So I’ve got a few new shirts here that need to be posted. The first two have been sitting around for a couple weeks, and actually, I’ve worn them already.
This first one comes from Threadless.com. It’s called Old, Old Friend.
Alright, so it’s been a little while since I’ve blogged. Oops. It’s probably going to be slow for the next month as well while final wedding stuff is coming together. Sorry about that, but I haven’t abandoned this thing, I promise!
Last weekend, I took a trip down to Baltimore for Insubordination Fest. This was my third time at the fest and it was probably the most fun year I’ve attended. There were no venue issues like last year. In fact, the venue, The Ottobar, couldn’t have been better for the weekend. I couldn’t come up with a complaint if I tried.
One of the highlights of the weekend was actually a joke band that was put together solely for the sake of the fest. And amazingly, the songs that were recorded a few days before the fest are actually better than most real bands’ stuff. Their set was a ton of fun.
But, that being said, the hands down best set of the weekend was from The Copyrights. So damn good. If you’re not already listening to this band, you should be.
I got myself into a little trouble with continuous mode on my camera though. I came home with almost 1400 photos from less 36 hours. Insane. I narrowed down to about 200 to edit and I narrowed down further to about 70 to post.
Enjoy.
Over the weekend, I went to Insubordination Fest down in Baltimore for the second year in a row. It was a really good time, despite having a cold, but I won’t get into a lot of specifics, just a few highlights, I guess.
The Smoking Popes kind of sucked. I would have been disappointed if I was actually expecting more, but even though I’ve always been a fan, I just haven’t really been that into their reunion. They completely ruined “Pretty Pathetic” and a couple of other songs by dragging them out way too much. It was awful, actually.
But Tenement, Dear Landlord, The Copyrights, The Leftovers, Dead Mechanical, and the Dopamines were all super good. The biggest surprise though was Less Than Jake. We didn’t want to pay for a second night for the hotel room, so our plan was to drive back Saturday night and since LTJ didn’t go on until 12:15, we couldn’t stay for much of their set. We watched about a half hour and watched them rock a bunch of stuff from Losing Streak. This was really great. Hearing them play those songs instantly brought me back ten years. So much fun.
This fest was also my first attempt at any kind of band photography. It was mostly a failure. Out of almost 300 pictures, I only liked a handful of them. The two main issues I had were lighting and getting a good spot. Since I’m a short dude, I pretty much need to be in the front, but I’m past the point in my life where I want to push and squeeze past people to get up front. Being in the front also comes with the risk of your camera getting damaged if the crowd is moving a lot and pushing forward…or if there are a lot of stage divers. Not good. As for the lighting, I felt like the venue that hosted the show has worse lighting to work with than most venues, but it should have been workable. The issue is just that with the low-level of lighting, I really had to crank up the ISO to be able to shoot with a fast enough shutter speed even with my 50mm 1.8 wide open. I ended up with a lot of noise in a lot of pics. But even with the ISO up to 1600, my pictures all came out really dark. I was able to successfully use the flash for some shots, but for many, it killed the entire mood of picture. I don’t want to make excuses for my lack of skill and experience, but I definitely think there was little I could do without a bigger flash that I could aim at the ceiling to bounce the light. Oh well.
Here are the pictures I actually consider “useable.”
This week’s show was my countdown of my top 10 albums of 2009. It was an easy show to do since I picked out everything beforehand. I opened up with a few honorable mentions and then went right into the top 10. I ended with a Thorns Of Life track. I figured that bootleg from 924 Gilman St. was one of my most listened to records in the early part of the year so I should play something from it. The only real difficult part of this year’s countdown was trying to find a clean track from the Dear Landlord album. Everything I wanted to play had profanity in it and I didn’t have time to edit something out. I could have done it on the fly, but I never like leaving it to that. Don’t want to risk getting distracted and missing it.
So here’s the playlist (if you’re reading via Facebook, it’s going to be a jumbled mess since their import sucks. Click to read the original instead.)…
| Camera Obscura | French Navy | My Maudlin Career |
| Grizzly Bear | Two Weeks | Veckatimest |
| Wilco | Wilco (The Song) | Wilco (The Album) |
| Future Of The Left | The Hope That House Built | Travels With Myself And Another |
| NOFX | Creeping Out Sarah | Coaster |
| Conor Oberst And The Mystic Valley Band | Nikorette | Outer South |
| Dear Landlord | Lake Ontario | Dream Homes |
| Monsters Of Folk | Man Named Truth | Monsters Of Folk |
| Coconut Records | Microphone | Davy |
| M. Ward | Rave On | Hold Time |
| The Lawrence Arms | The Slowest Drink In The Saddest Bar On The Snowiest Day In The Greatest City | Buttsweat And Tears |
| Frank Turner | Poetry Of The Deed | Poetry Of The Deed |
| Neko Case | This Tornado Loves You | Middle Cyclone |
| Thorns Of Life | I Hate New York | Live At 924 Gilman St |
Source: 90.3 The Core
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