crazybobbles » gigs

Splash of October Swimmer (Summary)

crazybobbles — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:02:33 +0000

Crazy calendar updates!

Time flies at a ridiculous rate when you’re busy. Already we’re in mid November and getting ready for the start of Christmas, winter coats, bankruptcy, roasted poultry, mind games and the lovely end to a crazy and eventful year. When peering at my Google Calender, I quickly skipped back to the previous month to see what I’ve been up to and boy was it a crazy month, though you’ve probably noticed that already with the sudden abundance of blog posts Since October was such an amazingly packed month I thought I’d write a big fat summary post of it all, kinda like a catch up post for those who check less frequently or for those who’ve just started reading. So yeah, lets rewind the tape and go back to first of October, 2008, no idea if you can click on all the links but I’ll take my time to link up to EVERYTHING so it all makes sense!

1st October: Lykke Li
Lykke Li was recommended to me by uka (well I just checked his last.fm and thought I’d give it a listen). Her tickets were sold out so I managed to buy a ticket from ebay and see her live at the Scala. Her voice was amazing and on par to her dancing (at one point she event started dancing right in front of me which was awesome (mmm private dances haha)). First time I used good old Eve, my compact camera to film a video of the performance. Favorite song: I’m good, I’m gone.

2nd October: Lost Coastlines:
I started writing a short story called “Lost Coastlines“. It was loosely based on a trip I made in September to the north. The story only has one character, but focuses on his mindset, thought process, and other subtle things. The story was told via a series of photos I took during my visit to the Four Rise Locks in Bingley. I slowly released the photo and passages bit by bit and eventually spilled the ending at some random point in the evening. Having an influence on certain games where they offer a good and bad ending depending on the actions you took, I gave this story a double sided ending where the readers need to search for happiness in order to find the good ending (Probably giving too much away here).

3rd October: Photography and regret:
That was fun, following from the Lykke Li gig and Lost Coastlines, I decided to write another quick monologue story type thing called “Photography and Regret“. This was based loosely on a livejournal comment I made about my insights on photography and the future, I write a dark side story about Mark, the photography with a flagship DSLR camera who was at the Lykke Li gig. Twas a fun write but then I think i totally lost the plot near the end haha. But yeah, just a complete ramble

4th October: Scottish Ballet:
One of the more diverse events in my calendar, I went to see a scottish ballet, the catch/gimmick here is that they were dancing to Radiohead. It was quite a fun show, though I actually enjoyed the last act more than the act that had the radiohead dancing, it was far too pretencious and I preferred some good old classical dancing with fancy pancy dresses and costumes.

5th October: Crazy ass coding:
I got really annoyed at the lack of search bar in my site so I started coding and added one in, that’s about it

6th October: CSS:
This was an impromptu gig, I pretty much bought the ticket the week before off ebay (it was cheaper than face value). I had emailed a fellow photographer about the security of Shepherds Bush and was told it was quite a strict place in terms of DSLR photography, I brought Eve along and stubbornly took my DSLR with me, they found my DSLR during the bag search but I eventually got the camera in after some sly words and ninja’ing. Traumatic experience but nonetheless a fun one, the gig was a fruity one, lots of jumping and balloons. Favorite song: Left behind

7th October:
Relaxing day for blogging and catching up sleep (Shepherds Bush gigs tend to make me end up sleeping at 4am) Near the evening Michelle updated that she had guestlists to CSS which she couldn’t attend, i took up the offer but needed to find a girl to go with.

8th October: Wine tasting and drunken CSS:
Spent entire morning and afternoon finding a plus one to go with, failed in epic proportions. Had a wine tasting session, learnt a bit about wine and left halfway. Michelle managed to get Silvia to come with me and woo, was able to smuggle the DSLR whilst slightly tipsy. Was glad I saw CSS once again because I felt the other gig wasn’t enough. Chuckled at the fact that the band gets free xbox360’s out of this gig (it was an xbox event). I had to squeeze through some ickle ladies to get through, later on after writing about it they manged to find my blog and comment on what i said about them teehee. Favorite song: Music is my hot hot hot hot hot sex

9th October: Emiliana Torrini:
After two crazy nights of CSS, I went to see Emiliana Torrini at an ickle Church near Soho. The performance was amazing and she was unbelievably cute! She constantly conversed with the crowd during intervals and explained how the songs were written or whatever crazy anecdotes she could come up with, you loved her gigs for that! Met up with some photographers too. Favorite song: Sunny Road

10th October: Diggnation:
A nerdy event with Stuart and Dip, after work I met up them two to see Diggnation live in London (apparently it only happens once every year). It was quite a fun show! The highlight was the vast amounts of free beer provided by Google, after the event we went to the Facebook aftershow and grabbed a lot of stuff, got to love free stuff.

11th October: Blog updates:
Updated a new feature for my blog which makes flickr integration awesome.

12th October:
Chillaxed, excited about Monday since I had a new 28mm lens and contemplating on see of Montreal play at an instore gig.

13th October: New wide lens and of Montreal acoustic set:
Coworker arrived with new lens I asked him to buy in New York, got well excited! Used the lens to shoot of Montreal who played live at Rough Trade East, was my first time there and I enjoyed the venue. of Montreal were amazing and their acoustic set was quirky and different from what they’d play at a proper gig. Met up with loads of old friends, got talked into seeing The Dears play on Wednesday, I sense crazy gigathon this week again (was SOOO tired from last week’s 3 gigathon) Favorite song: For our elegant caste

14th October:
Just to repeat last week, this day was spent relaxing and recovering from gigging. Probably wrote a lot of blog entries this night too! Went to pure groove records to try buy a tilly and the wall cd for tickets to an instore gig on 17th but found out it was closed after 6pm even though it said it closed at 7pm :(!

