Word on a wing

Ramblin woman

nobody@vox.com(Eva) — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 15:23:10 +0100

Last night I once again trudged to the Paradiso to go see Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan who made an excellent idea called Ballad of Broken Seas. Mark Lanegan has been somewhat of an interest of mine for a while, but I've somehow managed to miss him every time he played here. Isobell Campbell is probably better known for her work in Belle & Sebastian (a band I admittedly never really got into or even gave a chance) and Mark Lanegan has done guest appearances with a number of bands, including Queens of the Stone Age and more recently, the Twilight Singers.

Mark Lanegan

He seems a very introvert person and that's exactly the persona he is on stage. Tall and stony faced with very little expression. I only spotted a slight grin, when Isobel started giggling and just that tiny grin seemed a world of expression for him. A very enigmatic singer, who has that whole tall dark and handsome thing going on. His dark, deep voice contrasts heavily with Campbell's light, high one and her fairylike appearance. And yet, the two come together and put down a stunning performance. A very impressive performance. Unfortunately through a miscalculation, my pictures didn't turn out as well as they could have. I really do need to invest in some more interesting lenses with a bigger range.

Jarvis Cocker

Earlier in the week, I went to see Jarvis who was in one word delightful. Here's the anti hero putting up a flawless appearance. Playing the crowd like a pro, delivering a mix between rock solid Jarvis-esque music (which deserves a class of it's own) full of cynicism and dark humour and stand up comedy. His conversation and songs seem lightweight and and entertaining, yet carry out a message without the overbearing preaching like techniques some performers like to use to get their point across. One downside was the poor advertising, which resulted in this show being very undersold and me having to eat two of my tickets :( Oh, and, Jarvis stole my joke! That bastard! It was funny though, so he's forgiven. I wished I could have seen more of his show, but it seemed to be fairly impossible to go do that. A real bummer, but c'est ca.

Yesterday when I came home from the Lanegan concert, Storm was just too cute. He more or less pounced me as soon as I came in through the door, then went completely hyper for the next two hours and kept pogoing around the flat while I was trying to sleep. He doesn't really know it, but I he'll be going to the doctor this coming Thursday to lose his mandhood. Poor little chappie. He has proven to be an absolute delight to be around, almost doglike in his mannerisms. I suspect I'll be spending a bit more money on him to get him completely sorted out though, but he'll be worth it :)

On a less happy note, Solon his leg is slightly swollen. While he isn't sore or lame, I'd rather take things a little easy for now. Hopefully it won't be anything serious, but for now all I can do is wait and see. Fingers crossed!

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Two things

nobody@vox.com(Eva) — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 23:21:25 +0200

Two things that are worth mentioning.

I came across this interview/article in the Observer by guest editor Jarvis Cocker, which was very clearly bits of conversation from the Came So Far For Beauty group. The shallow reader will probably go "Pah, he's namedropping all over the place", but it is actually a good read about music and the whole process of creating and everything around it. I like this particular Nick quote (yes, him again), which kind of confirms my suspicions. I've always had the feeling he doesn't care much about the full band album touring, but prefers the more low key solo shows. Often he comes across as if his hands were tied during the album tour dates, whereas at the solo shows he seems more loose, more happy to do his own thing.

For me what music is for is very much a selfish thing. All I know is that I have to do it on a regular basis or I don't operate correctly. What happens with the records and the history of the thing: I feel I have absolutely no control over that, and I'm not even interested in it personally

By the way, I totally agree... Jarvis is catchy.

Great read.

The other thing I came across is the pretty fucking awesome news that the Dirty Three will be curating the All Tomorrow's Parties festival next year. That one sounds like a very laid back kind laugh, which I'd love to go to. I'm curious to see what other performers they'll come up with. The one snag to the festival is that it is at the end of April, which means it may possibly interfere with Bowie's High Line festival in NYC next year. I can't for the life of me remember the dates to that one, but it's in May somewhere. The whole things sounds like a really mellow kind of thing.

There's something a bit spooky about me stumbling across this bit of news today though. This morning I kicked some beat-y cd out of the cd player in my car, only to replace it with a Velvet Underground there. I got annoyed with the big scratch on it, which made it skip all through I'm Waiting For The Man, but got over it after Venus In Furs played alright. All Tomorrow's Parties was just playing when I parked the car at work this morning, and it was stuck in my head all day. There's a very strong YOU MUST GO kind of message in there somewhere :-)

Now I just need to get someone mad enough to go with me :-)

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Vox Hunt: Are You Ready To Rock?

nobody@vox.com(Eva) — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:14:31 +0200

Show us some concert photos.
Submitted by Abigail Road.

How many do you want? I love taking concert pictures. More or less started back in 97 during U2 gigs, with a not so great point and click camera, which had a decent zoom for that kind of time. I upgraded to a Canon EOS300 (the analogue kind) a couple of years after, and but the cost of film bled me dry. July 2005 I splurged out and went digital with an EOS350. Cost me a small fortune, but it's paid back for itself a thousand fold taking the cost of film into account. I'd like to get a more robust/professional body and a couple of lenses, but I'd probably need to invest a couple of grand to get where I really want. A good photo course wouldn't go amiss either. Despite all that, I do get the occassional "lucky shot" though. I really should do something interesting with all these, but for some reason, that never really happened.

