Sonisphere

It’s Rock Festival season, so it’s time to pack my tent, a slab of beer and go listen to some bands.

The first one this year was Sonisphere UK.

A great attractor was that the “Big 4” were –playing-Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Metallica. But there were also some other great favourites such as Motorhead, Bill Bailey, and Slipknot.

I’ve been lucky in previous years in that the weather has been great, well…it was a bit more variable this year.

Getting there was a trial. Her Majesties Highways Department had decided to shut the motorway exit that was needed to get to the venue at Knebworth. Add to that a couple of accidents, and what should have been a 90 minute journey stretched to 3 and a 1/2 hours.

Ho, hum, by the time I got there I was in need of breaking into that slab of beer!

But, joy of joy, I had paid extra for a VIP ticket. You get lots of extras such as warm showers, and easy access to the main arena, but the main joy(and it’s a huge joy, believe me) is that you could park your car next to your camping area. This contrasts with the normal arrangement where cars are parked 2-3 miles from the camping area, and you have to drag your life up hill and down dale to the remote camping area. Joy! I was set up in a matter of minutes. But I was quite late, even with the easy set-up, so not much time to see the bands.

So onto the bands….

Friday was headlined by the big 4, but I can take or leave Anthrax or Slayer. But Megadeath and Metallica were just outstanding!

I wanted to see if it’s possible to take shots on my camera, transfer them to my iPad, edit them on that, and then post them to the Aminus3 website-all on battery power, so once Megadeth had finished I sloped back to my tent, and, joy of all joys, managed to get the shots off the camera, edit them and get them posted.

But I made an almost show stopping  mistake….more of that tomorrow

Forged by Fire

There are some benefits to being an old geezer. One of them is that you have offsping who have grown up, and can stop you getting older(If you get the tautology of that!)

At the Ozzy concert last year, James kept talking about the guitarist, Gus G. I didn’t really get what he was on about until Ozzy did “Mr Crowley”, and a bloke with long hair(How unusual), did an amazing solo. The person was Gus G, a greek guitarist who, as well as having his own band-Firewind-was also Ozzys lead guitarist on the  Ozfest tour.

Anyway, time passes, and James told me that Prinitai were the intro act, supporting , Breed 77, and Firewind at the Relentless Garage gig in London. WOuld I like to go-of course.

The Relentless Garage is a really good venue-great lights and sound, professionally organised, and relatively large – 700 people.

Primitai were good, and did a great job of getting the audience energised.

The act that followed thm, to some degree, is difficult to explain. Let me try…

Try taking Spanish music, add some middle eastern influences, now dollop on a huge amount of shred and metal-and you have Breed 77. They were really good, but I wish I’d done my homework beforehand, as it would have enabled me to “Geddit” a bit earlier on.

The headline act was Firewind. Driven by Gus G’s stunning solos, the band metaled their way through some great numbers to a very enthusiastic audience. Really really good, I just don’t get why Gus isn’t better known than he is. he is really amazing.

The fans doing the “Metal Salute”

Gus G looking every bit a star that he is

Gus, and Firewind are Greek, and a number of the fans knew that

Circadian

James’ long time flat-mate Bav, is in a band called Circadian. James asked if I could go along and do some shots-I was pleased to, of course.

So we went to a small venue in Southampton, The Joiners Arms, and took a few shots. I wanted to something a bit different so here’s some odd shots followed by some more standard ones.

Primitai-3

Guy and the lads have just come off a tour supporting White Wizzard. These are some shots taken at the last gig in Camden. I tried to focus on the relationship between the audience and the band.

Nocturnal Hordes

I went back to see Primitai at the Purple Turtle in Camden. It’s a pretty “intimate” (AKA small!) venue, but the guys managed to light it up!

Guy jumped into the Audience, and the guys looked really relaxed and focussed on the stage. Even Srdjan managed a smile or 2!

Anyway here’s some shots that I took…

 

 

I’m going back in a month or so to see them playing in The Underworld, Camden – it’s one of the prime venues in London, so it should be a good gig.

It’s so Easy

I saw Guns 'n Roses at the O2 on Wednesday, but before the usual close ups, I was amazed by how much kit they used! Only some of it was in this shot. I counted 4 sound mixing desks, 3 light control desks, 1 pyro control unit, 2 video mixing desks, 8 gas control valves to produce huge sheets of flame, and a huge number of vari-lights -Oh, and a HUGE sound system!

Guns 'n Roses have a well found reputation for-going on late,Axel throwing hissy fits, and having arguments with the audience, management and security staff. None of that happened! They were only 30 minutes late-and that caught a lot of people out out, so a lot of folk were still in the bar, when they started "Early"!!
Axel's voice has all that cutting edge that he is so famous for...the songs could have come off a CD...BUT his stage presence energy and the stage-show really made it something special!

  

Guns 'n Roses have had more band members than the population of a small European state!
This shot is Axel with one of his 3 lead guitarists.
What got me about this guy-Richard Fortus-was how much he looked like a young Ronnie Wood.

A truly amazing night-great music, no hissy fits, and apart from missing my train home-so I finally got to bed at 3:15 in the morning a perfect evening

The Craft

As well as the ol’ rockers that I’ve been to see and photograph this year, I’ve been to see some up ‘n comers as well. One of them is Primitai website here

I’d known about them for some time as the drummer is a good friend of James (They’ve known each other since they were 5!), and I had heard that the band had won the “UK battle of the bands” competition in the summer. In 2009 over 12,000 bands around the UK entered the national battle of the bands ‘Surface Unsigned Festival’.  Initially an application, and example of the music was submitted, then on the basis of that each band were then invited to play at the first round in regional heats The winners then went through 5 further heats which were all live gigs leading up to the London final, which then culminated in the national final held at Indigo @ the O2 arena in London. 

The scoring was based around text votes, audience reaction, and the judges vote.

So from 12,000 bands and a lot of sweat, Primitai won! and netted around £60K’s worth of goodies! So they were on their way.

I said to Chris, last time we met up, in my best “Snatch” voice, “If I ever find out you have you have played within 20 miles of Reading, and don’t tell me, I will cut your fucking Jacobs off” - he was a bit taken aback, as he didn’t know it was a quote!, and took me a bit too seriously, but he got the message. Anyway, they played in Reading last Sunday, and I went to see them.

They are really, really good, and I can see how they got to win the competition.

I took some shots at the gig, they aren’t that brilliant, but the lighting was so feeble that trying to capture them was not an easy task.

Here are some of the shots

 

These first 4 I put on my photoblog link here

And here are some that never made the cut

Somehow, the lead singer, Guy, found the shots I had put on Aminus3, and made contact,he seems quite happy with the shots, so I’ll go along to their next gig, and take some more when hopefully there will be a bit more light-which will make it a whole load easier to do some of the whole band together.

Guy also asked if I could mention that they are looking for a 1000+ facebook “likes”. They are doing a free promo where in return for registering with your e-mail address. you can down load a track from their latest album, so if you do that, and you like what you hear, why not click on the “Like “ button- you can claim to have helped them to Stardom!!