Tag Archive for "The Tivoli"
One thing I often wonder about the move away from music as a physical product to a digital one is whether the same emotional attachment is there as it was for the older generation. It’s just not the ritualistic nature that used to exist – buying the album, looking at the photos on the inlay and reading the liner notes on the train back home, carefully taking the album out of its sleeve, the physical act of actual being able to hold it, checking for inscriptions on the vinyl, placing it on the turntable, lifting the stylus over to the edge and lowering the arm as gently as possible to not to made a sound when the needle and the vinyl connect, not forgetting the oh-so-important act of turning the record over to play the second side: Playing records was (and still is) one of life’s greatest pleasures. It’s not just the ritual, it’s the way music is listened to, even to the very fact that it instead of being listened to, it’s described as “consumed” now: How do you consume music? Listening habits have changed to the point where not only can you “obtain” my entire music collection in probably a day – whereas it taken me the best part of 30 years to collect – but you can carry it around with you and listen to it 24/7. Instead of music being something to be cherished in stolen moments it’s largely become something to fill the silence in every second of every waking hour of modern life.
September 1991. If push came to shove I reckon I could narrow it down to near enough the very day that I first heard Mazzy Star. 144 Brighton Grove, Fenham, Newcastle. A house that a year later I moved into, into the very room where I first heard Hope Sandoval sing. There are a lot of albums that I can remember hearing for the first time; some I can even remember buying. Does that still happen?
So almost nineteen years after hearing She Hangs Brightly for the first time, I finally get the opportunity to see Hope Sandoval perform live. However, she’s known for being “difficult” and the day’s events definitely prove that to be true.
I’m expecting it to be dark and as it’s all seated I’m guessing that I’ll probably have to photograph from the stairs but maybe naively that is all I’m expecting until an email from the Tour Manager via the Promoter arrives in my inbox mid-morning, telling me:
Although I’ve seen Mick Turner the previous evening at The Hangar, the original date for this show, I’m keen to see him again so get to The Tivoli at the advertised start time of 8pm only to be told that I can’t go in for the support acts (Dirt Blue Gene, who back Sandoval as The Warm Inventions are also on the bill) and to come back in 90 minutes for the headline set due to start at 9:40pm. Luckily the re-arranged date is the same night as the free-entry I Used To Skate Once 6 night at The Zoo so it gives me something to do for well in the meantime whilst Dirt Blue Gene and Mick Turner play. On the plus side, “the vibe” is good so I can photograph but it’s confirmed that I’m going to have to do this from upstairs.
When I get back to The Tivoli there’s a contract to sign, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t too bad but has a very interesting clause at the end written in big capitals:
ABSOLUTELY NO RELEASE TO ANY INTERNET SOURCE IS PERMITTED
Maybe that’ll explain why there’s not much in the way of photos in this blog.
Then Hope’s Tour Manager comes down to meet us and to “discuss procedure“. It’s quite sweet and enduring and yet it’s so laughable it’s hard to keep a straight face. There’s lots of talk about needing to work together so that we can all benefit from the experience. There’s lots of reinforcement of the ABSOLUTELY NO RELEASE TO ANY INTERNET SOURCE IS PERMITTED and any photos being put forward for possible publication have to be sent to them for approval before anything can be printed (Note: the Rave deadline has been and gone without anything being approved for publication to accompany the review, although the Tour Manager said he thought the photos I’d sent through were beautiful). We’re also told that normally they tour with a photographer and, as Brisbane is the first date of the tour, we’re the first photographers from outside “the organisation” to ever be allowed to photograph them. It’s also confirmed that we have to photograph from upstairs although we can shoot from either side of the balcony for the first three songs; I had been expecting a Ryan Adams shoot from the lighting desk at the back of the balcony so am thankful for small mercies.
However, when it comes to the low lighting stakes, Hope Sandoval wins by a country mile; she’s so far out in front of Ryan Adams it’s not true. The lighting is minimal to say the very least, with the bulk of it coming from a projector in front of the stage used to project Super 8, arty-type images onto the screen at the back of the stage. This is the main light on Hope Sandoval so for the three songs it becomes an exercise in waiting until there is a flash of light from the image being projected to take photos. This happens best in the second song, There’s A Willow, although at one point it coincides with her playing harmonica and at another with her resting her hand on the top of the mic so that it casts a huge shadow over her face.
