WHAT a weekend it has been!
On Friday, I continued from Road Recs to take photos at The Merrion Hotel for Stuart Clarke's interview with American author Richard North-Patterson, timing it especially early; my new-old book started getting interesting in the bank queue and there's nothing like hotel-lounge quiet for a literary sesh.
He was a nice man, very friendly. The Merrion people didn't want us to take photos inside so I just sat in on the interview and enjoyed a comfortable swank amid silver-service coffee and dinky biscuits I longed to wrap in a napkin and bring home to the kids. Except the napkins were linen and HP ain't insured against klepto peegees...I fogot to pay before I left so that's equally awful :p

Back in November I had a very hungover photoshoot with The Hoosiers after the legendary NC gig at UCD. I promised I would go and see them when they returned to play The Ambo in February. Haven't snapped an MCD gig in ages...there's such subtle differences between the different promoters, venues and bands across the city but nowhere more so than the tattered black pit of the Ambassador. For a start, there's a gaping abyss of a trapdoor in front of the stage and I just know that one night there will be a painful collision when I'm racing around glued to the magic eye machine.
The Hoosiers were meh, btw. Glam pop for bebo babes.

Over the road, Bright Light Fiasco were playing in dear BoomBoom with The Red Labels and Fear The Foilage. Much more my scene. Totally blagged it at the door, I know unsigned gigs are cheap but I'm a blogger, so I'm broke. I always buy the EP if it's been a good show though.
Which it was. Fear The Foilage are coming on in leaps and bounds since I saw them play Emergenza at TBMC a year or so ago. They're very young and not yet ready to lose it on stage but give 'em another year in their bedroom...
The Red Labels were more confident, not yet swaggering but they're not afraid to belt out. I'm definitely keeping an ear out over the next few months.
BLF now, they had it sewn together nicely. Dunno how they managed to conjure a full crowd from an empty room! To be honest, I was pretty pissed by their set and just remember bounding in proper camera-derie! Pics will of course be on OHR in the next few days.

My younger brother works in CineWorld and met me for a pint at 11pm and then we headed home. Breaking cigarette cellophane open outside the Centra by Fraziers' we agreed to walk a bit before getting a cab. Damn cigarettes.
Passing the dark, vacant lot of the old church on Sean Macdermott Street, two young fellas blitzed past us out of the gloom, one of them grabbing my camera bag on his way. Don't think he was expecting its weight cos he stumbled and slowed as Anton gave chase and then dumped the bag to one side as he caught up.
My viewfinder display is bogey and the LCD control window has completely burst.
My poor baby is fractured and broken!! My 35mm is chipped and my 50mm won't focus. My lovely 50mm! *sob* I went home in proper hysterics and woke up at 6am on Saturday with a hangover almost as heavy as my heart.

Because Saturday was set to be massive: monument of my teens Frank Black was in town and I was scheduled to take his photograph...brought the cam into Graham at work and he gave me the office Nikon to borrow along with the f2.8 200mm but it's not the same without Saoirbear's glow-in-the-dark green heart sticker or knowledge that the smears on the viewfinder are my own bodily exhalations. What can ya do?

Cheered up a lot by the time I met Colm and his daughter Katie in Smithfield with my two: we were there to see in the Chinese New Year celebrations and it was a gorgeous day for it. Hasn't this been a great week for weather actually? I'm glad I made the most of it and got a lot of outdoor excercise. There were so many photographers out! Would be nicer if the corpo opened up the square though, it was too squashed and cramped with the stage at one end and catering at the other, a narrow run of shops bridging the gap. We bought peach juice and hot beef noodle soup. Martial artists gave a performance and there was a hilarious Chinese singer throwing his best Strictly to a techno beat.

Frank Black was amazing. Exactly like a rock hero should be; charming funny, aloof. I couldn't really talk and just hovered, snapping away until our time was up and asked to shake his hand before we left. Wonderful big squeezihand, steady as a rock. Frank fuckin' Black! Nothing got the shoulders slumping and emotions thumping like Doolittle, I can pick out huge tracts of teenage experience set to The Pixies. Aah....

And to just think that there are young souls everywhere, ready to claim new bands for their life-track all over again. If SuperExtraBonusParty continue to rev hearts and minds to sinewy mass like Saturday's show at Whelans, it wouldn't be a long shot to say they might be that band for some of those kids.
There were loads of photographers there and I have some fairly recent SEBP pics from their Crawdaddy gig so I decided last night to really push the boat out and try to capture some really strange pictures away from the live setting of ISO 1600, 160 sec shutter at f2.8. That's the standard for fast-paced, dim-lit gigs.
Only a few bands can do slow-sync flash justice. Agility and creativity are really important or else you just get flash pictures. Normally the ISO maxes at 400 when using flash because higher settings develop a a strong grain in the pic resolution. Grain was something I decided to exaggerate with these pics because nothing says underground and uber-cool than dark, grainy pictures. I'm so happy with what I've got and glad that the loss of the 50mm didn't make a massive dent in the range of shots. Plus I got to include Rodrigo stage-diving :) and even Nialler in a couple (his visualos looked great on the wall above the stage, although it was quite high)....

I mean it about the kids though; my two rudely awoke me at 9am one Sunday a few weeks back so I could see "Super Bone Party" on telly. The kids love the animal characters and we've all chosen our totem. I'm the owl! The game continued when I picked them up from the childminder after the gig last night, still clutching my EP and their friend Celine asked me to copy it to her Shuffle. Gotta be better than Pussycat Dolls!
And when I was on my way out last night, Captain Moonlight (en-route to missing them at Whelans :( ) were ringing out as I locked the front door and I couldn't help but stop and unplug my headphones as I passed the group of young lads on the wall.
"Do you MySpace? Check out Captain Moonlight, they're deadly Irish hiphop!"|
I was jeered and told to fuck off! Hah!

You never know though. One of them might look next time he's in the lab at school....

Today was great though. Just...calm to be here, washing dishes and moaning about the kids leaving the week's crusts in their schoolbag. I rarely work Sundays as there's so much to do for school the next day. Anyway I love my cuppa with Antiques Roadshow...I watch it for the stories, not the values but one couple tonight discovered their cello was a 17th Century royal artefact worth £10,000, the Japanese bowl they inherited a cool £50,000 - £100,000! .
This was followed by a batchelor with a round vase. The appraiser described the "golden ears of corn" of its design and for the first time in her life, I saw Saoirse's brain refuse to commute. She goggled at the television and then turned to me, mouth agape.
"Plants...can hear?!"

The Horticultural Society may soon find a new guest speaker....