15th October: The Dears:
Turned up to see the Dears since had nothing better to do on a Wednesday, met up with people from of Montreal gig, then spoke to a guy because he had a crumpler bag (Just ordered a bag at work you see!), and finally spoke to Chalky from Terrible Love Songs. The gig was pretty fun, especally seeing the tension between the two band married band members Favorite song: Demons

16th October: of Montreal:
This was a horrible date, so many things clashed! I wanted to see Howling bells play but alas I had tickets to see of Montreal and it kinda took priority because I’ve never seen them play properly (acoustic one didn’t count). I acquired a spare ticket so I gave it to Chalky. Met up with more people from both gigs (including Anika) and even met up with a fellow photographer from flickr (preamble). Gig was amazing and theatrical, especially when Kevin Barnes gets naked and frolics around in hot pants, there was even a piledriver performed on stage! Favorite song: Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse.

17th October: Tilly and the Wall:
I managed to buy the Tilly and the Wall album online and it came with 3 guestlists, I invited some people from the CSS gig and even a coworker to the gig. The setlist was super short but it was an ickle gig and we were able to talk to the band about of Montreal (they were at the gig) and whatnot. Favorite song: Dust me off

18th October:
After 2 weeks of weekday non stop gigging, it was time to call it a rest! I believe lots of blogging was involved on Saturday, had a lovely meal out and did some chillaxing

19th October:
Got my haircut! It was getting far too long! Also started coding my site so it was 960px wide, made the sidebar all fancy looking

20-23rd October:
Quiet day of blog catching up (from September gigs), watching films about cyborgs and reading a book about super geeks who choose to fall in love with girls named Katherine. I enjoyed this week, it was nice and quiet for a change, but all the good stuff happened on the weekend hehe

24th October: Video Games Live 2008:
Went with jason and rachel to go see video games live 2008, where a live orchestra performs songs and tunes featured in famous and cult video games. It was a nerdy night, ate some steak before the show, took photos of lots of folks dressed up and enjoyed a slew of nerdy things, they played a lot of songs I loved and at the end of it all. I decided to go check out this cosplay exhibition on Sunday (was going to do Saturday but that was Tilly and the Wall day that me, jason and rachel had planned to go). Favorite Song: Castlevania

25th October: Tilly and the Wall:
Quite a hectic day I must say, Jason and Rachel weren’t able to come because Rachel wasn’t feeling too well. Was going to get their tickets to let someone else go but couldn’t find any one who were able to come so I eventually went solo. Met up Anika from various Rough Trade East gigs (she loves her free gigs), and met up with Preamble and another photographer I met at Emiliana Torrini too (called Lorne). Tilly and the Wall were amazing live, the lights were amazing and awesome for photography. Met up with a girl called Angela during the gig and had fun talking to a random drunk guy called Jeff with Angela, Angela had a chrome bag (I thought it was a crumpler bag :$) Favorite song: Tall tall Grasss (you can hear Angela in it)

26th October: London MCM Expo 2008:
The cosplay fest! Went there and saw loads of people dressed up as video games characters, bought loads of merchandise, mainly studio ghibli plush toys, phone charms and whatnot. There were signings but they cost £15 a pop for some C list celeb action (no way!)

27th October: Gabriel Kain:
Work colleague asked me if I wanted to go see a local band, it was his girlfriends’ coworker’s piano teacher that was playing at the gig. I said why not and went, the gig wasn’t that amazing, we laughed at the band after Gabriel kain and pretty much left afterwards. I took some shots and gave evils to a girl who took shots using flash!

28th October:
Another nice and chillaxed day, I managed to finish writing up on Tilly and the Wall entry, mainly talked about upskirts and whatnot haha.

29th October: Photomonth Preview:
Met up with my friend Malakai, went to the flickr photomonth preview event and had some free wine whilst enjoying some photos, then had a crazy night in London where we ate a Korean BBQ and did some crazy bumper cars and bowling, quite a jam packed night (the kind of nights I’m good at making for people who visit london)

30th October: Uka / Lomokev / Jonathan Coulton:
Crazy assed day where I managed to meet up with uka who was visiting for a few days, he dropped his bag off at my place, we had lunch at my local burger joint type place, then I stuffed him with loads of England based foods such as Krispy Kremes, Thorntons Chocolates and Fireflys (he could of drank imported ones but that’s not cool/it was expensive). After work I met up with uka and went to go see Lomokev at his signing. Was able to get two copies of his book hot shots signed (one for Inn) and take a photo of lomokev and uka together. We then swiftly left and I dropped uka off to Alice whilst heading off to a gig myself. Saw Jonathan Coulton, ninja’d a lovely seat near front and took loads of lovely photos (at Shepherds Bush! mwhaha) It was fun when he rick rolled us! Favorite song: Still alive

31st October:
Nope, no halloween for me, got some chocolate eyeballs from work but afterwards I felt like staying at home and just relaxing, it was pay day finally and all I could think about was getting some rest for such a crazy month I’ve had.

So that’s about it. That’s pretty much my month in a list format, hopefully you’ll read an article or two, doubt you’d click on all the links (please do, it took forever to link up!)! Thanks for your time here! Glad people actually take interest in what I get up to hehe!

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“That regina photo” strikes again

crazybobbles — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:51:40 +0000

Regina Spektor isn't happy with photo stealing!