Photographically, tonight is largely a waste of time. However, sitting down and watching the show after the first three songs is a different matter; from a punter’s point of view it’s sublime. Whilst being near useless for photographing in, the projections are beautiful to look at and the sound, in particular the vocals are stunning. Song-wise it’s a fairly short set at nine songs. Highlights are Around My Smile, which also would have been good to photograph as there was strong front light from the projector and really interesting silhouettes of Sandoval’s xylophone playing on the back screen, Trouble and set closer For The Rest of Your Life (the link is to a live version; it’ll give you an idea of the darkness).
Towards the end of the final song she just turns and walked off stage; the only time we’ve heard her talk tonight is when we overhear her asking the band whether she should come back later when there are problems with the bassist’s foldback speaker at the very start of the evening, before the band have even played a note. There’s no hello, no goodbye, no thanks for coming, no acknowledgement whatsoever. The setlists on stage have a two song encore of Satellite and Feeling of Gaze but after the clapping and calls for an encore finally die out, the music starts up over the PA and when a little after this the lights come back on it’s clear that there isn’t going to be any encore. It’s a shame, especially not getting to hear Feeling of Gaze, but at least it sounds like we got a much better deal than they did in Melbourne.
I guess if it had been someone I didn’t really want to see or if I’d been escorted out of the venue after three songs I would have been a lot more critical but I knew a bit about what to expect and it held me in good stead for the day’s events. It helped a lot that the show was fantastic, even though there was no encore and it was terrible to photograph. That she didn’t acknowledge the audience didn’t really matter to me although I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone play an entire show without saying a word. In many ways it was like seeing My Bloody Valentine at last year’s ATP and the first show being the best of the three they played even though the second and third shows were incident free. That there is a fallible human element can make it a much more memorable experience, more than a show where you feel the band is going through the motions, playing the same songs as they did the night before and the night before that, playing them note perfect but on autopilot, with the same ad libs and between song stories. And where’s the fun in going to see a band where you know exactly what you’re going to get night after night? I might have taken me nineteen years to finally get to see Hope Sandoval play live but hopefully it won’t be as long until the next time.
Generally a lot of the blame for restrictive terms and conditions when photographing concerts is laid at the door of management and promoters; an assumption that the artists leave the business side up to the people they pay to look after the business side of the industry and any bad treatment is carried out without their knowledge or approval. However, there are a number of artists who have a noticeable disdain for photographers – Nick Cave and Mike Patton for example. And Julian Casablancas has shown from his Australian tour that he can be added to the list of musicians that doesn’t like photographers either.
Photographically, the night doesn’t get off to the best start with no photographing of the support band (The Cairos. That’s ‘The Cairos’ for Mr Casablancas benefit as he manages to get their name wrong numerous times during his set when thanking them for playing). Luckily I receive the news via Twitter and so am able to make a detour to The Jubilee where the price of drinks is far more agreeable than at The Tivoli and where they also serve cider in pints). On arriving at the venue, PR inform the assembled photographers that it’s the first two songs but they’re 4 – 5 minute long songs so they’ll be plenty of time to photograph in. Never believe anything PR tell you. I had hoped to change lenses but there isn’t enough time to do that and get some close-up shots and no time to really get photos of all the other members of his band as the lighting is so poor that all the time is spent desperately trying to get something usable of him so that I can submit something to accompany the review. It sounds like it was a similar experience at all the other shows, plus at I read somewhere that at Sydney he insulted the photographers as they were leaving the pit.
Apparently at one point whilst he’s stood right in front of me he starts swinging his microphone around right in front of my face. Somehow I manage to completely miss this happening and only get told about it afterwards; I think I manage to miss it as it’s so dark that it’s pointless trying to photograph him when he’s standing that close as my camera focus wouldn’t lock on him. So I was probably ignoring him and using that time to get a few shots of the band whilst waiting for him to move back a bit into what little light there was. Afterwards, whilst watching the rest of the show, It does make me think about what would have happened if I had have been hit in the head by a swinging microphone or if it had hit my camera. Other than the fact I might have been in a world of pain/bleeding profusely/possibly unconscious from being hit by a solid lump of metal, would I have just shouted and sworn, thrown my camera at him or just gone the whole hog and jumped up on stage and given him a piece of my mind, no doubt making the news the following morning and being forever immortalised on YouTube via a collection of poor quality phone video clips.
