Category: Music

  • Kaki King and Joe Robinson

    Joe Robinson

    Last weekend I was visiting friends in Massachusetts and they took me to see a show in Northhampton, headlined by Kaki King and opened by Joe Robinson.

    I had absolutely no idea what to expect, having neither heard of them nor of the venue (Iron Horse). I walked in, sat down, ordered some food and beer and marveled at the panoply of guitars that were set out on stage. There were a lot and I didn’t (still don’t) have descriptions for them.

    Then Joe Robinson came on stage and started playing. Halfway through the first song, I leaned over and whispered to Annie, “This guy is good.”

    Then he got better.

    And then he got better.

    Joe Robinson fucking rocked the house with just himself and his guitar. I think he applied vocals to two or three songs, but I was too fixated on his guitar playing. Wow.

    Kaki King

    Once Joe was done, to wild applause, it was Kaki King’s turn. I had remarked after the first song by Joe that I hoped the headliner was at least as good or I was going to feel let down. I did not.

    Kaki got on stage and proceeded to do things with her guitars so that I couldn’t understand how she was making those noises! She was using a technique that I’d never seen before (partially shown in the image) and was making that guitar sing in ways I’m sure I can’t describe with any sort of fidelity.

    It was, possibly, the best concert I’ve been to in years. I was blown away by the musicianship and virtuosity displayed by these two fabulous guitarists. I hope they come to Atlanta soon.

  • Dresden Dolls has a Drummer

    I saw The Dresden Dolls last night (for the first time). They were fun, exciting, energetic; basically a total blast. But, all props to Amanda Fucking Palmer, Brian Viglione got most of my attention during the show. He has so much energy and presence. It was awesome.

    Here’s a video of him preparing for the tour. Note that the energy you see on this video is about 40% of what he showed on stage.

  • The Extraordinary Contraptions

    I don’t push these guys (The Extraordinary Contraptions!) just because they’re my friends. I do it because I like they’re music. For proof, I offer Exhibit A. My iTunes library sorted by number of Plays:

    Library sorted by Number of Plays

    Go now and check out their music!

    Or you can look at some recent photos here on flickr. Here’s a good example

    2010-09-02_IMG_1401

  • Night of Astounding Peculiarities

    Fire Eating 7

    Last night I attended The Night of Astounding Peculiarities at Lenny’s Bar in Atlanta. We were treated to entertainment by Thimblerig Circus (show above), Witness the Apotheosis, and the always extraordinary Extraordinary Contraptions!

    If you haven’t heard the Contraptions play, I highly recommend it. If you have, they’re unveiling new stuff right now! I head a song last night that I’d never heard before (“Hollow”) and it rocked. They’ll be playing Dragon*Con in two weeks.

    Witness the Apotheosis was excellent as well. I have missed them several times running and was happy to finally get to hear them, and of course Thimblerig Circus is always entertaining. They perform their death-defying knife throwing, fire eating, nail-bed lying, pin juggling circus act with wonderful aplomb.

    Images from last night’s festivities can be found at the flickr set. There weren’t any good shots of the Contraptions, except for one, but you can find others here and here and here.

  • Streets Alive Atlanta

    Streets_Alive
    Biking in from Inman Park MARTA where we picked up Keith

    We attended Streets Alive in Atlanta on Sunday. It was a blast! They closed down Edgewood Avenue from Peachtree Street to Boulevard and Auburn Street from Peachtree to the Connector. There were cyclists and skateboarders and rollerbladers and walkers and strollers and jugglers and all sorts of stuff. It was a lot of fun. Hot, but fun.

    One of the coolest things I saw though was this guy (who’s name I totally didn’t get!).

    Portable_Music

    He passed us while we were on a group ride around town, on his way to the Streets Alive. On his bike he had:

    • A dog
    • A guitar
    • Himself
    • His amp
    • His speaker
    • The speaker stand
    • The battery to power all that stuff
    • Microphone and stand

    That’s hard core. I love it.

    There’s more images of him and his dog at my flickr set of the event.

  • Concert Photography can be Frustrating!

    Good Photo #1
    So, there you are: capturing images of a concert that fully embody its spirit and energy. Sure, you know that with the low light and general clutter of an on-stage environment you’re likely to throw out most of your photos but you have high hopes of some excellent moments; times where the performers just shine. Where you can feel their music screaming from the image.

    Instead you get home and discover that of 250 images, exactly four aren’t crap. That ratio is a bit lower than I care for.

    There are manifold reasons why concert photography is hard: everyone’s moving; light is low and variable as the performers move in and out of spots; foreground and background clutter make framing difficult; your options for location are limited (especially in small venues). These are known problems and you do your best to overcome them and, of course, shoot until your hands hurt and you run out of memory cards or battery (or film, I suppose).

    Last night was exceptionally frustrating for me, though. These are friends I’m shooting1 and they could really use some great, spectacular, fantabulous, insert-adjective-here concert shots. Part of my particular problem resides with inexperience and the famous learning curve. For example, I learned a few things last night about trusting my autofocus, even when I’ve got good light and spots for focusing on. Here’s an image that I thought was going to be prime:

    Depth of Field FML

    With some obvious problems like the water bottle in the foreground which would prevent me using this as a full top-to-bottom performer shot, this was a great setup. Unfortunately I got the image off the camera and found this:

    Focus Crap

    Grrr! Out of focus faces are the bane!

