When the Pixies were last out here on tour, back in 2007,  I saw them play at both of the V Festivals: the Sydney one as a paying punter, the Gold Coast one with a photographer’s pass.  I am a huge fan of the band as anyone who knows me will testify, especially if they knew me back in the late 80s/early 90s when they were releasing new albums with new songs on them and touring them, so getting to see them twice in two days after such a long gap was a hugely exciting affair.  But in the end they left me crushingly disappointed; Black Francis’ voice sounded completely shot and the sight of them really going through the motions, playing with no sense of passion or happiness at even being there, and with the band tensions really obvious for all to see,  left a really bad taste in my mouth .

Three years later and the opportunity to redeem themselves presented itself, with all the glowing reviews for their Doolittle 20th Anniversary Tour making seeing them on the Australian leg of the tour look like it might be a promising prospect.  I still wasn’t convinced though, partly because of the V Festival experience and partly because Doolittle isn’t either of their two best albums (three albums if you count Come On Pilgrim separately, as opposed to the CD version where it’s on the same disc as Surfer Rosa).  It was largely seeing Kim Deal sing so sweetly with The Breeders at Ten Years of ATP back in December that made me start to sway.

I was still holding fast from buying a ticket when the very late opportunity came to photograph them.   Originally the promoter sent out a communiqué saying that there would be no complimentary tickets available for review – the tour has been such a shameless grab for cash, why would they make tickets available for review when they could sell those seats and keep the money? –  and the photo opportunity only came through the day before the concert, the first of two dates in Brisbane, the second show 12 days later.  Being the BCC it meant being escorted out of the venue after our song allocation (which we were told in advance would be songs 5, 6, 7 and 8: the first four songs from Doolittle – Debaser, Tame, Wave of Mutilation, I Bleed) so it provided the perfect opportunity to see whether it was worth paying for a ticket and going to the second date; a try before you buy deal, with being able to take some photos thrown in for good measure.  In the end it turned out to be an even better deal as we were allowed to watch the first four songs (Doolittle singles’ B-sides Dancing The Manta Ray, Weird At My School, Bailey’s Walk and Manta Ray) from the side of the stage before being let into the pit for the four we were allowed to photograph.  Eight songs to be impressed, for the band to live up to all the rave reviews and show me that the V Festival experience was just a couple of bad shows that managed to be on consecutive days and to convince me to shell out $90 + BF for a ticket to the second show.

But watching those eight songs nothing had changed since V Festival; Black Francis’ voice is still shot and doesn’t do justice to the songs, there’s still a sense of going through the motions, no passion or real happiness at even being there on stage in front of a few thousand people.  And yet I seem to be in a tiny minority, with everyone else who was there apparently having the time of their lives.

I found Time Off’s review of the show interesting, particularly the concluding sentence: “The hearts of some band members might not have been in tonight’s performance, but the production, the amazing music and the mystique of this truly influential act combine to make it a wonderfully compelling evening nonetheless“.  Surely if you’re going to see a live show and the hearts of some band members aren’t in the performance, especially when according to the review it’s the lead singer, it can’t render the night anything but a disappointment at best, a travesty at worst; you’d be better off saving your money, staying at home with their back catalogue, listening to the songs sounding their very best, and written, recorded and released when their hearts were in it.

I wanted to make sure that it just wasn’t nostalgia that was clouding my judgement so checked up on old and new performances of the songs on YouTube.  Is there anyone who can seriously compare and contrast any of the following live video clips and tell me that the 2009/2010 versions sound better than the earlier versions?  Black Francis’ voice is magnificent in the early clips; those guttural screams at the end of Tame send shivers up my spine every time I watch it.  It’s just a tragedy to listen to it now, ravaged by age and no longer able to reach those high notes, even though there is some power left in his voice,  no longer that amazing sound – with THAT scream – that made him one of my favourite singers.

