonight’s concert the following week, it’s clear that there was a definite divide between those in the seats and those in the general admin areas. Apparently a lot of people thought that with it being an outside mini-festival, the likes of Bernard Fanning, John Butler and Missy Higgins would be playing some of their own songs and not just singing someone else’s, which probably explains a lot of the background chatter from the back of the place.

Musically it was a really enjoyable night and whoever was doing the sound should be responsible for doing the sound at every outside concert and festival in Brisbane; it was really superb.

The photos are largely forgettable, but there’s a few more on Flickr.

This time last year I blogged that 2008 had been a hectic photographic year, little knowing that 2009 would be even more extreme, and end up looking as follows:

1. Stars
2. Black Keys
3. All Tomorrow’s Parties - Mt Buller
4. All Tomorrow’s Parties – Brisbane Powerhouse: Fuck Buttons, Dead Meadow & Afrirampo
5. Bon Iver
6. Laughing Clowns
7. Jeff Beck
8. Gareth Liddiard
9. Gary Numan
10. Summer Tones
11. The Stranglers
12. Andrew Morris
13. Duke Spirit
14. The Kills
15. Evan Dando
16. Easy Star All-Stars
17. Giants of Science
18. School of Seven Bells
19. UnderExposed – 25 April
20. The Drones
21. UnderExposed – 1 May
22. UnderExposed – 2 May
23. 4ZZZ Rumble Rock
24. Screamfeeder
25. Violent Soho
26. Brisbane Sounds
27. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead
28. Red Riders
29. DZ
30. The Middle East
31. Ladytron
32. Flipper
33. Deerhunter
34. Wolf & Cub
35. Washington
36. Incremental Records Launch
37. + 1 Records Launch Night
38. Philadelphia Grand Jury
39. Timothy Carroll
40. Splendour In The Grass
41. Cannot Buy My Soul
42. I Heart Hiroshima
43. X
44. Alice Cooper
45. Monster Magnet
46. Violent Soho
47. Big Sound 2009 – Weds
48. Big Sound 2009 – Thurs
49. Big Sound – Friday
50. Frankly Festival
51. Van Dyke Parks
52. DZ
53. Spiral Stairs
54. Vivian Girls
55. Tiny Vipers
56. Butcher Birds
57. Yves Klein Blue
58. All Tomorrow’s Parties – Nightmare Before Xmas
59. All Tomorrow’s Parties – Inbetween Days
60. All Tomorrow’s Parties – 10 Years of ATP

As last year, I managed to meet my target for the year of 52 gigs (i.e. an average of one a week), although in retrospect I’ve really struggled to keep on top of it this year, as can be seen from all the blogs and photos I’ve yet to sort out. I’ve been out of Brisbane for about 5 months during the year, which meant that I’ve never managed to catch up with the backlog.

Counting up the number of acts I’ve photographed during 2009, the total is a somewhat scary 259, with the end of the year’s ATP adventure resulting in 60 bands being photographed in 10 days (although I didn’t shoot many bands at the 10 Years of ATP weekend as didn’t have a photo pass but security were fine with me taking my camera in and no one seemed bothered by me photographing from the crowd).

In terms of venues, The Zoo has again been my second home during the year, with 17 of the gigs being there, with The Troubadour a distant second with eight gigs.  The plan to try and get some bigger gigs has largely been a FAIL, with only three gigs at The Tivoli (and none since March), two gigs at the  BCC (Jeff Beck and Alice Cooper), one at The Riverstage (Kev Carmody: Cannot Buy My Soul, which was a mixing desk shoot apart from the last song) and NONE at the BEC.  The full breakdown for 2009 is shown in the pie chart below.

On top of the gigs I photographed there’s another 12 gigs I went to as a non-photographing punter, including Big Day Out, ATP in Brisbane, Neil Young, The Who (both at the BEC) and Iron Maiden in Christchurch.

Photographic highlights of the year include:

• All things All Tomorrow’s Parties – From the Mt Buller weekend, which was one of the best music festivals I’ve ever attended to getting to photograph a UK festival at the Nightmare Before Xmas weekend to seeing and photographing Dirty Three on a tiny stage in front of about 100 people;
• Getting to show a load of my photos from the last few years at the UnderExposed exhibition;
• The complete insanity of photographing Flaming Lips at Splendour, wondering if being in a photo pit to photograph a band will ever be as good; and
• Being given artistic direction by Van Dyke Parks when taking his and Robert Schneider’s photograph at the Big Sound conference.

Overall gig of the year was probably All Tomorrow’s Parties at Mt Buller, which being at the end of the first week in January set the bar ridiculously high for the rest of the year.  Other exceptional performances were of Flaming Lips, The Specials and Gutter Twins at Splendour, The Who at the BEC (which I was really disappointed at not getting to photograph), Van Dyke Parks’ exquisite show upstairs at The Powerhouse, seeing My Bloody Valentine three times in three days at ATP Nightmare Before Xmas and Dirty Three three times in a week, including an impromptu, unrehearsed run through of ‘Horse Stories’ in front of about 100 people at ATP Inbetween Days.  Best local show I saw was DZ’s 1am show at The Troubadour at the end of May.

Musical lows of the year were again so many mediocre-at-best bands at Splendour, with the weekend largely saved by Flaming Lips’ unforgettable show and another fairly poor bill at the Big Day Out, although not as bad as the 2010 festival line-up.

Photographic lows? Any gig with rubbish/no lighting, which was probably most of them…as usual.  And missing out on photographing a lot of the big gigs and festivals I really wanted to photograph.

And finally, personal favourite photos from the year include the following images, although there might be a load more in all the photos I’ve still yet to go through:

Back to Brisbane next week, although don’t have any gigs lined up for January yet.  Will hopefully be getting a bit further through catching up on all the photos and blogs from this year in the meantime.

Happy New Year.