One of my somewhat most popular shots of regina spektor (aka that regina spektor photo) has made it to someone’s blog. (The url will give away what it’s about, Big thanks to Antz for informing me of the post) As I’ve onced said to a friend, female shots gets the most hits and favs in the world flickr! But yeah, it’s a funny article, though I wish they had contacted me about the photo, or better yet, actually credit me? (grr, but can’t be arsed chasing it up). And whilst that’s happening to me, Solamore posted a photo talking about big companies taking photos from photographers and then sueing the individual photographers for defaming their reputation by ranting about them online. The article can be found here. What happened to asking people to use their photos huh? Plus they’re a big company so settling it discretely would have been the way forward, not sueing them and adding salt to the wound, I must say in the world of internetz, it’s very easy for the masses to go against the classes (mmm I feel like listening to Manics now). So yeah, feel free to post your thoughts on the situation

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…and you think Thom Yorke can dance

crazybobbles — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 22:01:45 +0000

Photo taken from Aurelien S at Flickr

Now this was pretty hilarious, whenever i told everyone i was going to see a scottish ballet they gave me this very confused and *breathe in* “ah i totally get your choice of entertainment, i get you so much like we’re blood brothers, buddies since highschool even though we weren’t but it sounds nicer to say that on paper to show a strong bond between us but deep down inside i haven’t a clue why you’re going to a random scottish ballet but i’ll just smile and nod along whilst judging you in my head for not only on where you’re going, but also what you’re wearing because you probably can’t hear this thought because i’m too busy giving you that look like i’m agreeing with you whilst thinking about what i’m eating for dinner and calculating whether or not i have enough meat to cook up a mean pasta and then wondering whether the stores are still open to buy some because i’m in that mood of cooking and will most likely need the extra meat but then having second thoughts on whether a mean curry is more appropriate and then having to trail back at the food i had the previous nights to ensure i haven’t recently eatten a mean curry to show a bit of variety but knowing i’m just kidding myself because i’d eat 3 curries in a row if i really felt like it” look *breathe out* (oh yeah, got to love big fat strike offs). I usually would milk the silence for a bit whilst the person is still doubting whether I’m serious or not and then I would pop the reason why I was going… I would add to the end of the line “… dancing to Radiohead”. Immediately the other person finds me cool and everything is happy and sacred (not that Scottish ballet isn’t cool, more on that later).

I think I heard about this first from NME when they mentioned that 5 radiohead songs were going to be used for a ballet. When that was announced, the performance wasn’t announced for London just yet so I didn’t pay any interest, a few weeks / months later I saw the event pop up on my last.fm calendar, Scottish Ballet with Radiohead. Immediately that event clicked to the article I read on NME and I decided that it was going to be a kooky (yet fun) experience that I couldn’t miss out on. I booked some shonky seats near the top of the stage (like, the last minute seats that cost nothing! haha) and tada.

I decided against using my DSLR camera to take pictors since photos would never really do justice to a ballet performance (hence I did some flickr searching and found a photo to use). I paid my friends a visit before venturing to the performance, there we ate nando’s and played all sorts of games from Rockband to Soul Calibur (oh how fun was that, i kept whooping my friends with a simply tap tap tap combo :P). It was nice seeing them again, we’d talk about Lost theories, books, bands, films and various kinds of odds and sods. Things were too fun that I left later than I was supposed to leave. I arrived at the doors a wee bit late and was held up at the doors to the hall because the performance had already started, I was luckily able to watch the thing on the TV’s outside (which made me wonder why the hell do we need to purchase tickets?).

Once ushered in I got seated to appreciate some fairly abstract dancing to the songs of Radiohead, the performance wasn’t just people dancing to radiohead, it was split into 3 acts. The first act was called Ride the Beast which featured the Radiohead songs. The song I missed out was creep and fitter happier which was a bummer, but fortunately I didn’t miss out Idiotechque and National Anthem and the other radiohead songs. I couldn’t really put my thumb towards the whole experience, a few times I wondered what the hell I was doing watching a bunch of people dancing around to radiohead and thoughts kept distracting me from the visuals.

I finally settled in and was able to focus on watching the folks dance, though it was always hard to digest the entire scene as a whole since there were so many things happening simultaneously, sometimes I would direct all my attention to one dancer and sometimes I would picture them as colourful dots on a big black canvas swimming around. In my head I would even imagine how I’d choreography a bunch of dancers to the beats of radiohead, and when Idiotechque was on, all I kept imagining was my very own performance of 50 people spasing out like Thom Yorke, kinda reminded me of that episode where Joey taught a bunch of dancers how to dance, you know…hand, hand, head, head, up, out a beret, out a beret, big turn here, grand dechant, desont, desont, slide back, step, step, step, and jazz hands!

The clothes the dancers wore were vivid coloured tops and trousers, the movement was lickerty and there was this one guy who just stood there the entire performance (sucks to be him). Their movements reminded me of ripples of a sound wave, things were fairly in time to the music and beat, other times it felt slightly off sync, like I was listening to radiohead in my earphones whilst actually watching a proper ballet. Things felt like a massive build up as the number of dancers would slowly increase until the “climax” of the show where uhm… people left? (tbh I can’t remember, it’s been a while but I did remember telling myself that it felt a bit like minimilism). The radiohead act was pretty short, once they were done we clapped and it was interval time. I was indecisive of whether it was good or not, it’s the first time I’ve watched ballet and I really had no idea whether or not it was some good ballet, or some lousy ballet. After some thinking it was time for act 2… s**tsticks.