Debaser 1990

Debaser 2009

Tame 1990

Tame 2009

Dead/I Bleed 1989

I Bleed 2009

Dead 2010

There’s plenty of more amazing live clips on YouTube, including some really early 1986 stuff, which I recommend you check out.  And if you haven’t already got it, the Pixies at the BBC album, a compilation of tracks from live sessions that they did for the BBC, mainly for John Peel’s show, is well worth a listen, even if just for their cover of The Beatles’ Wild Honey Pie.  It’s 9:15pm now and Pixies will be starting their second show in Brisbane right about now.  As for me, I’m happier sat on the couch watching them in their prime, trying to not let the last few times I’ve seen them ruin all the happy memories I have of them.

Some more photos on Flickr.

Normally when I photograph a show I’ll try and write some quick notes the next morning to help me when I finally get around to writing the blog post.  However, I have gone through a massive phase of not doing this, meaning trying to write posts more than five months after they happened.

The most interesting thing about this show is that I can’t remember much about Vivian  Girls other than that the bassist is really cute and they had copious amounts of reverb.  I can’t remember much about Nova Scotia other than they stuck out like a bit of a sore thumb on the bill by being way too proficient on their instruments.  And I can’t remember much about Feathers, other than thinking that this might have been the first time that I’d seen them with Susan drumming.

But over 5 months later I can still remember that Jad Fair told The Legend! (better known as fading music critic and fringe dweller Everett True) that there are only two types of song – songs about love and songs about monsters – and that the Legend! was more of less drunk between the ages of 18 and 4o-something (other than one year in his late 30s from memory).  This was my first experience of seeing The Legend! live, having missed him play a couple of times with The Young Liberals previously and I was quite impressed.  He was playing with The Deadnotes, who  provided a musical backing that really suited the prosed-based monologue vocals.  That I can remember more of the music from their set months later than anything else that happened on this night speaks volumes and goes a long way to validating Everett True’s view that if you’re given a platform you should at least be memorable.  Something like that anyway.  I’m sure he’ll be along to confirm or otherwise in a bit.

Some more photos on Flickr.

Vivian Girls

The Legend! & The Deadnotes

Nova Scotia

Feathers

I didn’t quite know what to expect from a HEALTH show.  I probably wasn’t expecting it to be the most scenester show I’ve probably been to in the time I’ve been in Brisbane, with the majority of the crowd looking like they’ve just walked out of the pages of Vice.  There’s a very scenester-looking photographer in the queue in front of me, a Canon 5D mk II slung over his shoulder, who is getting the guy on the door to phone up the promoter to try to get a +2 added against his name on the guest list.  He succeeds in getting a +1, leaving me thinking if any photographer has ever got a +2, when most struggle to even get a +1 and if any other photographers get the door to phone up the promoter to try to get additional names added against their name.

The +1 is a bit of a bug bear for most photographers.  Whereas the reviewers generally get a +1  to almost all shows, photographers don’t for the most part and at the bigger shows are escorted into the photo pit just before the start and out of the building after 3 songs.  In the name of fairness, publications probably should ensure that the photographer gets the reviewer’s +1 but this doesn’t ever seem to happen.

Back at the show, Stature::Statue play a really decent set.  Been a long time since I last saw them (probably/possibly at Ric’s a lifetime ago) and they surprise me by being a lot better than I remember; maybe the result of one of those random nights at Ric’s when the music is more something that’s happening in the background rather than being the main reason for being there.

HEALTH set up with minimal fuss.  And then they start and it really wasn’t what I was expecting. It’s really fast and furious, everything is at 100 mph and the combination of instruments and pedals is all held together by BJ Miller’s really hard, really superb drumming.  But almost as soon as it starts it’s over, all done and dusted after maybe 40 minutes.  And in the long-term that sentiment may prove to be the band’s epitaph.  They’re very much a band of the moment and it’s hard to see where they go next.  Listening to Get Colour, their second album, you can’t help but think that in five years time it’ll sound really dated.  Time will of course tell but it’s hard to tell whether their primary fan base will have moved on to the next big thing by the time they come around again.

