Guitar Rock in NYC

[minoltaman]

My friend and former bandmate, Larry May, rocking at the Rodeo Bar, NYC, 8/9/07.

Minolta X700, 50mm lens, Kodak 800 film, Sunpak 266D flash.

My first attempt at bouncing a flash unit. The shots I didn't bounce the flash didn't have the same glow as this one although they were easily fixed in photoshop.

No photoshop used to enhance this shot except for a slight crop on the left side.

Let me know what you think.

[PeterW]

Very nice shot. Pictures of performers always look much easier to take than they actually are. It's a matter of anticipating and catching the right moment - which you've certainly done here.

I haven't done any flash shots for quite a time as I prefer available light if possible, but when I used to use it I prefered bounce flash to direct which I found often burned out highlights.

It's nice to see a rock guitarist who doesn't have to depend on waist-length hair, outlandish garb, beads, bangles and other gimmicks to present an 'image'.

But from the look of this guy's left hand (wrist well down, fingers arched - absolutely textbook!), he obviously knows how to play. And with that, who needs gimmicks?

Your picture made me wish my fingers were still supple enough to play what I used to. .

When you say former bandmate, what did or do you play?

Unfortunately, the only bands who gig at our local pubs all seem to be 18-20 year olds who try to copy Slipknot, Korn and similar punk groups - in other words they can't play and they can't sing. So they make up for it with hoarse-voiced shouting, over-use of effects pedals and amps over-run till they distort. Nah! not my cup of tea, or even pint of beer!

PeterW

[minoltaman]

PeterW, much appreciate your comments. You definitely say the truth when you mention that getting good shots of live performers is much easier said than done. I really love doing it though and this was my second attempt at concert photography. I wish I was into real photography all the years I was in the band but I can hardly do two things at once.

I only had one great one out of the whole 24!

Yes, Larry and I have been friends for a long time. I played lead guitar for the band called Larry May, playing orginal music (we did Replacements and Lemonheads covers too sometimes) during the 90's while also playing lead for another NYC original band, The Pan.

It was total blast of a time but I miss it only a little bit these days.

I still play guitar here at home.....getting guitar tabs off the internet is the only reason I still pick it up now!

Anyway, Larry's a very good rythmn guitarist and also a very good songwriter. Our music was more in the line of power pop guitar pop, in the vein of the Lemonheads, Replacements, Elvis Costello, while my other band The Pan played singer/songwriter electric folk.....we used distorted guitars but definitely more overdriven than crunch.

I don't like nu metal or commercial rock these days but I like some newer indie rock bands like The Shins and Interpol.

You play guitar? What styles did you play and what kind of guitars did you use?

Anyway, just so I can show the difference, here's a shot that I didn't bounce correctly. I had the angle of the flash off and my camera positioning off. The ceiling of the stage was clear and I didn't get the same glow as the first shot.

I did a tone adjustment in photoshop and took down the highlights, but I like the energy of the shot, so I sent it to Larry and his band, which they said they liked.

He had a young lady playing drums for the band this night since his regular drummer was obligating another one of his productions.

[minoltaman]

Thank you Kamera!

I think since I was a performing musician for many years in the past, I'm naturally drawn to photographing live music acts. The opportunities to shoot bands doesn't come up frequently anymore as I don't personally know many bands like I used to, but I use each of my experiences to build on and perfect, so hopefully I'll have some more chances soon.

[PeterW]

Sounds as if you had a great time!

I've been playing (or playing at) guitar on and off since the 1960s, after I gave up playing trumpet in a trad jazz group. I was never part of a settled band, just used to get together with friends in a local guitar club to play in local church halls, pub beer gardens and the like. Anyone with a guitar could come along and sit in, and if anyone came along just to listen, so much the better.

Like a lot of people I started with a cheap Korean acoustic, thumping out skiffle and folk song chords and then got an equally cheap and nasty Taiwan solid bodied electric - who needed a whammy bar when you could just pull back on the neck?!! I used to play rhythm a lot because I was often the only one who knew the chords (er, what's a flattened fifth, and who trod on it?).

Then I got into Hank Marvin's solos with the Shadows: Apache, Foot-tapper, Wonderful Land and so on, but it wasn't till I saved up enough to buy a secondhand Telecaster and had guitar lessons that I developed anything approaching a technique. Man, that axe was heavy. It used to make my shoulder ache after about half an hour, but it had a tone that would cut through anything.

I used to go to clubs and listen to people like Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jeff Beck and so on, and traded in the Tele against a 1964 re-issue Strat. I spent hours trying to learn their solos from records and tapes - there wasn't any internet to get tabs in those days.

Then a guitarist whose name I can't remember, but who at one time played with Jeff Beck in Whitesnake, introduced me to modes like pentatonic and pentatonic minor and showed me how to construct my own solos based on progressions. I began to go less frequently to the guitar club because most people there only wanted to play trad folk, and I haven't played out anywhere since.

I've still got the Strat, though I've taken off the trem arm, and I still play at home, getting tabs off the internet and then trying to build my own improvised solos, but arthritis in my left hand won't always let me do what I want, at least not at the speed I want. Gets frustrating at times.

At the moment I'm playing with sorting out the solos in Hotel California, but having two guitars playing a sort of double lead makes it tricky. I'm also working on Clapton's finger style guitar version of Classical Gas, on a Yamaha steel strung acoustic, but my playing's a very poor fourth-rate version of the originals. I enjoy it though, and that's the main thing.

PeterW

[minoltaman]

peterw said:

Sounds as if you had a great time!

