2 posts tagged “the fall”
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 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 :)
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 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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Well then, I finally sat down to get some of my thoughts out of my head.
The Came So Far For Beauty shows were simply amazing. It wasn't even so much who was part of the lineup, even when it was impressive, but just the whole atmosphere altogether. An atmosphere where no Lou Reed is more important than Mary Margaret O'Hare, or a Nick Cave is a bigger star than Teddy Thompson. It's all about Leonard Cohen's song, no matter who's doing them.
The variations were immense, from some doing their best to do the best possible rendition of the songs, to others (mainly Jarvis Cocker) taking one of the songs and making it sound completely like one of his own, almost giving a deeper, double meaning to it, most befitting a Pulp song. The mixed audience were kind of funny too. From Leonard Cohen die hards to corporate whores to Lou Reed fans and so on. Most people probably didn't know even half of the people on stage and their reactions to the different performers was interesting and sometimes, frankly, unexpected. Apparently that varying divided opinion wasn't purely limited to the audience. The reviews in the papers the next day were all over the place, with the Irish Times hailing in the Handsome Family and Teddy Thompson, totally dissing Gavin Friday to the freebie Metro type paper calling Gavin the highlight of the evening. I am very curious about these variations of opinion and what causes them. I can see the pros and cons, and how they'd cause some people to like one thing, and others not. For example, Gavin and Mary Margaret's rendition of Hallelujah was so original, so different from any Hallelujah version ever heard before, people were bound to either love it, or hate it. If you associate the song with Buckley's version and then get exposed to this, you might hate it, whereas if you decide no version of Hallelujah will ever be better than the original, it may actually be very refreshing to hear this new, avant garde kind of rendition of it. I absolutely loved it, simply because it was new, refreshing and original.
It was also my first time ever seeing Lou Reed live, which rocked. I did think his version of the Cohen songs were a bit guitar heavy though and I preferred the song/duet he did where he didn't play the guitar. Beth Orton blew the audience away, as did Antony. I'd never appreciated Antony much before, but all that has changed. His voice is so pure, so simple and so freaking stunning it's impossible not to appreciate it. Him doing backing vocals to Gavin is bound to make Sue jealous for not being able to make it over. Sorry Sue :-]
Friday we drove down to Glendalough with the intention to go fo a good hike and see the waterfall and whatnot. Well, we made it about as far as the cemetary and never even got a glimpse of the waterfall for all the rain pouring down on us. So not surprisingly, we ended up in the pub munching unexpectedly gorgeous sandwiches and sipping hot tea. Dropped off Caroline in Dalkey after which Stu, Sandra and me joined up with Patrick for food and drinks at the IFC. Another old favorite of ours, I suppose. The nachos were great, and the atmosphere was good, just loud enough to not hear everyone's conversation, but quiet enough to talk amongst ourselves. Very mellow, relaxing evening.
Saturday looked like I might spent all day trying to either find accommodation or suck up to the ex-boyfriend to kip on his couch, but I really didn't want to do that. None of that necessary however, since the tourist information centre sorted me out really quickly. So instead, I headed off to Nude for a turkey bagel and one of them Wu-Tang juices I love. In the evening I headed off to the Village, up next to Whelan's to see if I could scrounge a ticket for The Fall. The Village has a lovely bar with pictures of all bands that played there, that kept me entertained for a while. They even had one of the Dirty Three, but also the Magic Numbers and a couple of others. Slummed there for a while and talked to the tout hanging around there and a few folks. Nobody seemed to be having spares and even the tout seemed to be despairing. Bit of a grim outlook really, but I shouldn't have worried, really. Funny how I have been ticketless so often but always manage to get a ticket anyway. Whatever the case, I paid only face value and ended up in prime position at the Village. Great little venue it is too. It holds maybe a couple of hundred, with a nice little balcony and a nice, low stage. Possibly the only downside is the insane security.
Fujiya & Miyagi were the support. A Brighton based band (I think) who I hadn't heard from before, but proved to be very entertaining indeed. The Fall started off moderately calm, but everyone kind of went berserk during "What about us?" I absolutely loved it! Loved it, despite the bruised knee and smashed shoulder I'm now suffering :) The crowd was absolutely nuts which, considering the average age there was about 50, was pretty damn neat. Lovely evening, and very glad I went.
Today then is your typical sunday. Grey, drizzily, nothing really going on. The place I am staying in now is right next to the Music Centre where the Automatic are playing tonight. I don't really know them other than one or two tracks I may have heard on Xfm, but I think I'll go see them anyway. They are soundchecking at the moment with the Killers blasting out of the stage door. Heh. I'd like to take some pictures, but my camera is kind of running out of juice, and I didn't bring a charger. Hopefully it'll hold up during the gig.
Oh, and I kind of need to remember to buy a ticket for Nina Nastasia when I get home. Reluctant to go home (and back to work) at the moment, but c'est ca. At least it's only for 10 days, until I go to Budapest ;) How lucky am I? And, OMG, only 10 day to sort out my Halloween costume, nevermind a horse sitter. Hrm. Feeling slightly disorganised here. What else is new?
Boo. No free/unsecured access points near, so I'll have to post this later.
Update: Munching from the early bird menu @ Fitzers and abusing their free hotspot. The fishcakes aren't bad at all.