A few more photos on Flickr.

HEALTH

Stature::Statue

Back in the good old days of film cameras, one of the harder things to keep a check on, in addition to whether any of the photos you’d taken were actually any good, was how many photos you’d taken of each band member.  Many a frustrating Sunday morning was spent developing films in the darkroom only to find that whereas you’d got a load of good shots of the guitarist/bassist/drummer you’d only actually managed to take 5 shots of the singer, in four of which they had their eyes shut and where the fifth photo wasn’t very good.  This problem would seemingly have been consigned to history with the benefits of instant LCD review screens on the back of DLSRs.

But in reviewing tonight’s Dirty Three photos I find that the split of shots between the three members must be something like 65% Jim White, 30% Warren Ellis and 5 % Mick Turner.   What feels even stranger is that part way through the second song (The Restless Waves) I change to the longer 70 – 200mm zooms to specifically get photos of Jim White as it feels like I haven’t been focusing on him at all with the wider 28 - 70 lens, using it to try to get wider shots of the whole band and for full length portratits of Warren Ellis.

One day I will finally get around to blogging about seeing the Dirty Three three times in a week at All Tomorrow’s Parties at Butlins Minehead, and in particular their impromtu, unrehearsed run through of Horse Stories on a tiny stage in front of about 100 people at ATP Inbetween Days, the four days between the two weekend festivals for people who wanted to hang around for the week.  And when I do get around to blogging about that night I will tell you about my Jim White epiphany, seeing him play on a knee high stage and realising just what a phenomenal drummer he is, possibly the best drummer I’ve ever seen.  Watching him play is utterly mesmerising, as he switches between sticks, brushes and beaters, adds tambourines to his kit mid-beat and then removes them again.  At times it’s almost like there is no beat to speak of, it’s so loose but is is ultimately what makes the Dirty Three such an amazing live band.

More photos on Flickr.

I don’t think I’ve ever given a support band a separate post, normally just including the headliner and all the support band musings and photos all in the one post.  But tonight Ed Kuepper hinted that this might be the last time that we get to see Laughing Clowns and as it’s been such a pleasure seeing them a couple of times over the last year (at ATP Mount Buller and at GOMA) I thought they deserved a post of their very own.  Plus I really like some of the photos that I took of them tonight.

More photos on Flickr.

Still in photo and blog catch-up mode, this is the most overdue of the lot; last September’s boutique Frankly Festival at the Powerhouse, organised by Room40‘s Lawrence English.  It was a very eclectic line-up, with differing musical styles on show as well as the different geographical backgrounds of the acts on show.

An early highlight was Heinz Riegler, who I’d seen at many a show over the years but had never actually seen play.  His songs reminded me a lot of Robert Forster, with a similar spoken/sung delivery and a more narrative style of lyrics, but with an all female band (Sekiden‘s Seja, I Heart Hiroshima‘s Susie Patten and ex-Rational Academy‘s Meredith McHugh) to soften it out.

Seja was ok; The Pancakes were fun; Jamie Stewart was possibly the most intense thing you’re ever likely to see at an indie music festival, the Xiu Xiu song ‘Dear God I Hate Myself‘ being just one example of this during his set; Nikasaya and Tenniscoats were lovely; I Heart Hiroshima were as good as ever; Qua & Supermelody wasn’t really my cup of tea; and Peaches played a DJ set mostly in the dark.  It was interesting seeing the change in the audience demographic over the course of the afternoon (the festival ran from 2pm to 8pm), with the indie kids that had been there earlier on slowly being outnumbered by a more dance crowd that were there just for Peaches.

Although my memory of specific details from the day are more than sketchy, as I didn’t write any notes down the next day when I was downloading the photos, I do remember it being a really enjoyable and relaxing day, although for the me the best was to come, with Van Dyke Parks playing an evening show upstairs at the Powerhouse.

