The continuing series of first time visits to new/refurbished venues continues with a first time expedition to Triffid. I miss living in the inner suburbs close to the city, and if I still lived where I use to live in Teneriffe, this venue would have basically been at the end of my road, within a 10 minute walk. Who knows, I might have even offered my services to be venue photographer.
Although I don’t venture upstairs to the balcony at the back of the room, my first impression is that I’m not sure if I’d really want to be there for a sold out show. It doesn’t feel like a 800 person venue, downstairs didn’t seem a lot bigger than the Zoo which I think is in the 500 person capacity region and I can’t imaging upstairs would hold that many people to make up the difference, at least not for a view of the stage.
Sadly, it’s The Horrortones last show. They haven’t said why they’re calling it a day, but I’m guessing that everyone is too busy with families and other adult commitments. In coming up to 10 years of being in Brisbane and thinking about photography and the bands I’ve photographed, I think music photographers have a limited shelf life in terms of being close to active bands and it probably is in the 7 – 10 years mark in most cases. Most bands start in when the members are in their 20s and by the time they’re heading into their 30s different life priorities take over and mean a lot less time to spend on musical endeavours. When I think back over the last 10 years, so many of those bands from 2005/2006/2007 that I used to see around the Valley, and obviously especially in the likes of Ric’s and 610, don’t exist anymore, and a lot less of the personnel who played in those bands are still active on regular basis. A new generation of bands comes through and brings with them a new generation of music photographers.
As I’m sure I’ve said before, most music photographers are usually only a couple of editors away from having no media accreditation for anything but the small local gigs at venues that don’t have any camera policies. Triffid doesn’t seem to have any camera restrictions, and this is obviously a good thing for people like me.
It’s still a shame for The Horrortones to be calling it a day. I always thought they’d be the sort of band that would play a show every now and then, even if it was just for Christmas or some other occasional on-off events.
Been a while since I last saw HITS, and I’m sure I say this every time but each time I’m blown away by just how good a live band they are. I treat myself to an early birthday present by buying a copy of Hikikomri on vinyl when I leave. When I get home I find that it doesn’t come with a download card, so, not actually having gotten around to buying a turntable in Australia yet, I’ve not actually listened to it yet. One of these days I will get around to buying myself a new turntable to play all these albums I keep buying [it finally happens at start of 2016, although I need to now buy a preamp for it]. I keep expecting vinyl to come with a download card as a mandatory inclusion these days, so it’s always frustrating when it doesn’t. Hikikomri can join my copies of Change Becomes Us by Wire and Lost Songs by Trail Of Dead as albums that I bought as mementos from gigs by the bands but haven’t yet actually heard.
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