Future Music Festival @ Doomben Racecourse, 03.03.2012 – Part 2
Back at the Flamingo Stage, The Rapture sound, look and feel like a band that’s well past its prime and who are not really enjoying the experience either. I can’t remember ever seeing Fatboy Slim play before but he’s another of the day’s disappointments. He takes an almost student disco approach to his set, playing [...]
Future Music Festival @ Doomben Racecourse, 03.03.2012 – Part 1
Future Music Festival is more than just the vileness of the masses, there’s also some live music taking place and some photos to be taken. Hanging outside the festival and watching the midday carnage of people being attended to by the medical services, isn’t my idea of fun but, as with the last time I [...]
Soundwave 2012 @ RNA Showgrounds, 25.02.2012 – Part 3
Photographically, Slipknot are the band of the day. They’re just a photographer’s dream; the aesthetics, the on-stage dynamics of their show, great lighting and a crowd that’s going nuts on the other side of the barrier. Musically, I’m less sure but then again Slipknot are just another one of those 90s bands that just completely [...]
Soundwave 2012 @ RNA Showgrounds, 25.02.2012 – Part 2
There’s another small window of opportunity between bands so I make my way down to check out Stage 3 for the first time, where Underoath are due to start at 3pm. By 3:15pm the band still haven’t started and so I end up going back to the main stage for Bush. The crowd has visibly shrunk from the one that [...]
Soundwave 2012 @ RNA Showgrounds, 25.02.2012 – Part 1
Working in an office block that overlooks the RNA showgrounds, I get to see the festival site take shape over the week leading up to Soundwave. However, come Friday afternoon, even as a veteran of far too many wet Glastonburys and Readings, looking out of the office window at the dark mid-afternoon skies and the [...]
Laneway 2012 @ RNA Showgrounds, 28.01.2012 – Part 3
Disappointingly Feist (6:20pm start) has decreed that there will be no photographers in the photo pit during her set. I would have liked to have photographed her but in protest go and see Twin Shadow instead. I do go back to catch the last couple of Feist’s songs and snipe a few last-minute photos from out [...]
Laneway 2012 @ RNA Showgrounds, 28.01.2012 – Part 2
The next three stage clash of the afternoon pits DZ Deathrays (3:35pm start) against Laura Marling (3:50pm start) and Girls (3:55pm start). I was always going to see DZ Deathrays and the fact that (a) I’ve photographed Laura Marling before and she was boring; and (b) Girls start five minutes later, meaning I can spend [...]
Laneway 2012 @ RNA Showgrounds, 28.01.2012 – Part 1
This year’s Laneway Festival was another one of those occasions when I didn’t scribble down any notes afterwards. In part this was due to the always unwise reasoning that makes me think I’ll easily remember everything that happened over the day and in part because it was hard to come away from Laneway thinking much [...]
Big Day Out @ Gold Coast Parklands, 22.01.2012 – Part 3
If the lunchtime overlapping of Cage The Elephant, Parkway Drive, Best Coast and Dune Rats was an annoyance, the worst clash of the whole day has to be the one between Mariachi El Bronx on the Hot Produce stage and Battles on the Essential Stage, with only five minutes between the start times for the two acts. Given [...]
Big Day Out @ Gold Coast Parklands, 22.01.2012 – Part 2
There’s been a lot of criticism about this year’s Big Day Out lineup, in particular just how many acts have been quickly recycled from last year’s festival lineups. It does seem worse than in previous years as the number of quickly recycled overseas acts has increased but (at least to me) it’s always been a [...]
Big Day Out @ Gold Coast Parklands, 22.01.2012 – Part 1
Having only finally been accredited to photograph Big Day Out for the first time last year, at the seventh attempt of trying, 2012 finds me back there again with little difficulty. Maybe the heavily-criticised line-up helped dissuade photographers from applying this year to cover it. With there being no Sunset Sounds this year, after the pre-Brisbane [...]