More photos on Flickr.

Peaches

Qua + Supermelody

I Heart Hiroshima

Nikasaya + Tenniscoats

Jamie Stewart

The Pancakes

Seja

Heinz Riegler

Amazingly, this week was is the fourth anniversary of me starting to do a regular photo blog, first on Myspace and now on This Is Not A Photo Opportunity. The actual anniversary was on Wednesday but although I’d drafted up 90% of this post it’s been a hectic week and I forgot to finish it and publish it. In those four years I have written 282 blog posts, with this post now being number 283.  I guess the big news for the blog over the year was it being archived by the State Library.

Having lost my way with the site last year, there’s still a back log of blogs from last year to write, including what I can remember from 10 days of All Tomorrow’s Parties at Minehead (where I’m really regretting not writing down some notes and hoping that going through all the photos will remind me of what happened), plus all the gigs from the last month that I still need to sort out.  I live in hope that one day I will be back up to date.  The trouble is that it rarely stops and there are weeks where I might write a few posts but also go to a few gigs and add more to the bottom of the list, meaning little movement in the overall number still to be completed.  One day, one day… Although next up is five days at the East Coast Blues & Roots festival.

To celebrate/commiserate here ‘s a link to an interview I did last year with the Harmony In Discord blog.

Thanks for reading and thanks to all the people who have taken time to comment.

I recently blogged (in a backlog blog from last year) that one of the highlight’s of the Big Sound Conference gigs was Hunz’s show at X & Y Bar.  It seems to be a bit of a fallow time for bands in Brisbane at the moment so it’s always really good to discover something ‘new’ (he’s done two albums but was completely under my radar until his second album, which he recorded in 28 days as part of the PRM Challenge and made available for free download).

Walking into Ric’s tonight to see his first show of 2010, supporting Polaroid Fame at the ‘New’ Ric’s support band strat time of 7pm, I had to do a a double take, thinking that I’d somehow walked into the wrong place.  Ric’s has changed in the last couple of weeks since I was last there (for the Vegas Kings).  The wall opposite the stage is now a wall of mirrors, the whole place has been wallpapered in fancy red and gold wall paper, the backroom has been refitted with seating around the edge, the only posters for upcoming shows are on the wall behind the stage and mood lighting has been installed around the bar.  Sadly the art looks like it’s gone – it was free to exhibit art at Ric’s and my first Brisbane photo exhibition was there in 2006 and the Galaga machines have also gone from the backroom (although it looks like there might yet still be a place for them at Ric’s).

When i first moved to Ric’s I spent the majority of weekends there; a constant supply of free bands and it seemed to be the centre of Brisbane’s music scene.  Everytime you went in there you would see the same faces and most of the people I know I probably met at Ric’s for the first time.  But over the years it noticeably deteriorated as a place to spend time.  The atmosphere completely changed, and not for the better.  It was a constant source of annoyance;  the place was such a potential goldmine but so poorly managed that I ended up with a ‘What I would do if I owned Ric’s’ list in my head - both short-term and long-term plans.

The short term plan included  extending the serving area on the downstairs bar so that there was more than 50cm in which to get served and getting rid of the stools at the bar.  From a business point of view, the aim is to serve alcohol and having such a tiny serving area was ridiculous, particularly when they kept increasing the price of drinks, probably to make up for the fact that they weren’t selling the number of drinks they needed to.  I would have drunk a lot more in Ric’s if I could have but most of the time it was too difficult to get served, especially when a band was playing.  Getting rid of the barstools served two purposes; firstly they seemed to be used largely by the bar staff’s friends to chat to the bar staff, something I didn’t consider part of a good business model if I was paying wages to staff, and secondly they caused a massive bottleneck in the place.   My longer term plan was to change the whole layout – put the bar where the stage is, knock through kitchen area, open the whole place up and put the stage where the backroom is.