David Bowie

David Bowie at the Point Depot in Dublin, 2003. One of those "lucky shots" you can only ever dream of. This is one of my favourite pictures ever from the analogue time. I've been told David liked it too :)

David is a very willing subject and will actually pose for the camera, which rocks. Now if only it wasn't so hard to smuggle cameras in.

Bono

This shot of Bono I took about 10 days after buying my the 350. It was one of the favourite pictures all tour picked by atu2.com readers during a competition.

Bono is another poser, who seems to be very aware of cameras in the audience. He'll bend over, pose and hold still and even play with the photographers. U2 concerts are, unfortunately, near impossible to smuggle half decent cameras in to. I lost a 50mm/1.8 lens during the concert before this one, when I dropped it.

Gavin Friday

Gavin Friday at Liberty Hall in August 2006. Another lucky shot, where the lighting turned out to be just right. No one seemed to particularly care about the camera, or me sitting on the floor taking shots. Perfect!

Incidentally, that late July/early August weekend in Dublin was one of my highlights of 2006. So there.

Nick Cave

Nick Cave at the World Forum Theatre in The Hague, September 2006. I've taken loads of pictures of Nick before, but none ever lived up to my standard set at the Liss Ard festival in 1999. He moves so much and erratically on stage, it's hard to get any shot in focus. He's one of few performers I find impossible to do justice in pictures. And that's not just because of the funny moustache.

Nick sometimes glares evilly at me and I get scared.

Rufus Wainwright

Rufus is another willing subject. While he doesn't necessarily pose for any camera he spots, he just has that natural way of moving and expressions that makes him a very easy subject to take pictures off. Aside from that he loves to spice up his shows with a dash of drama, like this crucification scene. I hear when Madonna did something similar, there were protests going on outside the Amsterdam ArenA.

Warren Ellis

The Dirty Three are probably my favourite band, ever. This is another picture from the analogue era and then scanned in. I took this at a tiny venue in Paris of which I can't remember the name somewhere in 2004 (I think), but I know there's a great bootleg of it doing the rounds. I really like the colours in this pic.

Another Warren Ellis picture I absolutely love was also taken at the Liss Ard Festival in 1999. First person to ever offer to put me on the guestlist... then promptly forgot and subsequently made me feel very embarrassed by trying to convince the venue people to give me my money back.

Anouk

This picture of Anouk (Dutch singer) I took at Rock Werchter this year and promptly got hassled by the press lady person right after taking it. Apparently if you've got a 350 with a 100 buck 50mm lens you get tagged "professional". These people are going to have a hard time in the years to come.

After that, I was unable to take pictures of Muse and The Who which, frankly, sucked. Muse, however, did not suck.

Jarvis Cocker

One of the coolest pictures of Jarvis ever. I took this at the aforementioned Liss Ard Festival back in 1999 with a very questionable camera. Apparently the organisation had asked Jarvis to, aside from the regular Pulp set, also do an acoustic session at the side of the lake. Jarvis doesn't like acoustic though, or so I was told. So instead, he brought his records and did a DJ set. Very surreal setting. Bright light, lake, lounging back in the grass...

...a terrible shame I was too sick with fever to fully enjoy it.

Gwen Stefani

Gwen Stefani of No Doubt. I took this picture at the 2002 Seat Beach Rock Festival in Belgium. While I'm no huge No Doubt fan, their performance was pretty amazing, with Gwen climbing up the light post and whatnot.

Other things I remember are the smell of dung, which isn't exactly what you'd expect from a festival called Beach Rock, but may be explained by the fact that the festival actually took place on the Oostende racetrack.

Bowie and Primal Scream rocked, even when Bobbie Gillespie had to hold on to his mic stand for dear life to even stay upright.

Bauhaus

Then the most disappointing concert of 2006. Bauhaus. I'd anticipated it so much, looking forward to it, and being very excited about it. I got prime picture shooting location, right in the middle and slightly off the side, so as not to have the mic stand right in front of me.

Peter Murphy and Daniel Ash were having a major tiff on stage, however. The first thing Peter did when he got on stage was sit down on one of the speakers at the far end corner of the stage, giving Daniel Ash the center light he apparently craves. The lot of them ended up playing only half a show in between major sulks.

The day after they played a perfect show at the Mera Luna Festival without any craziness whatsoever. Unfortunately, I wasn't there.

The Fall

And last but not least, two pictures I took in Dublin last saturday. One is Mark E. Smith of The Fall, who played The Village and put up an amazing show with old people dancing, bouncing and pogoing about. Someone I was talking to beforehand called The Fall the mother of all indie music, which I could kind of find myself in.

You wouldn't give it to him, looking at him, would you?

The Automatic

The second is a band called The Automatic ("Is it a monster?"), who I didn't especially needed to see, but I got a little bored all by myself in Dublin so I went anyway and ended up being the old people pogoing about.

I actually enjoyed it. They've got a bit of a punky thing going on on stage, which I really like and makes for some awesome shots.

Special thumbs up to their support band Mumm-Ra who were pretty awesome too. Very energetic and overexcited like a pack of young dogs.

There's more on my flickr page.

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