The next act kind of bored me to no tomorrow, the dancers wore naked suits and danced to some experimental piano music which included all sorts of weird ad lib noises recorded to make it sound deep and interesting. I’m not sure whether the moves were fun either, the first part I just remember some girl running a bit and stopping, then she’s run backwards and stop a bit. Funnily enough it felt like me when I’m running to work, I’m always all over the place, maybe I’m perfect for ballet? haha.

This act felt far too pretencious, there was one guy who again, stood for the entire performance (sucks to be him again) whilst one, two or three dancers would begin to move. It mainly involved a lot of running, jumping, and running, and jumping, and standing, and running and jumping and rolling. Once the act was over I was even more confused as to whether or not that piece was good or not. I personally felt it was a bit pretencious and there was a lacking of cowboys jumping around the place! I kinda felt a bit tricked into going to a ballet where the only pull was that they were playing thumping radiohead music whilst people danced to it. I went out for some fresh air and finally went back in for act 3. I was glad I was watching act 2 near the back because I really didn’t want to see people in naked suits (they freak me out).

For the final act, I decided to sit RIGHT in the front, I had remembered where people sat during act 2 and made sure I would sit on a seat that wasn’t occupied (would be silly if someone joined in on the last act so I assume they couldn’t make it). I found a pretty nice spot that was close to the stage, the middle aged lady sat next to me looked slightly frightened that I suddenly appeared, but I paid no attention to her and played about with my mobile for a bit (most likely going on flickr to check up on photos). It was nice being flexible during gigs and sitting in empty spots, I remember going to a regina spektor gig with some cheap cheap tickets that was located at the far end of the venue (so regina was a tiny dot) and just ninja’ing a nicer seat at the next interval, you typically can’t do that when you have another friend so yay for solo missions.

The third act was a classical themed piece of ballet, people would wear suits and dresses and dance to some old time pieces. The dresses were elegant and the suits were… i dunno.. black? haha. Each person was paired up (I could picture the director going, “alright I want every in groups of two” like it was drama school all over for them) as a couple and would dance together throughout the act. I liked the chick in the green dresses because the dress looked awesome but what really won it for me was this couple where the lady was ickle and cute! The performance was warm and comfortable as they seemed to enjoy the dancers as much as the audience enjoyed seeing it, the music wasn’t experiental and really complimented with the dancing, the background was projected with stills or clips related to the piece and yeah, just loads of dancing, the themes moved from hotel lobby, to bar, to outside a hotel, to country western (thats when all the guys dress up as cowboys haha) and then back to something else again (sorry my memory is poor! It’s been over a month!). I remember coming out of the venue feeling happy that I was able to see the last act, it was the saviour of the whole piece and was even better than the radiohead, sometimes it’s the simple (and non pretencious) things that win it for me.

So yeah, sorry for the lack of photos, I’m sure it’s hard to imagine anything I said (especially judging on how descriptive I was for each act) without some form of illustration so yeah, here’s a youtube video I dug up of the three performances I saw that night, it’s all rehearsal stuff so yeah *shrugs*. Hopefully all of this drivel will make sense now. This was the last performance I went to in October that I had to blog about so woo! That’s all done now! Now I need to blog about Mercury Rev *grovels*.

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Howling Bells: Now with more dancing

crazybobbles — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:39:04 +0000

A few weeks ago Howling Bells announced that they’ll be back on tour again, I was immediately excited to see them play but alas that excitement was shortlived, their actual headline gig in Kings College was clashing with of Montreal’s gig in Koko and I already had tickets for of Montreal! S**tsticks! I did consider selling my of Montreal ticket but I knew it simply was a show I could not miss (and I was right) and I wasn’t keen on selling tickets at such short notice. Luckily (or perhaps not? (more on that later)) they were also supporting Mercury Rev who were playing in Shepherds Bush Empire. I think my immediate reaction was “aargh not shepherds bush again!” but since it’s been a while since I’ve seen Howling Bells play, I decided to bite the bullet and spend £20 odd (and Okkervil River tickets were only £14!) to see Mercury Rev Howling Bells.

It was the second time in a week where I had to pay Shepherds Bush Empire a visit, though everytime I’ve successfully smuggled a camera in, I still find the place pretty scary and traumatic, though the excitement and adreneline involved is always priceless so nonetheless I took both of my cameras to the gig and used my new and improved smuggling technique to hopefully get my camera in. Last time was far too easy since I wasn’t able to fully appreciate the thought involved in smuggling the camera, this time my techniques really came into play, because alas ladies and gentleman, I GOT CAUGHT AGAIN! haha.

Juanita having an orgasm haha

This time they were convinced my secret compartment had something suspicious so I surrendered and showed them the lenses I had stored there (the camera body was somewhere else!). I said i brought them there but won’t be using them. He asked me if I had any cameras and I thought as distraction, I should show him a compact camera to convince him no person is silly enough to bring two cameras into a gig (fortunately for me I’ve gone past the zone of being silly and back to sly again). He was silly enough to suggest that I could fit a lens into eve, my poor little compact camera! Almost to a point where he said I should goto reception and hand in my compact!

