September 2008 Archives
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I have a pair of tickets to giveaway for this Friday's gig at the Rock and Roll Hotel featuring D.C.'s own Soft Complex and Howard Wolfson's favorite band, Glasvegas. Should be a lot of fun. All you have to do is email me the name of your favorite D.C. band and your favorite band from Scotland. Please put "Ticket giveaway" in the subject line. I will pick a winner on Friday morning so make sure you check your email.
Oasis & Ryan Adams - 2008 Tour Dates
Dec. 3 - Oakland, CA Oracle Arena
Dec. 4 - Los Angeles, CA Staples Center
Dec. 6 - Las Vegas, NV The Pearl
Dec. 8 - Denver, CO Broomfield Events Ctr.
Dec. 10 - Minneapolis, MN Target Center
Dec. 12 - Chicago, IL Allstate Arena
Dec. 13 - Detroit, MI Palace of Auburn Hills
Dec. 15 - London, ON John LaBattCentre (rescheduled 9/9 date)
Dec. 17 - New York, NY Madison Sq. Garden
Dec. 19 - Camden, NJ Susquehanna Center
Dec. 20 - Washington, DC GMU Patriot Center
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No, this set was not as good as their sterling performance at the 9:30 Club from a few weeks back, but any day you get to hear "Shine A Light" is officially a good day. The band went on about 25 minutes late, which played havoc with the rest of the day's schedule on the second stage. They basically played the first 45 minutes of their set on this tour, but still, soooooo good.
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Spiritualized @ 2008 Toronto Virgin Festival
Check out some of my other photos from the Toronto Virgin Festival:
The Kooks
Silversun Pickups
Shudder To Think
Paul Weller
Stereophonics
Sunday: The Mars Volta @ Ram's Head Live: Imagine a combination of Prince, James Brown and the worst prog rock you have ever heard. That's The Mars Volta. One guy was playing the flute! Visually compelling, but basically unlistenable. Not my thing at all, but I took a friend and he absolutely loved them. Can you believe they sold out Ram's Head Live at $41 a pop? Yes, forty one American dollars to see The Mars Volta. Heckuva country we live in.
Last Night: Built To Spill and The Meat Puppets @ 9:30 Club: Quite possibly one of the worst shows I have seen all year. I might be going out on a limb here, but I would imagine Doug Martsch has made enough money over the course of his career to buy more than one guitar. Perhaps if he employed these extra instruments in the live arena the audience wouldn't have to wait five minutes in between songs while he tuned up. Not that it mattered much, when the band was playing they were sleepy and boring, which is saying something when you have as good a drummer as Scott Plouf (ex-Spinanes!) behind the kit. The Meat Puppets, who I was intrigued about seeing, should have hung it up a while ago. Total dreck.
Tracklisting and whatnot. Fluxblog (aka Master of All Things Pavement) gives us the pros and cons of the choices.
Brighten The Corners is probably my least favorite Pavement record, only because I never owned the physical copy and didn't spend the appropriate amount of time with it to ever make it to regular rotation. Probably because at that point I was waist deep in Britpop and also still listening to Wowee Zowee two times a day. BTW, you need to cop that Wowee reissue if you don't have it yet. I say best.
Can't say I was much of a fan of The Kooks before their set in Toronto.
Can't say I am much of a fan of The Kooks after their set in Toronto.
Shrug.
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The Kooks @ 2008 Toronto Virgin Festival
And by "it" I mean Dig Out Your Soul. Happy hunting.
I am eager to know what people think.
I know it's not really cool to like them, but I count myself as a big fan of the Silversun Pickups. I've seen them four or five times now and they have yet to disappoint. Their set in Toronto was no different. And even though the lead singer has bad posture, they are very photogenic. I burned quite a few frames shooting the drummer, which is nice, because drummers are usually hard to shoot indoors. Yay festivals. They also played at least one new tune, which I really liked. That bodes well for the next record.
