Leaving the Monster Magnet show mid-way through it’s a race across town to get to the Step Inn for Violent Soho’s last show before relocating to New York. I get there just in time, although having missed all the support acts. Photographing at the Step Inn is challenging at the best of times, as it’s one of the most poorly lit venues in Brisbane, but tonight with a large crowd, some of who might have been drinking heavily and wanting to give the band a proper send-off, it’s an even harder proposition. So I squeeze into a space at the very edge of the stage and try to avoid being squashed in the mosh, whilst taking a few photos. I don’t stay for too long, relocating back to a mush safer vantage point after a few songs. Fun times, rubbish photos. They will be greatly missed from the Brisbane music scene but best of luck to them.

 Having seen and photographed Violent Soho plenty of times over the last few years and having photographed them recently in The Zoo car park, I took the opportunity to relax from needing to get editorial photos for publication and take a roll of film instead when they supported …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead at The Zoo (although I having used the roll of film, I did take some digital shots in their last song). 

I used my usual film choice of Ilford HP5 and developed it in Ilford ID-11 for 14 minutes.  The negatives were scanned into Photoshop to do a bit of tidying up; namely using the Heal Tool to remove the worst of the dust, small scratches and any water marks on the negatives.  I also upped the contrast using the Layers and Levels tools to make the images a lot darker and  grittier.  A few more photos on Flickr.

When it comes to live music, I’m usually a ‘stay ’til the bitter end’ type of gig-goer.  For the most part I can never fathom why people would purposely walk out of a gig after only a few songs; maybe it’s just the optimist in me that hopes however bad it is it will get better, that the band might impress me, even if they only manage it in the last 30 seconds [Note: since drafting this post last week Swells has sadly died and whilst I think you'd be hard pushed to find a music fan he hadn't managed to wind up and infuriate over the years, the vim and vigour which he approached his writing makes it a sad loss for music journalism].  I will admit to leaving The Drones opening of The Hi-Fi after only half a dozen songs due to its late starting, and I did leave Sloan’s show at The Globe last year well before the end, but it was 12:15am on a Thursday night when I left and I had a photo deadline as well as work on the Friday, but from memory the only show I’ve walked out of due to anything other than acute tiredness was a Spin Doctors show at Newcastle’s Riverside back in the early 1990s – they were so desperately dull and even some mid-show games of pinball at the back of the room couldn’t improve the sense of utter boredom from their workman-like, emotion-draining, insipid, early1990s college rock.

As much as I wanted to, I don’t stay for the whole of tonight’s Trail Of The Dead show, bailing about half-way through, the night another victim of a long day and getting up at 4am to watch the Barcelona football master-class in the Champion League Final.  It’s a sad excuse really as the Trail Of The Dead’s show is such a extreme case of sensory overload, both visually and aurally, that if they couldn’t keep me awake and alert then nothing would.

From a photographic point of view, I assume my normal position at the front stage left, although it means that I’m in a poor position for action shots but in a good place for the obligatory Rave portrait shot.  They definitely are a band that I would love to shoot from a photo pit.  And preferably on a day when I haven’t gotten up at 4am. 

Violent Soho supported, in their last gig before heading overseas and to Download.  Was an ok show from them but far from their best, with the band not as finely tuned as they normally are when playing shows more regularly.  The new songs they played at the Tym Guitars Zoo car park gig were given another airing and were a lot more intelligible than when they were played on the aurally abusing p.a. system they used in the car park. 

More photos on Flickr.

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead

Violent Soho

Australia music seems to be intrinsically linked to a notion that the best Australian bands have to play to tiny audiences in tiny venues, get little attention in their own city, let alone the rest of the country, due to the parochial tendencies of each major city/state and the unhealthy competiveness that goes along with it, move overseas, get the recognition they deserve and then, and only then, can they return to Australia be hailed as all conquering heroes by the general population and the mainstream music media and newspapers who had zero interest when they were playing the small/cheap/free local shows and the early in the evening support slots to better known/more popular international and Sydney/Melbourne acts.

From The Saints to The Go-Betweens, from Nick Cave to The Triffids, continuing through to a current age when bands like The Drones seem to garner a much higher degree of respect and recognition outside of Australia than within it. Even moving away from the plight of Australia’s better bands, Jet‘s and The Vines‘ success was largely based on the UK music media championing both bands when most Australians had no idea that the bands even existed and even Gabriella Cilmi and Sam Sparro’s UK success means the Australian music industry were falling over themselves to give them ARIA awards last year. In the UK it’s the complete opposite; go to somewhere like the USA and make it big before you’ve at least tried to do it in the UK and no one will take you seriously (see: Bush. Although they were also hampered by the fact that they were rubbish, basically the 1990′s version of Nickelback).