Bon Iver @ The Tivoli, 15.03.2012
I photographed Bon Iver the last time he played in Brisbane, at the same venue as he’s playing tonight, except this time around he’s playing three sold out nights at The Tivoli versus the one show back in 2009. It was a good show, a surprising show in a lot of ways as I didn’t think much [...]
Brian Setzer’s Rockabilly Riot @ The Tivoli, 28.03.2012
Having photographed Duran Duran a couple of weeks ago, requesting to cover Brian Setzer’s Rockabilly Riot Tour was going back even further into my musical past. Considering that The Stray Cats hit in the big time in 1980 and I was 8, my musical history doesn’t go a whole lot earlier. Having put in for it, it [...]
Dirty Three @ The Tivoli, 22.03.2012
Tonight’s support act, Lost Animal, are already playing when I get to The Tivoli. There’s no one in the photo pit and I don’t check to see whether it’s still in the first three songs. They continue to play for a good while afterwards so maybe I should have checked as I might have been OK to [...]
Duran Duran @ BEC, 17.03.2012
Although I don’t really put in for many shows at the BEC (it’s such a long way to go to hang around waiting for a band and then get kicked out after three songs and have to come all the way back again) I just really fancied covering Duran Duran for a bit of old time nostalgia. [...]
First Aid Kit + Little Scout @ The Zoo, 16.03.2012
As is becoming a habit for me, I don’t get there in time to see Big Strong Brute and as the actual times have been changed from those advertised I also manage to miss the start of Little Scout. The band say that they haven’t played for six months but I think I probably saw them [...]
Real Estate + Feathers @ The Zoo, 13.03.2012
Running late again, I get to The Zoo twenty minutes after Tight Slip are due to start but with still another ten minutes left of their set. I can hear them playing as I walk up to the venue’s front door, but in the time it takes to walk up the stairs, get my hand [...]
Wild Flag + Love Of Diagrams + Blank Realm @ The Zoo, 11.03.2012
By the time I get to The Zoo, Blank Realm have already started. Walking up the stairs of the venue they already sound really good but then I realise that I’ve probably seen them most often at Woodland with its terrible sound. They’ve always been good and I’ve always really enjoyed seeing them but everything [...]
SIX
Amazingly another year has rolled by and it’s the sixth anniversary of the first blog post I ever wrote. In those six years I have written 449 blog posts, with this post now being the big 450. This time last year I was up to 362 published posts so it’s been a really productive year of writing, [...]
St Vincent @ The Hi-Fi, 10.03.2012
Tonight gig marks a special occasion in that I’m trying out my new camera for the very first time. I only bought a new memory card for it yesterday (it takes a completely different type of memory card to my previous camera, which means that I’m going to have to go out at some point [...]
Harvest @ The Riverstage, 19.11.2011 – Part 3
Having only seen the first three songs when Mogwai played Splendour back in July, needing to rush off for one final walk to the Amphitheatre stage for Kanye West’s headline slot on the first night of the festival, I’m in exactly the same situation at Harvest. Someone really needs to bring them out for another [...]
Black Lips + Tiny Migrants @ The Zoo, 02.03.2012
It’s the day after the night before. With no 11:25pm Beenleigh train, I have to hang around to 11:55pm to get home and the train is delayed due to a “police incident at Alderley”, making it another 20 minutes late. By the time I get home it’s just before 1am and there’s a big day at work with [...]
Neon Indian @ The Zoo, 01.03.2012
Having accepted a last minute request to photograph Jessie J over the other side of town at The Riverstage, I miss both of tonight’s support bands – Argentina (given Sean Penn’s, Roger Walter’s and now Morrissey’s comments, I wonder what their view of the Falkland Islands is?) and YesYou. I get to The Zoo just as Neon Indian [...]
Jessie J + Professor Green + Amy Meredith @ The Riverstage, 01.03.2012
I didn’t put into cover tonight (just in case you were wondering) but got a last minute email the day before enquiring whether I was available to cover it. Although I had another gig in The Valley already arranged for the night, the earlier Riverstage shows, with their 10pm curfews) meant that there was time to fit this in [...]