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Silversun Pickups @ 2008 Toronto Virgin Festival
It was effing incredible and I got to participate in what was one of the best concert moments I have ever been a part of.
Late in the set, near the end of "Sometimes (Lester Piggot)" Tim let the crowd take over on the chorus while the band finished playing the song. Only the crowd didn't want the song to end. We kept singing the chorus for another three or four minutes. Everyone was doing it! The band weren't sure what to do, as they were ready to play the next song. Tim had taken out his in ear monitors and the guitarist had traded out guitars with the roadie. But the crowd would not stop singing. We kept going and going. Then everyone in the band started smiling and one by one they all started playing the song again. Eventually Tim joined back in and the kept the song going for another minute or two before bringing it to a proper end. It was mind-blowing.
Someone had to get that on YouTube, right? Right?
I think I need to stop going to shows for a week or two because nothing is going to top that. Nothing. That song is one of my all time favorites and to see it performed like that was pretty special.
I am writing up a review of the show for another outlet, so you'll have to wait for the full review.
[mp3] James | Sometimes (Lester Piggot) (Live)
[mp3] James | Low Low Low (Live)
Head over to Pitchfork to see my photos of David Byrne at the Lyric Opera House from last night. I'm nowhere near the Byrne obsessive that many of my friends are, but damn, that man can do the soaring chorus as well as anyone.
Last night was just another in a long line of great gigs I have seen this month. It's really been an embarrassment of riches. Tonight it (hopefully) gets even better. James at the 9:30 Club, another band I didn't think I would get to see live ever again. And check out that setlist from Boston!
Yes.
Please.
Much better than the Spaceland show from L.A. a while back.
Among the many advancements in Canon's new EOS 5D Mark II camera is the Company's proprietary DIGIC 4 Imaging Processor that powers the camera's fast 14-bit analog-to-digital conversion for smooth color tones and exceptional gradation. The Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR offers a full-frame 24 x 36mm, 21.1 megapixel CMOS sensor and continuous shooting at 3.9 frames per second (fps) for an unlimited number of full-resolution JPEGs to the capacity of the memory card or up to 14 RAW images in a single burst when using a UDMA CF card. The camera includes a 15-point Autofocus (AF) sensor with nine selectable AF points plus six additional Assist AF points (three center AF points sensitive to f/2.8 lenses) with enhanced light source detection and AF microadjustment for greater autofocus performance. The EOS 5D Mark II camera also features a large, clear 3.0-inch Clear View LCD screen with 920,000 dot/VGA resolution, four times the pixel count of the EOS 5D camera's 2.5-inch screen, for enhanced clarity and color when viewing images.
It also shoots HD video. I won't be buying one but at least Canon is back in the game. I'd love to see the 15 point autofocus system migrate down to the next version of the 50D.
I bought The Bends on vinyl from Costco over the weekend.
Costco.
Vinyl is back, baby! Amazon is stocking 250,000 titles these days.
Nnnnnoooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I wrote up the my experiences and thoughts on the attack on Noel Gallagher in Toronto for my friends at Blurt Online.
Check out my photos of Paul Weller at the 9:30 Club from Saturday.
Site adds 'More Cowbell' to any song.
This just in: P4k hates KOL. But they have a nice interview with Paul Weller.
Annie Liebovitz talks photography.
Michael Stipe answers your questions.
Stevie Wonder plays "Superstition" on Sesame Street. And it is teh awesome. [via]
I got tangentially know the Shudder to Think crew when I worked at Epic Records in the mid-90's. I worked the very underrated 50,000 B.C. to college radio when it came out and I met and hung out with Craig, Nate and Stuart a few times. They were such genuinely nice people, it was impossible not to become fans of the band. It also helped that no one else in the company got their music, which made me like them even more. They had one of the best EPK's ever, which showed footage of them playing Lollapalooza (back when it was a traveling festival) and some big, burly frat-looking dude watching Craig do his thing and then looking directly into the camera and saying, "OMG! That dude it totally gay!" Maybe you had to be there...
