Photo by David Greenwald
Photos/ramblings re: yesterday’s madness (featuring Spoon, Rose Elinor Dougall [pictured], Real Estate, Toro Y Moi, Yukon Blonde, International Waters and more) will be up on Cokemachineglow this afternoon. Hugs!
All photos by David Greenwald
The first two times I saw the Clientele, they were plagued by technical difficulties and the injustice of opening for Peter Bjorn and John to a crowd more interesting in taking iPhone photos of themselves, respectively. Respect wasn’t the name of the game for some surprisingly rowdy drunks (at a Clientele show!) at the band’s Spaceland gig on Friday, but they sounded triumphant nevertheless. After opening with a cover of Big Star’s “Nighttime” and dropping song-of-the-2000s contender “Since K Got Over Me,” the band launched into a career-spanning setlist both beautiful and forceful. Frontman Alasdair MacLean referred to an early run of Bonfires on the Heath tracks as “my new songs,” but the band — which features rock’s most undersung rhythm section — took ownership of their catalog. Bassist James Hornsey, in particular, isn’t a showman, but after Wilco’s John Stirratt (and Sir Paul McCartney), he’s the most fluidly melodic player working, and his talents were in full affect on “Here Comes the Phantom” and “I Wonder Who We Are.” The show’s only failing was not extending the magic longer — after a too-brief hour, encore included, the band called it a night. More photos after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
All photos by David Greenwald
As one would hope, local post-Clap Your Hands Say Yeah country-punks LA Font’s embryonic recordings gain grit and sweat when brought to the stage — and apparently enough of a beat to make one audience member do variations of The Robot for 45 minutes. Join the party after the jump. (Dropping the pretty gallery software for now — more hassle than it’s worth. Unless you dig it! Leave your vote in the comments.) Read the rest of this entry »
Folks, you’re probably wondering why you’re not looking at a photo right now. Here’s why. Venues (and bands) don’t want a bunch of photogs with hulking DSLRs and flash attachments cluttering the front row at shows; thus, they have a certain allotment of photo passes. You obtain a photo pass by sending a nice e-mail to the band in question’s publicist or label and saying, “I want to cover show X for publication X.” The publicist, assuming there’s room and you’re e-mailing him or her from a respectable publication, will say, “Sure, I’ll put you down for a photo pass.” Tonight, as happens embarrassingly often, there was no photo pass, and that’s why there are no photos. It’s not always a photo pass — sometimes it’s a missing plus one, or your name’s not on the list at all, or some other unexpected disaster. It happens maybe once out of every 5-6 shows I cover. It might be the publicist’s fault, or the venue’s fault, or the band manager’s fault, or a missed hand-off somewhere in between. I have no idea. All I know is, in any other industry, if there was a 17% fuck-up rate, people would get fired. Folks, this is not a rant; just facts. (And if my wristband’s somehow not there for me at SXSW next month, I’ll burn Austin to the ground. But anyway.)
I’m sure Still Life Still, whom I came to see and still wholeheartedly recommend, put on a tremendous performance equal parts Broken Social Scene chaos and Japandroids sweat. Astoundingly, Wild Beasts, the headlining act, managed to sell out the show by 9:15 p.m., proving for the umpteenth time that no matter how determined a band is to sound like Shitty Wolf Parade, a Pitchfork Best New Music will guarantee a sold-out Los Angeles date.
All photos by David Greenwald
Most bands are terrible with tape loops. What sounds great on record is often difficult to reproduce in a performance, and though a number of solo acts — St. Vincent, Andrew Bird, Owen Pallett — use it as an essential element of their repertoire, it’s rare to find a musician outside of consumate performer Jon Brion who ever makes tapping that pedal look easy. Yet Pepper Rabbit, a trio based mainly on keyboards, bass and drums, stitched in their live looping seamlessly on Tuesday night, fleshing out their gloomy psych-pop with clarinet, ukelele, harmonies and whatever was at hand in their surprisingly cluttered stage. It was precocious stuff from a wet-footed live act, but the songs were as sharp as their instrumental sureness, gaining a boldness and volume on stage that recalled Grizzly Bear’s promising early days. Head down the rabbit hole with these guys soon — before it becomes the Palladium. [Hi-res photos on Flickr] Update: You can watch pretty much the whole show on YouTube.
Pepper Rabbit – “Red Wine”: mp3
More: Concert Photos | Camera Obscurist
First Fridays are typically over-stuffed, but apparently last night’s Atlas Sound show was particularly packed, forcing a number of attendees to watch the gig on video screens outside of the concert hall. (I’d heard the show was sold out earlier in the day and opted for drinks at El Prado instead. C’est la vie.) For those that didn’t get in, LAist shutterbug Melissa has photos on Flickr. Update: Michael Stipe and the dude who doesn’t sing in Animal Collective were there! Update 2: Michael Stipe and Geologist were at a New York natural history museum, not in L.A., as intrepid commentors have noticed. Good catch.
All photos by David Greenwald
Just over a year ago, I decided to turn my concert photography from hobby into a considerably more expensive hobby and bought a DSLR. It’s the most satisfying purchase I’ve ever made. So this year’s best concert photos are, hopefully, a few steps up from their predecessors and a document of my growth as a photographer. Along the way, I documented great bands on the verge of break-ups, the Rawky Awards pick for the year’s worst band in one of his first (and worst) concerts, and Thom motherfucking Yorke. In 2010, I’m looking forward to shooting SXSW and hopefully selling some photos (holler at me if you want to buy prints, folks), but for now, 10 shots I love from 2009. After the jump — my 10 favorite shows of the year. Read the rest of this entry »
All photos by David Greenwald
Oh, Morrissey, you most un-arena of rockers. With a tour that’s seen him collapse at one show, cancel another due to a blown voice and walk out on a third after a fan hit him with a thrown bottle, the girlfriend and I were just hoping he’d get through his Gibson Amphitheatre show in one piece. But if the former Smiths singer did betray a bit of his recent health woes with a seeming shortage of breath between songs and during a few missed verses, he made up for it in set list choices and sheer charisma. From the show’s opening moments, Moz sauntered about the stage like it was his living room, kicking things off with Smiths classic “This Charming Man” and cruising through a number of greatest hits from his old band: “How Soon Is Now,” “Ask” (the show’s highlight) and “Cemetry Gates,” among others. Full review + more photos after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