    Lower down the image we see the problem.

    Focus Good

    The autofocus picked Sharon’s hip as it’s point of focus (yes, I know it’s me, but I’m still going to anthropomorphize, here) and the shallow depth of field in this situation rendered a potentially good shot into crap. At least, crap for anything other than a small, low-res image similar to the one here on this blog. I was shooting with a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens and in this setup my depth of field was about 0.4 feet. Over the distance between Sharon’s hip and her head, that 0.4 feet was not sufficient to keep her face inside the zone of focus. I was shooting from about 5 feet away and don’t forget that while depth of field is usually defined as a planar distance from the lens, it’s really a zone of a sphere. If I were 30 feet away with the same depth of field, the vertical distance between her hip and head would have made little difference; at five feet, it killed the shot.

    There was a bit of serendipity, though. Here’s Kevin in the same shot. Too bad he’s cropped out at the edge. It’s fun, though.

    Serendipity

    Kevin has a wearable drum rig for some of the shows. It’s nice when he’s got it because he comes out from behind his drum set where I can get pictures of him.

    Acceptable Photo #2

    There are a lot of other things I’ve learned about concert photography in the last year. Most of it through bad experience. There are a few websites out there that have good tips and hints but mostly it’s just getting out there and trying again2. Which I will. And I’ll probably still get crappy photos but at least I’ll have a higher good/crap ratio.


    1: The Extraordinary Contraptions have just released their latest album, Scratch the Aether. Check it out!
    2: Having good equipment helps, but only somewhat. I’ve had good success using the Canon Rebel XT (about three generations back from the latest and greatest version) and the Sigma 30 f/1.4. There was a guy at the concert who graciously allowed me to borrow his Canon 70-200 f/2.8L IS lens (FABULOUS LENS!) and with that one in hand and using IS for all it’s worth…I captured some of the worst photography of the evening. Know your own equipment.

  • Marathon, Concerts, Presentation

    It’s been a busy few days. Lots of stuff going on.

    But let’s start with something funny that I have in common with this girl who ran the ING Georgia Half Marathon today.

    Runner with Her Tongue Out

    Let’s Compare!

    Sticking my Tongue Out!

    That was last Friday while I was giving a presentation on Diverging Diamond Interchanges (Soon to be a podcast at Talkingtraffic.org!) Sticking my tongue out when I concentrate is a habit I’ve been trying to break for years. This is incentive.

    What else did I do? Oh yes: I gave a presentation to the Georgia section of the American Society of Highway Engineers on something that is near and dear to me, professionally, right now.

    Diverging Diamond Interchanges

    A diverging diamond interchange is, well, Talking Traffic is going to cover that in just a few and ’til then you can hit Wikipedia.

    The presentation went very well and I got a lot of good questions from the other engineers and planners in the audience.

    Dimitri and Aelus

    On Saturday I ran the sound board and recording setup for The Extraordinary Contraptions. Pictures of that concert, and one this morning are at my flickr stream. This was at Momocon, which is a free convention put on at Georgia Tech. It’s an anime and cosplay and steampunk convention. Much fun was had.

    North Atlanta Multisport Club

    On Sunday I grabbed my bike and my MARTA pass and headed to downtown to cheer on the other people in the North Atlanta Multisport Club who were running in the ING Georgia Marathon and Half Marathon. I also got some good pictures while following the race route.

    It’s been a good weekend!

  • WordPress Plugin Development looking for a Developer

    Who wants to fix an issue with one of my favorite WordPress Plugins?

    Postie is a plugin that allows email postings to self-maintained WordPress blogs (not WordPress.com blogs). It has lots of cool features and I like it. However, one of its features doesn’t work.

    You are supposed to be able to append “:end” to an email and the plugin will strip off all text after it prior to placing the message in a blog post. It doesn’t work, as evidenced on my latest Blackberry posting:

    Regarding my post yesterday about the TIGER awards, it’s amazing how much excitement can be caused by the Feds. :end Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

    I find the automatic Blackberry attachments to my emails to be not only rude but a violation of my terms of service, but that’s not a fight I’m going to win. Regardless of people getting my emails with “Blackberry: ‘Cause we Can” attached to them, I refuse to have them appear in my blog postings. To date I’ve gone back and edited them out, but I’d prefer the “:end” tag to actually work.

    I suppose that this could be my opportunity to earn the Open Source Nerd Merit Badge, but frankly I don’t have the time. Anyone want to do this for me? I can even throw in a little incentive: Whomever takes care of this will receive a hot-off-the-press brand new album by The Extraordinary Contraptions (“Scratch the Aether”) as soon as it’s released this spring.

  • The Nerd Parade

    The Nerd Parade,

    Through the good offices of our friends at The Extraordinary Contraptions, we were introduced to The Nerd Parade. I first hear them about a year ago or so and bought their most recent album, The Span of a Life. Having enjoyed that album, I recently acquired A Delicate Bashing (2007)and can say that I’ve enjoyed it as well. It’s (*I* think) very different from A Span of a Life which I liked very much indeed, but I’m still listening to it, so it must be appealing to something.

    The Nerd Parade is off on an East Coast Tour this spring. I know at least a few people at their various stops. You should make an effort to go see them!