Musically it’s nothing special and he only plays for around an hour, par for the course for someone with only one album of solo material. He bolsters songs from his Phrazes For The Young album with three Strokes songs (Hard To Explain, The Modern Age and You Only Live Once), which is a bit of a surprise. It’s not a surprise that these are the best received songs of the night. I’m surprised that The Tivoli is fairly full (although not sold out) as it was $75 a ticket. And I’m also surprised that the crowd is noticeably on the young side given that Is This It is not far short of 10 years old.
With The Stokes being booked as one of the headliners for this year’s Splendour, I wonder if the photographic experience will be any different. Considering the part image has played in putting him and his band where they are you’d think he’d be a bit more appreciative of photographers.
A few more photos on Flickr.
I was so looking forward to FINALLY getting so Wilco and so ever so slightly gutted when security kicked me out after three songs on the orders of the band’s management that photographers couldn’t stay for the show unless they had a separate ticket. In retrospect I should have shown them the email from the promoter which said I had a single ticket and used that to persuade them to let me stay for the show. (However, whereas I used to print out the confirmation from the promoter, thanks to email on my mobile I don’t bother these days and so only realised that they had told me this the next morning).
It was interesting to see that security were asking everyone coming in if they had any sort of camera on them, and telling them that they needed to leave it at the box office if they did, and that there were a lot of signs around the venue warning that if they caught you photographing with a camera phone you’d be kicked out.
It was even more interesting to hear this same information played through the PA using a pre-recording of a computerised voice after the lights had gone down, right before the band started. I guess Wilco really don’t like people photographing them.
A few more photos on Flickr.
Wilco
Liam Finn
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.
For a while tonight’s Marianne Faithfull show, the first of two at The Tivoli, didn’t look like it was going to happen as a reviewer interested in covering the show couldn’t be found, meaning that it’s a fairly last minute addition to my diary.
Looking around the venue, it’s a very mixed crowd; there’s obviously a lot more older folk than I normally see at most shows but also a surprising amount of fairly young people. Best of all is the guy in front row centre aisle seat who has a massive green mohican; definitely something I wasn’t expecting at a Marianne Faithfull show.
Tonight’s photo instructions are to photograph from the far right hand side against the wall. It’s a long way from the middle of the stage but worst of all is that there’s a music stand in the way. And of course after the first three songs not only is there a change in lighting from a lot of red to a lot of pure white light, but she unhooks her mic from its stand and moves forward, providing a clear, unobstructed view.
Her tour is in support of a new album of covers, Easy Come, Easy Go. Whoever was responsible for the A&R and directing her to potential songs has a lot of good taste, although much of this is lost on the audience, with hardly a sign of recognition as she introduces songs by Neko Case and The Decemberists. A mention of the name “Black Rebel Motorcycle Club” (whose song Salvation she covers) provides some amusement, but probably more at the absurdity of the band’s name rather than her story about being a founder member of the ‘Club’ as a result of her role in the 1968 film The Girl on a Motorcycle. She also plays older classics from the 60s and 70s, including As Tears Go By, Sister Morphine, Broken English and the previosuly banned in Australia Why D’Ya Do It?.
The show starts at 8pm, with no support act and is all over by 9:45pm, an exteremly rare event for a gig in Australia on a Saturday night. Persosnally I think it’s a stoke of genius, as it’s gives the option to either stay out or head home. In the end I decided to head home, with an early night meaning all the photos are edited and out the way by midnight.
A few more photos on Flickr.
I think my favourite description of Joanna Newsom (maybe from Mess+Noise, maybe from Drowned In Sound, maybe somewhere else, I can’t exactly remember) described her as “singing like a recently smacked child”. It’s a description that always brings a wry smile as I’ve always thought there is an element of truth in the description and it’s been the main sticking point that stops me really loving her songs; the arrangements are glorious but her voice is very much an acquired taste.