I've been playing (or playing at) guitar on and off since the 1960s, after I gave up playing trumpet in a trad jazz group. I was never part of a settled band, just used to get together with friends in a local guitar club to play in local church halls, pub beer gardens and the like. Anyone with a guitar could come along and sit in, and if anyone came along just to listen, so much the better.

Like a lot of people I started with a cheap Korean acoustic, thumping out skiffle and folk song chords and then got an equally cheap and nasty Taiwan solid bodied electric - who needed a whammy bar when you could just pull back on the neck?!! I used to play rhythm a lot because I was often the only one who knew the chords (er, what's a flattened fifth, and who trod on it?).

Then I got into Hank Marvin's solos with the Shadows: Apache, Foot-tapper, Wonderful Land and so on, but it wasn't till I saved up enough to buy a secondhand Telecaster and had guitar lessons that I developed anything approaching a technique. Man, that axe was heavy. It used to make my shoulder ache after about half an hour, but it had a tone that would cut through anything.

I used to go to clubs and listen to people like Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jeff Beck and so on, and traded in the Tele against a 1964 re-issue Strat. I spent hours trying to learn their solos from records and tapes - there wasn't any internet to get tabs in those days.

Then a guitarist whose name I can't remember, but who at one time played with Jeff Beck in Whitesnake, introduced me to modes like pentatonic and pentatonic minor and showed me how to construct my own solos based on progressions. I began to go less frequently to the guitar club because most people there only wanted to play trad folk, and I haven't played out anywhere since.

I've still got the Strat, though I've taken off the trem arm, and I still play at home, getting tabs off the internet and then trying to build my own improvised solos, but arthritis in my left hand won't always let me do what I want, at least not at the speed I want. Gets frustrating at times.

At the moment I'm playing with sorting out the solos in Hotel California, but having two guitars playing a sort of double lead makes it tricky. I'm also working on Clapton's finger style guitar version of Classical Gas, on a Yamaha steel strung acoustic, but my playing's a very poor fourth-rate version of the originals. I enjoy it though, and that's the main thing.

PeterW

Gene, very interesting story there. Apache! My dad used to play that solo....although he was never a trained guitarist. I still like to play sometimes to warm up the fingers.

How much did you get that 64 Strat for if you don't mind me asking?

The guy that played with Beck in Whitesnake? Was it John Sykes?

I see alot of similarities in your guitar journey and mine. As far as the cheap Korean acoustic and not taking real lessons until later on.......like learning Pentatonic minors scales as well as major scales.

Plus we both play Fenders!

I have an '85 reissue Telecaster that is the most versatile guitar I've ever played, but I just know that Stratocaster you have MUST be one sweet sounding axe.

I started playing Beatles, Stones, Led Zeppelin as a young teen in the late 70's with a few lessons and then graduated to 80's heavy metal with the craze started by Eddie Van Halen along with Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. I learned mostly by jamming with other guitar players and jamming in bands.

I never got to shred status but I got fast enough to impress people. By 1990 I was burnt out, took some lessons from a jazz player and then started playing in the bands that I mentioned above. Bands and gigs were fun while they lasted and I'll always have the guitar with me forever.

However, photography is my new music and the camera is my new guitar and I'm learning things all over again.

There must be a connection between musicians, vinyl record enthusiasts, and film camera users.......I've met many and still meeting more.....or maybe since I just turned 41, I'm feeling old and nostalgic!

Cheers,
Tommy

[PeterW]

Tommy,

As far as I remember, when my re-issue Strat was new in the 1970s/1980s it was priced at somewhere around £450 ($900), but hardly anyone paid list price for a guitar. I traded in the Tele, which was quite an early original and probably with hindsight worth a lot more even though it was well used, and had to add about £80 ($160).

I honestly don't remember the name of the guitarist who showed me the pentatonic modes, and got me into chord progressions, but I remember sitting at a table in one of the clubs and writing the pentatonic scales down on a fingerboard drawn on the back of an envelope. It wasn't John Sykes though I believe he did play with Whitesnake, possibly after Steve Vai?, but looking back I think I might be mistaken about the band.

When I think about it I don't remember Jeff Beck ever playing with Whitesnake, though he played with many bands during his career. Maybe my memory's getting worse than I thought! Possibly, though I can't be certain, it was someone who played with Beck during his spell with the Yardbirds after Clapton left, but it wasn't Jimmy Page - I would have remembered that!

Beck had a very on-off sort of career due, I was told, to having recurring acute ear problems. It's said that at times he played the notes he heard in his head because he couldn't hear what was coming through the fold-back speakers, but whether that's true or not there's no denying his brilliant talent.

There were so many groups playing in the clubs in those days. You have to remember that at that time many of the guitarists and drummers who later became big 'names' were young and hardly known outside the clubs in and around London.

Cosy Powell was well known as a drummer, but who now remembers the early bands that a very young Keith Moon played with before he joined The Who? One I do remember was called The Beachcombers who played quite often at the Kodak Social Club in Harrow, north-west London (just to bring cameras into it!).

Many musicians got together to form scratch bands with all sorts of wierd names like Crabapple and Bloozrocker, and got gigs for a week or so as backing bands to the better known groups, just to see how well they gelled together and judge the audience reaction to new ideas they wanted try out - as well as bringing in some much-needed cash. They seldon stayed together very long.

You don't find these bands or the personnel listed anywhere because they never recorded anything and no-one at the time bothered to make notes of who played with who.

It was a great time to go clubbing. Lots of atmosphere. Nowadays I don't fancy being packed with thousands of others into a stadium or a big field somewhere and pay mega-bucks to hear the groups I like even though IMHO a live peformance - fluffs and all - will always beat a faultless recording that's been edited and electronically mixed.

PeterW