This Is Not A Photo Opportunity

We Are Scientists + Bluejuice @ The Zoo

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

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 19th, 2008 at 11:00 pm. It is filed under Music Photography and tagged with Bluejuice, Brisbane, Chris Cain, Chugg, first three, Justin Edwards, Keith Murray, Minolta 5D, no flash, The Zoo, We Are Scientists, www.notaphoto.com. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.