I argued with him that it’s a compact camera and that you couldn’t put lenses into compacts and dared him to try. I gave him that frustrated look and turned around as well just to show him that he’s holding people up behind me, he tried desperately searching my long coat I use as distraction hoping to find the DSLR body but to no avail, it simply wasn’t in the bag or the coat! The technique worked! (Woo!). He kinda reminded me of the Ignore Stubborn Sales Assistant I encourted when getting my hard drive caddy fixed, just to a point where he had to get something out of me, fortunately he failed and just let me walk through with my lenses, my compact camera and of course, my DSLR body he failed to discover! Mwhahah. Me - 4, Shepherds Bush Empire - 0

Aviv Geffen

This was pretty much my last Shepherds Bush Empire gig I’ll have this year so thank god for that. Inside I managed to get straight to the front pretty easily and converse with the kind people around me. The fans for mercury rev are pretty weird I must say, one of them joked around about how he was only served plastic cups in the bar because people were afraid they would bottle Mercury Rev, which he joked around saying Mercury Rev aren’t the kind of band you’d be throwing bottles since they’re not really a “rocky” band (in which I strong disagreed after seeing them play ;)).

The first act, Aviv Geffen was quite a fruity one, I found it funny how he’d let his “band” come in before he entered the stage, granted he does forget that he’s a support band and pretty much noone (including me) has heard of his great works. They were quite cheesy and overly dramatic, I was more intrigued with getting my mobile internet to connect in the venue than with the band unfortunately. I did manage to take a quick shot of them (out comes camera, SNAP, camera back in bag).

Once the first act was over, it was then a quick review on lenses I should be using for Howling Bells. I managed to smuggle the 28mm F1.8 so I was keen on using it, but sadly I think it wasn’t as useful as I imagined it to be in this venue, maybe if I was in the pit but certainly not where I was standing. It was fun watching the roadies set up the stage, at one point the guy got an electric shock teehee, they had to sing and play the bass guitar at the same time to discover where the source of the shocks were, and that meant getting more electric shocks! They managed to find it in the end and had the power replaced so the bassist wouldn’t have to deal with that. Got to love roadies, I remember talking to Chris from Muse about how when they were doing that festival where the wind and rain were all kinds of crazy (i think it was the hurricane one), they left the roadies to quickly risk their lives and get all the gear back inside, but I suppose that is their job. Poor roadies.

Twas hard getting a good landscape shot :(

Anyway, Howling Bells appeared on stage and Juanita, the singer greeted us with a very silent and whispery “hello”. I think we were shy. She went on to say, “We’re howling Bells” in a whispery voice and asked who we were (in which I tried shouting out LUNDUN but was too late *sniff*). Twas unfortunately that there weren’t too many Howling Bells fans in the house/empire (all venues should end in Empire, it sounds epic, Brixton Empire, Hoxton Bar and EMPIRE, Carling EMPIRE etc). Juanita was sporting a nice leather jacket and a new short and cute hairdo (I knew it was short but this was the first time I saw it in person). The setlist was pretty short tonight, the first three songs; Setting Sun, Wishing Stone and Cities were from their first LP (though Cities is a B Side) whilst the other 4 tracks were from their new album. I haven’t heard much of their new work, just Into the Chaos so it was all pretty new for me, here’s a video of them playing Into the Chaos:

Probably should of zoomed in for this video but I wasn’t thinking too far in advance I’m afraid. I really like this track, it’s beginning to grow on me and I can’t wait for the new album to come out (which is February so grr!). The new numbers seem to include more dancing from Juanita, my memory of Howling Bells was that Juanita was more of a swayer during the songs than dancing. We did get a lot of swaying in the beginning though, and man it was hard taking photos of someone who sways around (though that makes it more fun). Photo wise it was pretty difficult to take shots because the lighting was horrificly dark, I pretty much had to stick to around iso 400/800 in order to take a shot. Though usually that’s a case for support bands, they get mean sounds and mean lighting! Hope you guys like the photos still though, i did try

I really like Juanita's new hairdo, here she's clapping :p

At one point someone heckled her to play “The Night is Young” but she said no and said that the next new song had the word night in it though. It was a nice number and had more clapping and synths involved, I never really noticed much synth work in the previous album so it was nice seeing that included, just hopefully not in mass proportions. The other new songs involved a lot of dancing and drumming which was fun! It was a fairly short set so there wasn’t much to talk about. Howling Bells have still got it and this short set was just a taser (yup, taser) for things to come once their new album is released.

That’s about it, I’ll write about Mercury Rev another time since I still have to process the photos there, to give you an idea of the entry I’m just going to write about how bored I was and how I had to keep myself awake by engrossing myself into the crazy strobe lights that made my eyes hurt at the end of the gig. So yeah, more Mercury Rev bashing another time (sorry mercury rev :p).

More shots in the Howling bells set

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More taser shots: Howling Bells

crazybobbles — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:56:31 +0000

Howling Bells are back in action, join Jaunita and the rest of the gang in some crazy guitar swinging antics. This is another taser (yup taser, not teaser) shot since there’s quite a lot of photos to look at and I’m tired tonight! Tonight’s gig was exceptionally dark than it was previously so shots aren’t as great I’m afraid.

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Okkervil River @ Shepherds Bush feat. Lauren Gurgiolo

crazybobbles — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:05:38 +0000

For those who don’t know much about Okkervil River or who haven’t read my previous posts about them, they’re an indie rock band from Austin, Texas, here’s their last.fm page for you to do some more digging if you want to learn more about them. They do some pretty innovative stuff like have other bands they’ve met on the road cover their latest album “The Stand Ins” and post them on youtube (do check them out!). I saw them play live at Scala Kings Cross and at the ickle Borderline (mmm, intimate!) and always came out of the venue immensely satisfied that I’ve seen an awesome band play live. This was a step up venue wise compared to Scala so it was going to be nice seeing them play in a bigger venue with better lights and sounds. Oh and before you tell me, yes, it was Shepherds Bush Empire, the place that scares the bejesus out of me because I got caught smuggling my camera once (though I did survive and still took photos hehe). So yeah, join me on yet another journey to Shepherds Bush Empire, featuring the marvellous band, Okkervil River.

