Gah. Denied pit access for kraftwerk. Told front of house. Mixing desk know nothing about it. Shoot from crowd #

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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…

There was a two-song limit in place for photographing Joan As Police Woman. But not something sensible like Songs One and Two or Two and Three; instead it was the slightly bizarre pairing of Songs Two and Five. In retrospect there was some method to this madness, as these songs gave the differing opportunites of photographing Joan at her side-of-stage keyboard (Song One) and photographing her mid-stage whilst playing guitar (Song Five). The main downside to this arrangement was that it meant concentrating on which number song she was up to so as to not miss being able to take some photos.

It was the most full I’ve seen the Globe and it was a very interesting crowd that she pulled in. I never would have expected a middle-age woman in a nasty, very 80s looking, fire-hazard-of- an-all-in-one jumpsuit and pink boots combination to have attracted the audience that she did… It would have made for a good variety of social pics…

The lighting wasn’t up to the usual Globe standards, with lots of red backlighting aimed at the back of her head. And she was another one of those singers who always has their eyes shut. Musically it was probably a bit too jazz-caberet for me, so I only ended up staying for a couple more songs after I had to stop photographing. You can get hold of her performance from the Turn It Up To 10 blog.

My work recently located from Milton to a new 12 storey building in the Valley. I ended up being given a corner seat on the 12th floor. My view kind of looks like this.

Sometimes it’s hard to get much work done…

This night was one of those very rare occasions at The Zoo when you’re given a photo pass and told “first three, no flash”. Whilst I can deal with this “industry standard”, it is a pain when it’s at a small venue without a photo pit and without much in the way of lighting.

Support act tonight were Bluejuice. I wasn’t that impressed for the three songs I saw them for at Splendour In The Grass and having seen a full set I’m even less impressed. With all the “hey, hey, hey”s, the handclapping and the cheesy keyboard sound they sound like a band that got lost on the way to a Greek wedding. This isn’t helped by the two frontmen’s stage presence, which makes them a couple of pork pie hats and a couple pairs of sunglasses away from being some sort of bad tribute to the Blues Brothers. Much is made of Jake Stone’s (he’s even called Jake….) stage antics, but these people really need to go and sixfthick play sometime.  Despite the reputation he was fairly quiet tonight, even making the point that he didn’t have to throw himself around to have a good time.  Or maybe that was just a cover-up for a not-very-rock-n-roll excuse of making sure he saved himself for the weekend’s sold-out Sounds Of Spring festival in the city.  Sure, they may have had the 2nd most played song on Triple J during 2007 and been Number 11 on their Hottest 100 run-down for the year, but that just goes to show that people have no taste.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from We Are Scientists. Sometimes when you’re not quite sure how well known a band is, and wonder how big a crowd they’re going to pull at $55 a pop, you have images of them playing to the proverbial three men and a dog. So it was a real surprise to see that they’d pulled a sizeable crowd, although a bit disappointing that it was probably bigger than the night before’s New Pornographers gig at the same venue.

In typical fashion, the “first three, no flash” meant that they played in a combination of the dark and uber-red lighting. Live their sound is a lot beefier, than I had expected. They did seem to front-load their set with their better known tunes, although I didn’t stay for the whole set to see how much of an impact it had; a combination of having seen enough, tiredness and wanting to get back and try (and fail…) to get Big Day Out tickets when they went on sale at midnight. I managed to get some from Ticketmaster the next morning but am always open to offers of a BDO photo pass, what with BDO being the one major Australian festival that I have yet to photograph.  So feel free to contact me if you have a spare photo pass going for the Gold Coast show…

We Are Scientists

Bluejuice

 

I confess: bar a tune or two, New Pornographers were a band I mainly knew by reputation and recommendation. 100 or so minutes and two encores later I’m a true convert with a copy of their latest album, ‘Challengers‘ in my bag and money burning a hole in my pocket until I can get myself down to Rocking Horse to get started on their back catalogue. They might have butchered the Go-Betweens’ ‘Love Goes On!’, but other than that it was a pretty perfect evening of music. Which is more than can be said for the photography…

There’s something of a fine line when it comes to photographing gigs; do too many and you end up feeling tired and jaded. But do too few and you really feel off the pace, and this was something that I really felt tonight. Although it had only been about 2½ weeks since the gigs I went to whilst down In Melbourne, and only about 3½ weeks since my last Brisbane gig, it was only my second gig in the city since mid-August. What surprised me even more was finding that it was the first time photographing at The Zoo, easily my most regular haunt, since The Audreys back in May.

Feeling very off the pace was a frustrating feeling, further compounded by both A.C. Newman and Kathryn Calder singing and playing with their eyes tightly shut for just about the whole gig. I was desperately trying to get shots during the milliseconds when they flashed an eyeball, but apart from a couple of shots it proved to be largely a futile exercise.

Having seen Sixfthick and Rollerball the night before, the weekend of Brisbane-In-Melbourne continues back at The Ding Dong Lounge with Gentle Ben And His Sensitive Side. And in a role reversal from last weekend in Brisbane, Kim Salmon (albeit playing solo and without The Surrealists) is supporting.

Gentle Ben was showing no signs of the Sixfthick gig the night before; I often wonder how he does it, especially when Sixfthick do things like their upcoming European tour and play 16 gigs in 16 days. That’s gotta hurt after a few days without a break.  One of these days I’m going to have to crash a Sixfthick tour and do some more tour photography, even of it’s just a few days down in Melbourne or Sydney.  It’s been just over a year since I was away in Melbourne with Butcher Birds, so about time I did it again.   

Tonight’s gig was for a 7 inch launch, which I didn’t realise they were releasing. Good to hear they’ve been recording again and can’t wait until the next album. In retrospect I probably should have bought a copy of the single, but not having a record player in Australia would mean a long wait until I could get to listen to it.  I miss my record player.  And my approximately 2,000 record collection…