Today was a crazy day for gigging. Was guestlisted for Pink Grease at the Buffalo bar, one of the main reasons for going was to take photos of one of the instruments they used, it looked disturbing. Not to mention they sound pretty cool to see them and all. So yeah, I initially wanted to head to the venue and all but I strangely left the house a bit too early for my likings and decided to just lounge around central London and being a bit of a tourist.
Lounging out in London is fun. I’ve only realised that most of my childhood was spent NOT doing anything fun in London. I’m definitely taking things for granted in London and all. Its only been more apparent after the IBM placement year. Better make the most of my time spent in London and go to places that a tourist would go haha. I paid a visit to Haymarket just to take photos of Her Majesty Theatre. I really want to go see Phantom of the Opera again. Alice said she was really keen in going too so it would definitely be awesome if something was arranged after uni and all for us and inn to go check them out. Inn wants to go somewhere thats not a musical first but frankly you can’t get anything better theatre wise with Phantom. So yeah, fingers crossed that they do some cool promotion and all so we get to go 😀
Anyway, lets fastfoward a bit to the gig, right before the gig I managed to get myself a subway to eat. I had a chat with the guy serving me and asking whether he gets bored eating subway sandwiches, turns out he just brings his own food because he was a veggie and couldnt stand eating the ONE veggie sub that they have to offer hehe. I can understand why too (thats why meat is the way to go haha).
There were 4 bands up tonight, Brontosaurus Chorus, Gggrits (Yup, 3 g’s), Screaming Tea Party and Pink Grease. I’ve only seen Brontosaurus Chorus play once before, the rest are new to me. Was most surprised at how impressive these bands were when I heard them tonight.
Right lets get right into the photography haha.
Brontosaurus Chorus
Started pimping out the prime lens like last time, the problem was that the band was pretty big so I couldnt do a wide shot with everyone in it :(. Nonetheless I did take some cool shots of them 🙂
Gggrits
Bless them, they were awesome haha. The singer really knew how to work it with the camera. Quite alot of times she was posing and stuff in front of me whilst I took photos of her. I didnt even get to use my “make love to the camera baby” line :(. Some really good shots here. One thing I found funny was that they had a macbook out. I was thinking “hmm can macbooks run protools or logic already!?!?” only to discover that they were just using itunes to play the backing tracks hehe. The music was very dancey, I did my fair bit of dancing to compensate my lack of moving during gigs.
Screaming Tea Party
I asked Michelle what kind of band they were and she said “theres one italian drummer, and two japanese guys, they’re crazy” or something like that haha. Sounds like a crazy mash up. And yup, they were crazy. The guitarist wore a gasmask on stage and went nuts on effects (in particular the whammy and chorus/flanger). The music was really upbeat and exciting.
Pink Grease
The main act. Was here mainliy to take photos of the “machine”. Some crazy synth that one of the band member used. He uses two toothbrushes to play the thing by tapping some strings at the top of the mammoth. It was pretty exciting, they had a saxamophonist too just to really class things up. I always love it when bands have peculiar instruments at the gig, but yeah, the mammoth was definitely something haha.
The band was great, very charismatic. Though I felt very sorry for the singer, because there was some crazy chick in a blue dress who kept pulling his braces. He wasn’t happy about it. She was very VERY invasive. Totally crossed the line between a normal gigger and a loon. One part of the gig, the singer wrapped the mic cable around his neck for a laugh (rock and roll like :D) and she actually thought it would be clever for her to tug the damn cable. I think everyone during the gig wanted to give her a cunt punch haha. One part of the gig the singer just erupted and just pushed her off the stage (she was trying to get on stage and push the singer about) and I could hear him going “F**k off bitch!” really viciously. I guess singers have a limit to how much harassment you can get from crazy girls haha.
Apart from her, everything was cool. I had to use flash quite a bit for this gig but it definitely worked well with this venue. The guy who played “THE MACHINE” kept getting blinded by other photographers (and me) using their flash haha. During the encore he just wore some sunglasses to avoid getting blinded by us haha bless him.
So yeah, top notch gig, its good to visit some small bands you’ve never heard of, things are far more intimate and all.