Violent Soho seem to be the latest band to embark on this well trodden career path, having signed to Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace record label and playing the UK’s Download Festival in June 2009, to go with previous overseas tours in 2008.

Tonight they’re playing a free show to celebrate Tym Guitars’ Anne Street Shop’s 1st anniversary, along with the Boondall Boys, in The Zoo’s car park. By right the place should be packed (or as much as you can pack out a car park) but looking around it’s the same familiar faces that you see at every Soho gig, the usual suspects you see at most local shows and the unequivocal, unwavering supporters from other Brisbane bands, most of whom have shared a stage with band over the last few years. In some ways it’s great; it’s like being a teenager again and having a special secret band that you share with a few like-minded souls with good taste in music and that you don’t want to share with the world, lest the mainstream success change them, spoil them, and yet you can’t help but think that they deserve to be playing to much bigger crowds somewhere a lot more luxurious than the Zoo car park in the middle of May.

The Courier Mail’s Briz Bands blog, where ‘Candi and Khan explore Brisbane’s vibrant music scene with news, pic galleries, videos and tracks from some of Australia’s edgiest new artists’ has a solitary blog posting about the band related to when they got the Black Francis tour support last year, the usual press release cut and paste blog they excel at; it was written by ‘Carts’, who mysteriously went MIA and was replaced by Khan, who is only able to write about hip-hop…

By right Violent Soho should be the ones with the number one records, with the Rolling Stone features, the extended interviews on Video Hits, on constant rotation on Triple J, playing the sell-out shows at huge venues, being lined up for the ARIAs. But the people of Australia have spoken. And they want Eskimo Joe. At least they do this year.  But history has shown us that should Violent Soho make their return accompanied with column inches in foreign music papers, having had their records played on overseas radio stations and played some high profile festival and tour support slots, the rest of Australia, outside those gathered tonight and similar cliques in other cities, will start to pay attention. 

More photos on Flickr.

Violent Soho

Boondall Boys

I wrote in a blog last year about the joys of photographing The Mess Hall, in particular Cec and his photogenic drumming skills. The album launch last year was a disappointing affair, with very little light being stuck in a poor position to photograph from. When the Brisbane date in support of their latest single ‘Pulse’ was announced I couldn’t help but see it as a chance for redemption, even though it was at The Zoo with its very hit-and-miss lighting.

As has been a recent event at The Zoo, the gig was mostly backlit, with some lower power red AND pink lighting from the front. With backlit conditions similar to the recent JAMC gig, I experimented a bit more with wider angle shots (using my new-ish but very little used, AU$165 absolute bargain 28 – 70 f2.8 lens) and photographing directly into the light. I was trying to get something more than just a normal silhouette-type image and make the actual lighting an integral part of the photo. It’s a bit hit-and-miss, especially with lens flare, but when it works I think it works well. The general quality of the lens is fantastic but it is a bit slow to focus and it under-exposes by over ½ stop – which makes it less than ideal for photographing concerts…

And of course took some more close-up shots of Cec… which are ok but would have benefited from more front light and being able to use a higher shutter speed and less back light causing the annoying glare when I changed side to get the really close-up shots.

Main support band were The Scare. They weren’t bad, better than had seen them before but seemed to be a lot less energetic than the past, especially Kiss Reid, who seemed very sedated all night and almost apologetic for their last appearance at The Zoo in 2006 before they moved to the UK. So much for hating us all…

Violent Soho opened the night and were as good as ever. About time they got around to releasing another CD…

Lots more photos on flickr.

Some photos from the Magic Dirt gig at The Zoo a couple weeks back. Magic Dirt gone a lot more rock and noise since the last (and first) time I saw them at The Annandale about 2 1/2 years ago. Been told they were more like this back in the day. Violent Soho, still being one of the best bands in Brisbane, were the main support. And Gyanism… either they were the best opening band ever or they were the worst opening band ever… I just can’t decide which one…

A few more photos on flickr.

Gyanism

Violent Soho

Magic Dirt

Some photos from last Saturday’s 4ZZZ Market Day shindig at the RNA Showgrounds. A few below and the rest of them (193 photos of 18 or so of the 72 bands that played) are here.

Violent Soho

I Heart Hiroshima

Sekiden

The Gin Club

SixFtHick

The Meanies

Jump 2 Light Speed

CurseOvDialect