May 2011

Recently, it came to light that several states (Florida, Minnesota and Iowa) were trying to pass laws prohibiting people from photographing farms in their states. This was brought on by photographers uncovering issues in large factory farms that were unsanitary and unsafe, and blogging them to the world. Sounds familiar!! Seems those farms want to control what is out there in the press, so that they don’t look bad!

Nearly 33,000 people signed a petition on www.slowfoodusa.com to stand up for transparency and the right to take pictures of farms.

Since then, the bill has failed in Florida, and will hopefully fail in Minnesota and Iowa in the next few weeks.

Wouldn’t it be great if photographers in the music industry worked together to change the rules?

In the early 1980’s a group of music photographers got together to try to protest the contracts that were being trotted out pertaining to photographing musicians. After many meetings in New York City, we decided to boycott the Julian Lennon tour that was starting up the following month. Our tactic was to go to the show, ask to see the road manager at the box office, and reject the contract. The main thing is we all agreed to go to the show and then refuse to shoot. On the night of the first show of the tour, we called the two photographers from that city and told them to “be strong.” The next morning we called them to get the great news. They both told us that the 20 minute drive to the venue was a lot of work, and they decided to sign the horrible contract, because they didn’t want to waste all that time! The movement failed.

Since then, the rules have been getting increasingly worse. Is there any chance of a national protest happening in 2011?

Flew to New York for a quick turn around job. YIKES! What a town.

I had to go to the Jimmy Fallon show and photograph ?uestlove from the Roots. Got to 30 Rock and had to wade through a block long line of people who had been sleeping on the sidewalk for about five days waiting to get in to see Lady Gaga on Saturday Night Live! Man, that is a fan base! Some of them were waiting to see the host, Justin Timberlake, but most of them were there to see Gaga. When I arrived at the 6^th floor, I spent a great hour with ?uestlove and Tariq from the Roots. Hard to find nicer people in the music business.

Got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Then I started watching the people at the gate. How did people get anything accomplished before laptops and cell phones??

Almost everyone at the gate was either talking or texting or working on their laptops. When boarding started, people waited until the last minute to close their laptops, butr continued talking and texting. Once they got to their seats, laptops came out again. Nobody turned off their devices when the announcement came on until the flight attendant came by to warn them. What is so important that they can’t wait till they get home? As soon as they were able, all the devices came back out, till the announcement came to shut them off. When we landed, as soon as the wheels touched the ground the cell phones came out. As we were taxiing to the gate, I looked around and every person that I could see from my seat was either talking or texting! Is everything just more important in the 21^st century??

Photographed a band at the Aragon Ballroom this weekend. It is a general admission, first come- first served venue with a capacity of about 5000 people. The true fans start lining up the morning of the show in an alley down the block, and when the doors open, they run up the stairs to get to the front. Historically, there have been bands that caused people to sleep out in the alley for up to four days (Van Halen comes to mind). These people, I am surmising, were aided by substances legal and illegal. Many of them passed out in the front row before the band came on and had to be carried out.

This weekend, the situation was a little different. The band was Rise Against, a punk rock band, who in the last few years have risen from playing at the Warped tour to selling out two nights at the Aragon. That is 10,000 tickets, or 5000 people coming two nights in a row. Either way, a great accomplishment! The band is very political, and has a faithful audience. They also preach being “Straight edge”, meaning no drugs or alcohol. I talked to some of the people being crushed against the barricade and they told me that they had been there for  three and a half hours, after sitting in the cold in the alley for about 7 hours in 50 degree windy weather. That is some kind of dedication!

I think with these kind of fans, this band will go a long way (Doesn’t hurt that they are really nice guys, also)

Wednesday: Manchester Orchestra. Never heard of them till a few days before the night of the show. Watched a little of the Bulls- Hawks game with them on the bus before the show (They are from Atlanta so it was a little tense- Bulls were kicking butt). Took them outside for a little shoot at the end of the first quarter- priorities! Then they had to do a show. Band was really good, and the crowd knew the words to almost every song. Average age of the audience was about 17- man did I feel old!!!

Thursday: Of Montreal. Had seen some articles about them a few years ago but never tried to shoot them. My mistake. Did a quick shoot with them after soundcheck and then prepared myself to talk the road manager into letting me shoot more than 3 songs. Went downstairs to find him, asked him my question and it was met with a perplexed look. “Don’t worry everybody with a photo pass can shoot the whole show- stills or video. Also everyone in the audience can also shoot anything they want.” YIKES!!!

The show was amazing. There were people dressed as pigs and Mexican wrestlers beating each other up in between band members playing some great stuff and a lead singer/showman who prowled the stage, sang great and looked great in a mini-skirt.

Friday: Little Big Town. They were opening for Sugarland. Drove to the suburbs in rush hour traffic to find out that there was no pit, just a country version of a mosh pit in front of the stage! Trying to shoot in that situation, for a person my height, was troublesome. To add to that, it seemed to me that there were many parents in the pit with small children on their shoulders! Still a pretty good show, though. When I was walking in, I ran across a press photographer who shoots a lot of shows. He was carrying a 300MM lens with a monopod. He told me that he always carries it to arena shows, because it has become the norm for photo access to be confined to the sound board. Oh well, another freedom for photographers down the drain.

Saturday: Surfer Blood. Another band I have never heard of! Four nice kids from Florida. Sold out the venue. Will probably be pretty big. I felt like I was about 100 years old by midnight. I shouldn’t complain, though. Four bands who let me shoot in four days!

During the whole Lady Gaga saga last month, I came across a Temple University Graduate thesis called:

THE PRODUCTION AND USE OF POPULAR MUSIC CONCERT PHOTOGRAPHS by Maria T. Sciarrino

In the lead in to the thesis, a couple of quotes stood out:

Rock and roll has a handmaiden, and her name is photography. The music alone cannot convey the rebellion, liberation, ecstasy, and group dynamic that is rock…. After the music stops, the still image remains, a conduit for the electricity that is rock and roll. Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History 1955—Present,‖ (Buckland, 2009, p. 3)

Art critic Ken Johnson (2009), in his New York Times review of the exhibit remarked: ―Rock ‘n‘ roll and photography need each other — or, at least, rock musicians need photographers. You can‘t be a star if you don‘t have an image‖ (para. 1).

In short, concert photographs help create the social  reality of music and performance (Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, & Sasson, 1992).

The part in the thesis that stood out more than anything was the fact that all of the photographers interviewed were never around when people were allowed to shoot the whole show.

Justin Edwards, in last weeks post, Justin Edwards tried to pinpoint when the three songs thing started, and couldn’t.

This week, I was standing in the parking lot of Calumet Photo, talking to a few photographers. One line that kept on standing out in the conversation was the “Standard first three songs.”

So maybe we can start keeping track of when the “Turning over your copyright to the band” becomes the STANDARD.