I already knew that loads of people I’ve met beforehand were going, so it wasn’t a surprise that I’d see them queueing up outside the venue ready for some gigging action. We talked about our previous gigs we’ve been to and other stuff relating to… gigs really haha. I explained to them about the revised smuggling technique that was designed specifically for Shepherds Bush, from mind games with security guards to distraction mechanisms, sometimes I wish it was easy like back in the old days where I was able to just walk in drunk (with the camera) and still pull off a camera smuggle (good times). But the long coat is the key in making the searching process a pain for security ergo having a higher chance of getting through. Anyway, we went in and once again I was able to smuggle the camera into the venue, I was worried it was the same guy who discovered my bag (he was there) but I managed to avoid him altogether Good times…

Will Sheff loves couple shots!

Once in the venue I met up with the other folks (they were in front of the queue whilst I joined the back since security love searching bags thoroughly at the beginning) and then we resumed our conversation about…. gigs. I was recommended to go see Jeffery Lewis (which I have tickets for :)) who sounds like an interesting guy that sings whilst shows illustrations that he drew. After a bit of waiting the support bands came on, the first band was alright but didn’t really stand out as much as the Dodos. They were ace, the main singer strangely had a two mic affair going on which made photolising a pain, I had no idea why he had two mics because they both sound the same and he would switch them in between songs, perhaps stereo? but you really can’t pull off a stereo in a gig, it’s just a full blast of music in all directions from the PA systems. During the gig I was able to bump into a fellow photographer who was at the Noah and the Whale gig (not to mention another photographer who I’ve seen quite a lot of times in the past such as Shearwater, the “spinoff” project band founded by members of Okkervil River). But yeah, the two mic thing was weird, bands like Muse and Howling Bells utilise two mics by having one clean and one distorted but both sounded similar, any Dodo fan who’d like to share the reason why there’s two mics feel free to comment

Anyway, after the two support bands, it was time to set the stage up for Okkervil River, nearer the end of the soundtests and checks I noticed the band members coming out and doing their own gear (bless). I heard there were some changes towards the members of the band since I last saw them play. They’ve all grown beards from the last time I saw them which was pretty funny, we also have a new member to the team; Lauren Gurgiolo (singer songwriter for The Dialtones). She’s a multi instrumentalist so she had a slew of instruments at her end including Banjo, Mandalins, Guitars and the slidey-guitar-thingy-you-put-on-the-stand-and-sit-down-to-play-on-ey thing. She didn’t have a beard though. To be fair, I only realised she was a new additional to the band when she came out on stage to perform.

I originally thought she was a roadie! Oops! She rocks in the banjo and mandalin!

Once the stage was ready, it was ready to rock, the band came out and greeted us with Plus Ones. I was happy that the setlist included quite a lot of tracks from their earlier catalogue, they played… actually just read the setlist, most of the time I come back with the setlist and I should really take a photo of it to save my time from explaining the songs. Black (one of my favorites) was played as well as A Stone. The new songs were pretty sparse (which was good) and they made sure that they had a fair share of slow and quiet songs to perform. The one song I was dying to see live was Lost Coastlines. I instantly fell in love with that song when I heard it and vowed to get it on video to enjoy afterwards, and here it is:

I heckled “BANJO” right before the song came on (shame i didn’t record it) because I knew Lost Coastlines was next hehe. For those wondering why I moved the camera a bit, I was actually making it look like I was taking photos, keeping your camera steady for long periods of times makes the security guard suspicious that you’re filming the gig (and they can kick your out for that (or give you a proper telling off whilst brutally sodomising you whilst your friends watched). Not that I wasn’t suspicious already; what with donning two cameras around my neck. Though I wasn’t too afraid this time, especially when I knew I wasn’t alone…

Will Sheff with acoustic guitar...

Some photographers are right bastards

I think I’ve met the evil version of me at this gig, a few heads away from me was another guy with a smuggled DSLR camera, I didn’t see his photo pass or his presence in the photopit so I assumed he’s a smuggler like me, only a really bad one. He was wearing a big cargo jacket that made him sweat like a b****** (or like the singer from the Dodos, he was dripping after the gig!). I’m assuming he used that to smuggle his camera which was a bit silly becauase it only draws attention to you (plus it’s not sly during summers) We shall call him SUCD (sweaty uncool camera dude). I think he did the whole smuggling thing wrong, plus he did look silly wearing that coat during a gig (not that me wearing a scarf during summers makes me normal). However that wasn’t the annoying thing, the most annoying thing he was doing was taking photos at every moment during the entire gig. Most people can endure this but the bit that pisses everyone off (and I saw a lot of pissed off faces, constantly staring at him and giving him evils) is that he was snapping when the band was doing a quiet number and requested people to sshhhhhhhhhhhhut it, so instead of us listening to a heartwarming performance of A Stone. We get camera clicks every 5 seconds during the song. So yeah, twas lovely standing near a sweaty camera man who’s pissing everyone off with their camera clicks. I suppose that’s the reason why photographers are only allowed 3songs, you just become a distraction to not only the crowd but to yourself if you don’t know when to stop. I usually stop halfway to admire the music and only shoot sparsely at times when:

Will indicating to me that it's ok to take photos of him, honest

The lights were epic and bright
They were using some bitchass instrument (like the slide guitar thingy or THE MACHINE)
It was a rocky moment where people won’t notice the camera and the photos are more action’ey
There’s a person being piledriver’ed on stage (my camera was too late for that at of Montreal gig :()
The first 3 songs are being played (good to hide behind gig photographers)
A guest muscian comes in

To be fair, the above list is a lie (haha i just felt like writing a list), I can get pretty sucked into photography like the SUCD but I suppose when people give you enough evils, you kinda know it’s time to pack the camera in and just enjoy the gig. In his case he was completely oblivious to how much he was pissing the people around him off, heck even I was annoyed, but for other reasons (he was using a shit lens that wasn’t appropriate for a gig!). I tried digging up flickr for other Okkervil River photos but alas none of them are him (he’s still probably processing the 20544500 unncessary shots he took at the gig haha (though I did take 600, some of which were for animation purposes)).