Anyways, I was a bit disappointed with their set at V Fest in Baltimore. They just seemed a bit...off. Like their legs weren't under them yet. It was a completely different scenario in Toronto, however, where they hit the stage and went directly to 11. It had been a rainy and cloudy day before their early afternoon set, but the sun broke out just before they started. Craig looked up at the sky, smiled, turned to the audience and said "Hi, we're Shudder to Think [pause] and we bring the sunshine." Truth. Welcome back, guys.
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Shudder to Think at the 2008 Toronto Virgin Music Festival
They are playing a hometown show at the 9:30 Club on October 10th. Don't miss it!
Paul Weller ended his gig at the 9:30 Club tonight with a lively cover of "All You Need Is Love". It was the perfect ending to a damn-near perfect gig, so good it gave me goosebumps. The crowd would just not let him leave. It was eerily reminiscent of the the Travis gig from last year.
During the gig I decided that any day you get to hear "The Changingman" live is a good day. I had the pleasure of hearing it twice this week. Add in the fact that I had photos published all over the world and you can chalk this week up as a win for the home team.
Cheers.
PS - Pirates!
We found after the Stereophonics set who the lucky few photogs that were going to be able to shoot Oasis were. I was not one of them. Honestly, I was pretty upset. I had traveled a very long way to take photos of my favorite band and it was hard for me to accept that it wasn't going to happen.
Thanks goodness for Paul Weller then. There isn't a single other artist (including my beloved Super Furries) who I would have rather seen at that moment. Readers of this blog know I am a huge Weller fan and I had sky high hopes that his set, the first time I would see him with a full band, would deliver. Boy, did it. He was, quite simply, incredible. Full of vim and vigor of a person half his age (The Modfather turned 50 earlier this year). Standing a few feet away from him while he sang "The Changingman" was a treat that I will carry with me for a long time. He performed a changed up version of "Wild Wood" accompanied by some spare backing arrangement and a pounding drum beat, smoking a cig and giving off attitude the whole time. It was so bad ass. I was enthralled.
He's playing the 9:30 Club tomorrow night and you better believe I will be there. Would not miss it for the world.
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Paul Weller at the 2008 Toronto Virgin Festival
Believe it or not, there was more going on at the Toronto Virgin festival than the Oasis portion of the line-up. I'm still making my way through my photos (including a corrupted memory card full of Day One photos), but I wanted to get these Stereophonics photos up seeing as they are in town tonight to play the 9:30 Club.
I have never been much of a Stereophonics fan. I liked parts of their debut album but they have grown increasingly insufferable as their career has gone on. Some of their uptempo stuff is quite good (They played "A Thousand Trees" and "Pick A Part That's New" early in their set) but when they slow things down, they become the Welsh version of the Howard Dean "Yeeargh" speech. Kelly also didn't seem very into their performance, like he was just going through the motions, which was a bit of a turn off.
But don't take my word for it. The band is at the 9:30 Club tonight with openers People in Planes.
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Stereophonics at the 2008 Toronto Virgin Festival
9/11 might have been seven years ago, but I still think about it quite often and it affects me to this day. I started blogging because of it and, now that I think about it, also started down the path of being a photographer.
You can see all of my 9/11 photos over on Flickr. I wrote up my experiences from the day two years ago on the 5th anniversary.
Craziness erupted at the Oasis gig in Toronto tonight when during "Morning Glory" some punter somehow got onstage, and gave Noel a mighty shove into the monitors directly in front of him before turning and going after Liam. Luckily security corralled the guy before he could do any more damage to the band and the gig. I happened to be shooting Liam and Noel at the time and caught the incident the split second after it occurred. Everyone near us in the crowd was stunned, we all gave a collective "WTF?"