It’s good to see that some of these things have already been done by the new owners; the bar has been extended and the bar stools are gone.  Selling Toohey’s Five Seed cider, meaning that there is something other than the-battery-acid-better-known-as-Mercury Dry is an added bonus.  Although it looks like the art exhibitions might be gone for good, the Galaga machines have been moved out the back and it looks like the new owners, who also own RG’s the pub next door are also redeveloping the back of Ric’s into an additional outside drinking area.

The original plan tonight wasn’t to take any photos, just see Hunz’s set before heading over to The Zoo for The Mess Hall and Bridezilla but I just couldn’t resist taking a few quick shots.  During one song (I forget which one) he spends a lot of time leant low over his keyboard, with the very little light in Ric’s lighting him up really nicely.  However, by the time I decide that I will take a few photos, get the camera out the bag and turned on, the song has just about finished and he doesn’t spend much of the rest of the set over his keyboard.  Tonight is just old songs and although I don’t think he’s done the RPM Challenge this year I’m looking forward to hearing some new songs from him soon.

I haven’t been in the UK a whole lot since first coming out to Australia in 2004 but have managed to go see a few Australian bands during my brief visits up to London – the somewhat unlikely pairing of The Casanovas supported by The Grates (some awful photos of them) and also The Spazzys, with both gigs being at the Camden Barfly/Monarch back in 2005.

It’s always interesting/amusing to read the industry pages in the street press and find out that every Australian band that goes overseas has a successful tour; I can’t even remember anyone ever having a bad/unsuccessful time, even though playing the Camden Barfly is one of the lower rungs of the toilet circuit and has a capacity of maybe 250, not that any of the Australian bands I’ve seen there have come anywhere near selling it out, playing to a handful of Australian expats.  There are some notable exceptions of course, with the bigger Australian bands playing much larger places even though they’re completely unknown in the UK; my first experience of the name ‘Powderfinger’ was noting in the music press listings that they were playing two nights at Shepherds Bush Empire and wondering who on earth they could be to sell out two nights at the 2,000 capacity venue when I’d never heard of them before.  The big gigs by Australian acts have the reputation of being all things green & gold and Southern Cross, with never ending “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie” chants, something that’s going to dissuade the native population from usually going anywhere near.

Looking through the listings to see what’s on during my 10-day stay in London, there’s not a whole lot on; the week before and the week after my stay have much more going on.  But there’s a few solo support shows by Bluebottle Kiss‘ Jamie Hutchings and a couple by Yves Klein Blue.  Both are playing tonight, Hutchings at The Windmill in Brixton and YVB at The Social in the centre of town, just around the corner from Oxford Circus, but being a Brisbane band, Yves Klein Blue win out.

They’re the first band on and have just started when I get there.  The Social is a tiny venue, probably the narrowest I’ve ever been in (imagine if The Troubadour was half as wide as it is and you’ve got an idea), with a tiny stage at the back which you more or less have to walk over to get to the toilets.  It’s also very dark; small clubs the world over are all the same.

And they’re ok and go down pretty well with the crowd (being a Sunday it seems to be full largely of students).  Often with young bands, especially those on their first album it’s good to see them playing shorter 30 minute, support sets as opposed to trying to fill a headline slot without the amount of good material to do so.  So YKB stick to their strengths and their best songs and thankfully avoid murdering Born To Run tonight.

What is interesting is that they’re giving out free CD-Rs with a few songs on them, complete with B&W photocopied covers (although I don’t actually manage to get one, even though Michael comments on my Drones T-shirt as he walks past); doing the whole DIY thing when you’re signed to a label with strong affiliations to the world’s biggest major label wasn’t something I was expecting and in a way it seems strange to be touring in the UK but not selling any merch, including your debut album that was recorded in LA, to help fund the tour (although I’m not sure if they have been at the other gigs they’ve played).