This time he didn't scare me when he played Westfall!

The band finished with “Unless it kicks” and came back for an encore where they played “Girl in port“, “Okkervil River song” and finally “Westfall“. I didn’t really mention this last time but Westfall scares me, mainly because when I saw them play at the Borderline, Will sang that near the end and whilst I was taking photos of him he sang/shouted “Now, with all these F***KING cameras focused on my face!”. At first I wasn’t familiar with westfall so hearing him sing that immediately frightened me, thinking that he was angry at me (even though I said hi and stuff to him before the gig) for taking photos of him. Luckily after some careful googling I realised it was only part of the lyrics (just sans the swearing). This time I was fortunately wiser to know it wasn’t about me, but yeah, there is a moral there somewhere.

After the gig I quickly swiped the setlist and went home, I hate the curfews for Shepherds Bush because it ends at 11pm meaning I got home around half past midnight! Mucho tiredissimo :(. So yeah, next gig, Howling Bells and Mercury Rev. unfortunately I tried getting into Mercury tonight but got bored instantly so I’m considering leaving halfway through the set if I can’t stand it haha (sorry Mercury Rev). Anyway, hope you enjoy the photos!

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Jonathan Coulton rickrolls us all!

crazybobbles — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:20:18 +0000

Well, continueing from the epic meetup with uka, I head off to Shepherds Bush to check out the folk singer songwriter Jonathan Coulton. If you guys don’t know much about him, he’s the one who wrote the epic song “Still Alive” for the ending song of the video game “Portal”. He used to be a software developer (my roots) but now makes music and tours for a living. He income comes directly from his website www.jonathancoulton.com and you can download his tracks if you like it. He’s even nice enough to throw in some free tracks for you to download right now But yeah, if you like his stuff to buy them! Some tracks I’d recommend are (click on the links, some tracks you can download for free!) “Tom Cruise Crazy“, “You Ruined Everything“, “Skull Crusher Mountain” and “Code Monkey“. The lyrics tend to be passive agressive and involve zombies, crazy warlords, mad scientists and whatever geeky stuff he can imagine. So yes, on with the show!

Jonathan Coulton on guitar?

Getting to the venue was pretty easy, it was a few stops from where I dropped off uka, though I felt slightly disorientated and actually missed my station at Paddington, nevermind haha. Once I was finally there it was once again showdown time, camera smuggling part 2. Last time ended up almost in tears and this time, I made sure I was well prepared. Instead of stuffing the camera in my bag, I actually put it in the most dangerous place one can put it, strapped to my body. I actually wore the camera body (no lens) and walked in with just lenses in the bag (same secret compartment).

I was also armed with my long coat in my bag (best trick since it makes searching painfully long!) so immediately we have the perfect trap. A big bag distraction with the real loot hidden right behind my back. It was pretty maths to be honest, last time they didn’t do a body search so I’ve assumed that it isn’t really neccesary in this venue so having it strapped to my body whilst they focus on the bag was the best trick. After a few pats I was let in pretty easily and escourted to my seat….

Wait a minute I hear you say! SEAT?! You’re sitting down?!! Unfortunately, these gigs aren’t of the standing variety, it’s a folk artist, so you get comfty seats to relax instead of standing all night. It also probably made sense because most of the audience was made up of pasty skinny and/or slightly overweight greasy nerds :p (sorry nerds, I need to betray you to look cool haha!). Most of the folk probably spent their days sitting down so having it seated was a good idea (man I’m mean hehe). After a hectic day of work and getting things signed, I wouldn’t mind a nice chillaxed night of geeky folk music.

Pretty blue and green!

The support band Paul and Storm, were pretty cool, I actually missed half of the show but it was pretty easy to get in, it was clearly a mash up of folk music and comedians, their lyrics reached out to the fans with references only a pure bred (ie both parents are of geek bloodline) geek would understand. The mudbloods probably didn’t get a thing (me being a mudblood :D). Anyway, to give you an idea of what they did, here’s a video of their last song. You need to think like a pirate to be able to appreciate the jokes.

Judging from the seats you can tell that I wasn’t sitting particularly close to the band huh? Yeah my seats sucked, I was escorted to some shonky seating area near the left hand side of the show, though it was level 0 seats (ie ground floor), it was nonetheless shonky, the annoying thing was that it was a first come first serve seating arrangement when you booked your tickets, there were no premium seats and having your seats reserved was merely to avoid having people sitting alone from their friends (GO CRY BEHIND THE CORNER BECAUSE YOU CAN’T SIT NEXT TO YOUR FRIEND! CRY! CRY LIKE THE RAGE OF A BIBLICAL FLOOD) (ahem). Luckily for me, I’m used to going solo, and this is where solo missions pay off. After the interval (yes there’s an interval for these gigs, toilet breaks and people to catch their breath, being geeks and all ;)) I pretty much walked all the way to the front and sat in the most bestest (correct, bestest :P) most comfortablest (and correct, most comfortablest) seats there were, SORTED! Not only were the seats close to the band, it made ninja photographying inconspicuous and awesome (because I was shooting on the left).