A few hastily assembled, sleep deprived thoughts:
- Wow.
- How could something like this happen?
- Why would someone want to do that? After the end of the gig, the person in charge of security said this guy did not have access to backstage (via laminate or sticky pass, etc.) and just somehow managed to sneak onto the stage.
- Noel appeared to hurt his back. At the last moment as he fell, he turned and landed on his back, not his stomach (and guitar).
- The band came back out after a 10 minute break and finished the gig, cutting two songs from the set.
- They have my eternal respect for that.
- I bet security beat the snot out of that guy.
- I immediately thought of this.
- I am glad The Chief appears to be OK.
- Never a dull moment at an Oasis gig.
The girl standing beside me got the whole thing on video. There is already some other footage on YouTube. Go see for yourself.
Overall the gig was good, although I was gutted not to make the approved photog list to shoot it properly. But I did stand beside Andy Bell earlier in the day and got to see Paul Weller put on a crackin' set, so the day wasn't a total loss.
I'm exhausted. Off to bed.
Last night was the second time I have taken in a championship soccer match at RFK stadium. D.C. United beat the Charleston Battery 2-1 to win the 2008 U.S. Open Cup and I got another shot of me in the reflection of a trophy. DCist has the full story and the celebration photos.
Another ho-hum set by an artist I was excited to see. She wasn't bad, she just didn't have much of a stage presence. Her voice was in fine form, but there just wasn't much else to her show. Plus, she went on a bit late, which made me late for the next band on the bill.
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Duffy at the 2008 Virgin Mobile Festival
You have until noon to enter the ticket lottery for the Oasis show at Terminal 5 in NYC on Friday, September 12th. If you get lucky, tickets will run you $50 plus gratuitous surcharges.
Also, Noel has a blog. But you have to sign up to read it. Luckily, there is always the NME. At least he got # 6 right.
Other than the seven hour trip north (stupid Delaware), The Future Mrs. Leaf and I had a blast in NYC last weekend. We arrived in Brooklyn around 6 p.m. or so on Saturday and quickly made our way to our friend's apartment in Fort Greene. After decompressing a bit, we headed across Flatbush Ave. to 5th Avenue in Park Slope where I bored the crap out of everyone by pointing at all the shiny, new boutiques and saying "That used to be a laundromat, that used to be a bodega," on and on. Man, 5th Ave. is totally different than when I lived there. But it felt good to be back. Hanging out in The Slope made me realize I miss my old neighborhood more than I thought I did. It's so nice to be able to walk everywhere and have everything you need within a few blocks.
We had a short wait for a table at Bonnie's, but it wasn't long before I was tearing into my favorite cheeseburger on the planet. It's nice to know that some things haven't changed at all. That same can't be said for the beer list at The Gate, however. It was all crappy microbrews so we went up the street to Lighthouse Tavern, which had just opened around the time that I moved away. We had a few there and eventually headed home to catch the end of the Mardy Fish v. James Blake match on TV.
Sunday was our big day at the US Open. We watched about 8 hours of tennis and got to see Jelena Jankovic, Roger Federer and Andy Roddick play on Arthur Ashe Stadium. It was really hot in our seats though, so we ended up walking around and moving from court to court all day. We saw a few matches in Louis Armstrong Stadium as well as a few junior matches on the outside courts. Around 7 o'clock, our stomach's starting grumbling, so we headed out to the 7 train after a very full day. Oh, and I took the G train for the first time ever. I was probably more excited about that than I should be. We ended the night with a yummy sushi dinner. On Monday we got on the road early in an effort to beat the traffic and made it home in time to see the last two sets of the Nadal v. Querrey match. Bonus!
I brought my camera with me on Sunday and took a few pics. I decided just to take my wide lens and sit back and enjoy the day, which turned out to be a wise decision. But I still got a bunch of great photos from the day.
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US Open Trip / Labor Day Weekend 2008
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