crazybobbles

Tilly and the Wall (More dslr action)

Wednesday, February 28th, 2007

Me, Jason and Rachel had planned on going to see Tilly and the Wall perform at the Scala, Jason and Rachel booked their tickets well in advanced so I was pretty much joining in on the fun. I was pretty drained from gigging still, I was still recovering from my crazy weekend of Muser Meetups and Howling Bells madness.

Jason told me to meet up with him at Russell Square where we would find a local Nando’s and just eat there before the gig. Jason and Rachel were working so we had to meetup right after their work and all. Both were slightly late. Rachel being the latest (about 40 minutes late!). Anyway, we went straight down to business and got to Nando’s in no time (was pretty easy to find one must say) I really should have met them there so I could just munch on food whilst waiting haha.

We talked about DS lites, their holiday they were planning on going, stuff that was happening (and stuff that wasn’t), and my DSLR camera. I told them my plan of smuggling the camera in my laptop bag. Theres a wee compartment in the back of the bag which looks like its just padding (but it has zips and everything for storing extra stuff). So yeah, I also showed them my new lens I got, I was planning on using that lens if I wasnt at the front of the stage. We managed to munch down our nando’s pretty quickly and spent quite some time talking and drinking bottomless fizzy drinks.

Eventually we made our way to the gig, Scala was pretty close from where we were at so that was good. We initially thought the band wouldnt have sold out and I would have easily bought my ticket on the door without the need of booking fee’s and p&p charges. Turns out I was wrong, Tilly and the Wall actually managed to sell out tonight! There was queue going on outside which meant we had to wait a bit. At this time the bottomless drinks had kicked in and I needed to use the bathroom, thankfully that desperation disappeared when we managed to swiftly get into the venue without much hassle. Jason did get some hassle though, the security guard said they werent allowed to bring bottled water into the gig, so jason had asked them to hold onto the bottle until he left the building, he even had a ticket for his bottle bless him!

I managed to smuggle my dslr camera in without any problems. After using the toilet, I met up with jason and rachel who were buying t shirts from the gig. We went down to the dance floor/stage and immediately I said we should goto the front and watch the gig. It was a pretty risky decision as the security guards can easily spot a dslr camera being used and all.

I was a bit nervous about bringing the dslr camera at such close proximity to the security guards, but I decided to risk it and only take photos when needed (not doing a Regina Spektor again where I get told off for going nuts on the flash!). Anyway, the support bands were alright, the first one was Kate Nash, apparently she was a friend of Lily Allen and has the same style as her and the notorious Regina Spektor (no idea why I called her notorious, perhaps she sings too fast that it offends people or something i dunno?) anyway, the second band were called the small ones or something haha. They were an american band and played pretty chirpy songs. At one point we REALLY thought they were going to play coca cobana! They had the bells and everything! Unfortunately they didn’t.

Anyway, most of the time I was perving over band photographer and their photo pit access. Though one thing I had to remember was the fact that they were only allowed to take photos of the band for a limited duration (usuaully 3 songs) then after that they would be ushered out of the pit by security. I think the security guard took more notice with the photographers then with my smuggled camera.

I noticed that most of them used 50mm prime lenses for their photographer, I’ve already read alot of reviews and positive comments about this lens (it was even recommended by this author of an lens guide article who had pretty much slagged off every cheap lens there was out there). So yeah, I’m pretty certain that this the next lens I was going to be getting since it’s faster then any lens I have right now and was a f1.8 lens. (£60 too!)

Eventually Tilly and the Wall came out… no not to play, but to set up their own gear!!! I was pretty shocked that they had to do it all themselves, the venue roadie was pretty much standing about doing nothing. Though jason did tell me that previously when they let the roadies do the gear and all, they’d fuck up and it ended up with the band themselves fixing it. I guess its useful knowing how to do your own gear but its not good for the fans to see you doing it yourselves hehe. Though you must remember that this was no ordinary band, this was a tap dancing band haha. They had to install their tap dancing booths JUST right in order to really show off the tap dancing and all. The main tap dancer had to put a metal plate over her large platform. Was fun watching her gaffa tape it all together on her own. I felt bad for the band but then again, they’re not THAT big and their setup is pretty complicated.

Once the gear was all set the band pretty much started.

Photographers on your marks, get set.. SHOOT!

As always, the photographers go nuts when the main act comes out and starts their first song (wouldnt blame them, thats their third to last song they can have photo pit access to haha). I was doing some pretty discrete shots since I really didnt want to get caught, more photographers arrived on the scene and it was a hectic slush of photographers in the pit (as always).

At one point of the gig they played a new song in which the singer had forgotten the lines, that was pretty funny. The tap dancing was amazing. Its pretty cool how the tap dancer was doing it right in front of me, waas like my very own dancer 😛 haha. The second song they played was Fell down the stairs, that was pretty much my favorite song so it was nice to hear that.

The stage was pretty dark I must say, taking photos of the people on the right was hard, my lens wasnt wide enough to take a whole band photo so that was a bummer too. This was where I began playing about with settings too. At times I had to surrender to the camera and use ISO 1600 which took some slightly grainy shots but most of the time I was stuck on ISO 800.

The photos were pretty nice

Notice the third shot has a bit of light. Those are the fortunate shots you take where another photographer went nuts on flash and you’re using their light to take a nice photo haha. They were pretty sharp photos I must say

They even did some synchronised dancing at some point. I was really enjoying the gig and at the same time, enjoying taking photos of them.

The band did an encore of “requested” songs in which they pretty much pretended to hear what the fans said haha. Looking at the setlist they pretty much stuck to what was on there rather then listen to the fans. It was fun, the term used for it is “selective hearing” when you hear only one person suggest the song you already had in mind :p.

The ended with Night of the Living dead in which it was joined in with the support bands. The stage was pretty much invaded and mental looking haha. Hoepfully the last photo shows how mental it was.

I was really happy about the photos for the gig, I managed to juice out a whole gig worth of photos and also got the setlist (and guitar pick which i gave to jason) which was an added bonus.

And yeah, that was pretty much it, Rachel tried using the camera a few times and was jealous of the photos I had taken hehe (she tried taking some on her mobile and all bless).

our journey back was quite fun, since Rachel lives in Wimbledon it was quite an cosy journey back (ie I had company haha). I immediately reviewed the photos when I got home and deleted whatever I thought wasn’t “flickr quality” haha. I mananged to figure out a new system for my band photography in which I would only take a limited amount of photos, I made the number the same as the number of photos a 35mm film would store. inn said that was 32 but later on i found out it was 36. So yeah, I managed to squeeze the best photos from that gig and upload them to flickr. They’re pretty nice and varied so overall I was pretty proud of them :).