Disco ball action!

Anyway after the interval, Jonathan Coulton appeared on stage and greeted us with a song about a certain swedish furniture company. The stage was pretty bare, and the sound isn’t as full as other bands (since it’s just vocals and an acoustic) but it was nonetheless an awesome show. The fact is, the entire show I was in giggles for the stuff he sang and did. Occasionally Paul and Storm came out to provide backing as well as ad lib and vamp up whilst Jonathan Coulton was tuning up. The audience was all rowdy and not afraid of heckling during his talks. The best heckle was when Jonathan said “this song is about two people arguing” and another guy said “no it isn’t”, the sheer cheek in saying that made Jonathan giggle at the response…. oh dear, rereading makes me wonder whether or not you’ll get any of this it’s probably far too geeky! Uhm *panics* just listen to some songs and it should hopefully make sense.

Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm

Here’s a video of him doing Still Alive:

At one point of the show, he took his iphone out and told the audience he wanted to show us something, I immediately heckled (yup, heckling is fun) “STOP TWITTERING!” which he giggly replied that he wasn’t, the next thing he showed us was quite a funny bit. He explained how one of his songs, Mr Fancy Pants was like a 1 minute odd song that he originally hated when making the tune but later on loved, he wanted to play it live but didn’t know how to, so he installed an iphone app that did some sampling action (i’m not too sure now tbh, it might have been just for show and he was merely playing backing tracks) which played all the samples from the song whilst he sang along to it. The song was funny to listen to, but halfway through the song.. it happened! A video is needed to explain this. So yes, ANOTHER youtube video!

So yeah, the gig wasn’t about musical genious, it was about laughing out loud, being a pirate, heckling, and appreciating geeky references. The photography experience was pretty fun since nobody really cared about me photolising, their main concern was for folks filming the show, I did record a song or two but that was about it. I still prefer the satisfication you get when taking a pretty photo of a musician that really captures the moment and whatnot. Oh and only one professional photographer was at the “photopit”, it was pretty hilarious seeing him on his own (guess someone had to do it). So yes, enjoy the photos. Definitely check his site out and listen to a few songs and tell me what you think

So yeah, lots of videos since it’s hard to explain!

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Shearwater and the love of birds

crazybobbles — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:09:54 +0000

Man, this is a blast from the past. Anyway, a few weeks ago (we’re talking 19th September haha) I went to a gig near Bush Hall to see Shearwater, for those who don’t know much about Shearwater, the band was formed when band members of Okkervil River Will Sheff and Jonathan Meiburg wanted an outlet for more mellow and quieter songs. The cute thing I like about the band is that quite a lot of the names are based on birds, this is because Jonathan studied ornithology and knows his stuff about birds, so the name shearwater itself is a birds name :). Anyway, I knew they were playing at an ickle venue so I decided to catch them live at good old Bush Hall.

The venue was pretty ickle, when entering it I noticed a lot of articles about famous artists once playing in this tiny venue, I can’t remember who but there were some pretty huge bands. The entire yesterday I was actually spent panicing on my lack of tickets arriving for the show, I though they were either lost in the post or some silly thing happened. Turns out after a closer look at my confirmation email, it was a box office thing where you simply go to the venue and state your confirmation code, oops haha. I don’t think there were tickets for this gig anyway, perhaps it was too ickle for the venue to do tickets hehe.

I met up with a load of people I knew from the other Okkervil River gigs, we talked about gigs, and more gigs we’re going to, and gigs we went to in the past (I kinda got bored for a bit tbh haha). It was nice meeting the same folks from another gig. Anyway, that was pretty much it, the support band “The Constantines” played and were pretty alright, though I got the feeling most people went to see them instead of Shearwater which was pretty weird. There was a hoard of photographers surround the band when they played on which I never saw when Shearwater played *shrugs*.

One of the many cool instruments they played during the gig

Shearwater appeared on stage and greeted us with “On the Death of the Waters“. Jonathan Meiburg has a very soothing voice and it was further enhanced by the soothing electric piano chords. It was nice going to a gig that wasn’t about jumping up and down and more about enjoying the mellow side of things. Granted I always found Okkervil River still awesome when they play their mellow tracks but this was different, the entire set was mellow meaning you could really sink into the music and not worry about all kinds of ear buzzing after the gig. The gig made me smile.

ROOKing to ROCK (or the other way round)

One thing that you’ll notice further on the gig was that they were far from a normal mellow rock indie band. The drummer / percussionist, Thor Harris, was a classically trained music student and a former carpenter. He’s a special fella, he built his own house using recycled and found materials, some of the instruments he used are self made too (most of them anyway), you could instantly see his huge involvement in the music of the band when songs included a lot of unique instruments played ranging from steel pipes to random bones (that he killed for, kidding haha). He also had an awesome hairdo / dress sense (orange trousers anybody?) which is a plus in my books. It was very experimental and creative, defintiely a gig I’d love to see again (which I am woot!)

Songs that stood out from the setlist were Rooks, Seventy Four, Seventy Five and Leviathan Bound. They closed the set with a Talk Talk cover in which they played intimately behind a grand piano, a few meters away from the stage, using only acoustic instruments for the ultimate unplugged experience. It was an amazing set! Hope you enjoy the photos.