However, it was very much evident straight from the start that voice has changed a lot in the last few years’ it’s undeniably more mature sounding and she sounds a lot more like the teenage Kate Bush when she sings. There’s still the fragility and emotion but it feels more mellow and restrained, without that slightly awkward timbre.
Tonight’s set is made up almost entirely of new songs from her forthcoming third album, and a triple album none the less, ‘Have One On Me‘. Whereas this so often a recipe for disaster for so many artists, with crowds baying for the ‘hits’ to be played, tonight it makes it into a much more special event. The audience is so captivated that you could hear a pin drop during the songs, something that’s more than noticeable every time I take a photo and am more than aware of with the sound of the shutter opening and closing.
The set list from the evening (from a Live Journal review) was:
- Jack Rabbits
- Bridges and Balloons
- Have one on me
- Ribbon bows
- In California
- Easy
- Inflammatory Writ
- Soft as chalk
- Autumn
- Emily
- On a good day/81
- Esme
- Colleen
- Sadie
Throughout the show she kept apologising for being jet-lagged and not playing well but it was a completely enthralling performance and if she was making mistakes it didn’t show or detract in anyway from the songs, which were just exquisite. Based on tonight’s show, the album should easily be amongst the best released during the year when the movers and shakers come up with their Best of 2010 lists in December. A taster of the album has just been released in the form of the song ’81, with the album due out on 23 February.
I managed to arrive after she had started and in finding that it was all seated and with no photo pit, ended up photographing crouched in the aisle. It was nowhere near the best vantage point, with her microphone being across her face at all times but the best I could do given the time restrictions. Given the position of the microphone, I’m not sure where the best position would have been; maybe from the right hand balcony.
A few more photos on Flickr (although obviously they all look pretty much the same).
The Tivoli is surprisingly full for tonight’s Stranglers show; there wasn’t much in the way of advertising for either the original date (in December, but cancelled with the GFC being blamed) or tonight’s show, and at $90 a ticket it’s a fairly pricey mid-week night out
It’s been a long time I last saw Wind & Brackets, supporting Expatriate with Operator Please at The Globe if I remember correctly. Even though they’ve got the same personnel, they’ve changed a fair bit since then; they at least look like they’re in the same band and have similar musical interests now, compared to the varied looks they had back in 2007 and there’s a lot more keyboard than I remember (if they had a keyboard at all back then), with the (possible) introduction of said keyboard giving them a sound that makes them a suitable choice for the Stranglers support slot. Musically they’re solid if a bit unspectacular but go down pretty well with the crowd. Tommy seems quite nervous or maybe just out of breath when delivering inbetween song banter. He needs to get rid of the hair flicks he keeps doing though; it’s really off-putting and makes him look like a walking Timotei advert, it’s like he wants to lose himself in the music but is a bit too scared to let go in case it messes his hair up.
Waiting in the photo pit for The Stranglers to start I have a glance at the set list that’s been gaffa-taped to the stage and it’s an impressive list; even I know most of the songs that they are going to play tonight and I’m not a huge fan, with only a copy of ‘No More Heroes‘ representing the band in my record collection. It’s surprising, being perennially ‘uncool’, just how many hit singles they’ve had.
There’s no Jet Black tonight (unless he’s lost 10 stone and 40 years somewhere…), with post-gig research discovering that Ian Barnard, his drum tech, has temporary taken his place on the drum stool.  The post-gig research also reveals that in addition to illness over the last few years, Jet Black is going to be 71 in August, which explains why he’s not playing many live shows with the band. With no Jet Black, and with singer/guitarist Hugh Cornwell having left (somewhat scarily) almost 2 decades ago, bassist/singer Jean-Jacques Burnel and keyboard player Dave Greenfield are the only original band members on show. With Greenfield hidden behind a wall of keyboards at the back I spend most of my three songs photographing JJ as he struts around the stage, looking in really good shape for his 57 years. His bass sound, the driving force behind the band, is immense, sounding best on ‘Nice ‘N’ Sleazy‘, ‘Peaches‘ and the ‘No More Heroes‘ encore. Singer/guitarist is Baz Warne has been with the band long enough (since 2000) to make the position his own and there’s a definite on stage band dynamic, as well as appreciation from the audience, even though for the most part of the night he’s singing Cornwell’s classic songs.  Still, there is a strangeness in Warne’s broad Sunderland accent delivery compared to Cornwell’s familiar, menacing snarl on those songs, so tonight we get the likes of ’Gullden Brewn‘, ‘Ellweys The Soon‘, but it doesn’t take away from a fun night of nostalgia and reminiscence and an entertaining and enjoyable mid-week night out.
