It was a really busy weekend for me, and I started my week with over 1000 shots to go through. I'm just now starting to get a handle on them, and I should be fully up to date by Friday, just in time to shoot at Anthology and then some night photography.

Friday night I went down to the Whistle Stop early to meet up with Dave McHank. His encyclopedic knowledge about music is well-known, and his internet show with other local legends kept me occupied for days. He had an Inch DVD for me to watch, which was amazing. I've been a huge fan of Inch ever since finding their debut cassette in a budget bin in my hometown of Cleveland, way back in 1995. I didn't even know they were from San Diego until we moved here. I was hoping to catch a bit of Hotel St. George, but I had to leave too early. I met Brian from HsG, who is from West Islip, Long Island. My wife grew up in East Islip. We had a nice chat about East Coast/West Coast stuff, and how it's better here.

I figured I'd be running too late to catch all the bands at the Soda Bar, but I got there in plenty of time to see By Sunlight.


Their CD is full of shimmering guitar lines and lilting voices. It's seriously good, and every time I listen to it I like it even more. The next time they come to town you should definitely go see them.



While the Soda Bar has an awful lighting scheme, I noticed how the reds and greens echo the color scheme of their CD and website, so I tried to use that as a color palette for them. The music has a dreamy pop sound, with just enough interlocking guitar lines and off-kilter rhythms to keep it musically adventurous.







I think bands from the same place tend to have some similarities in their sound, kind of like a musical terroir. By Sunlight shares the clean tones and somewhat detached singing of their fellow Seattle band, Minus the Bear.



One thing I noticed during their set was that there weren't any breaks between songs. Each song melded into the next one. They capture that on CD too, and the last song dovetails neatly into the first if it's on repeat. Excellent touch.





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By the time Empty Rooms came on, I'd met with a friend to plan out the next day's trip out to the desert, to be covered in another post.


I also finally met a couple guys who do ZeeGig, new music review site who I'm letting use some of my photos. They'll be posting their review of this show any minute now. Check em out.


I think everyone else took some time to chat with friends too, since these guys played to, well... an empty room. It's too bad, because there wasn't anything wrong with what they were doing, I just think it probably needs more than one listen before it sinks in.






I mentioned the strobe effect that the lights create here before. Next time I shoot here I'm going to test out how to cxntrol this effect by shooting the lights themselves using very high shutter speeds. Then I'll finally nail down how they work and how to use that effect. The red and green color scheme is from stolen from some "A Naseous Christmas" special. And there's one really hot white light on the left side which makes exposure a challenge too.

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That's why I converted the photos of Fever Sleeves into black and white.




I did experiment with some split toning just to see what it would look like to mimic the colors.



 I like it.





I've found that bands tend to put my photos up more often if they're black and white instead of color. Not that I'm making a calculated attempt at getting more of my photos set as default Myspace pics so that I can add them to my top friends list for a cohesive look.


Tony's bass strap fell apart in the middle of a song. Luckily, Hialeah was there to get it reattached.



Tony might shrug it off as just being one of those things that could happen to anyone, but it's obvious what the problem is. He needs to use a stronger brand of duct tape.