Some more photos on flickr.
One of my very early musical memories was this on Top Of The Pops. So when Gary Numan rolls into town to play at the Tivoli, how can I refuse.
The trouble is that I only really know the very early stuff, and whilst these songs (‘Cars’, ‘Down In The Park‘, ‘We Are So Fragile‘, ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?‘) sound great tonight (although he does have me worried having changed the intro of ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric’, so for an instance I have that blood-from-face-draining experience that he’s made it into a jazz-lite solo piano version, before the all too familiar synth riff kicks in), my unfamiliarity with the later stuff (i.e. anything after the early 1980s) means that the ‘newer’, harder, more industrial songs sound too samey and make him come over like a lightweight Nine Inch Nails. Having influenced bands like NIN he’s definitely borrowed something back from those bands, visually as well as musically, although I’m sure there’s some irony that he’s now regarded as a godfather of industrial music when he seemed to spend most of the 80s being looked down upon as a poor man’s David Bowie.
From a photographic point of view it’s surprising how hard it is tonight and how sluggish and unsure I feel after a month away in on holiday in New Zealand.  I don’t even move much from my original position in the pit. For tonight’s gig I start with my 28-70, change in the second song to the 70-200, and back to the 28-70 for the third song. The lights seemed to be all over the place, so although I start in manual mode, I end up changing to shutter priority to make life easier for myself and give myself something less to think about whilst trying to get up to speed with the photographing again.
It’s often hard trying to get the right balance when doing music photography, a balance between having too many gigs to photograph, which leaves you exhausted and not wanting to photograph, and not having enough, which leaves you feeling a yard off the pace, like tonight. At the moment I’m trying to do a maximum of two gigs/week. When you add in time for processing and blogging, photographing two gigs ends up taking up most of the week as it is, not helped by possibly my greatest weakness, playing around in Photoshop. Some photos go through up to 6 different versions as I play with toning and different processes, even then still ending up unsure of which is the best version, which should be uploaded to flickr or shown on this blog and which should be hidden away from public gaze on my hard drive. I have included an example below and included a few more on flickr. And I still can’t work out which of those three photos below is the best; probably the last one, the second one is too dark, but then again the darkness gives it something, and the original colour version isn’t too bad either…Â
More photos from the night on flickr.
The whole Alt Country/Alt Folk scene has been flirting with the mainstream for a number of years, near enough since the start of this decade, but with Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver battling for supremacy in most of the music media’s end of year polls, 2008 definitely seems to be The Year That Folk Broke.
From one man in a Wisconsin cabin, the live Bon Iver experience is augmented to bring it up to a four-piece band and, depending on the song, two drummers, two guitarists, keyboards, bass and all four providing vocals. Starting with ‘Flume‘,  the quieter and more introspective sound of the album ‘For Emma, Forever Ago‘ is completely and instantly transformed into a folk Wall-of-Sound. This effect is used throughout and this is best heard on ‘The Wolves (Acts I and II)‘ where the ever-building song crescendo reaches a sparkling and startling cacophony, further enhanced by the audience supplying the “what might have been lost†refrain.
And it’s good, it’s very good, sometimes it’s sublime, sometimes it’s breathtaking. But it’s maybe not quite as good as the audience reaction would let you believe. The crowd reaction maintains a fervent level throughout, but to the point where it’s too frenzied, too hysterical, over-zealous to the extreme and to the point of uncomfortableness. Yes, it’s good, yes it’s very good but it’s not THAT good. It’s not standing ovation good, which the audience provides at the end of the encore. It is still one guy with one 9-song album that clocks in at less than 38 minutes and a just-released four song EP. It’s a promising start, a very promising start, but it’s not the Second Coming.
Mckisko supported and whilst her use of multi-track good looping of vocals, piano and melodica and the use of drums in some of her songs is used to good effect and provides some depth to the sound, some of her solo piano songs are just too dry, overwrought and not that memorable.
Bon Iver
McKisko
