Arrived back at around 8pm last night and to be honest was a complete Zombie for the whole day from the moment I got up, and then couldn’t sleep, that’s what being overtired does to a body.
As for the Weekend, brilliant, from Joe Lynn Turner to Night Ranger to Skid Row, each day brought some terrific performances, from bands I’d expected to be great like Eclipse, The Radio Sun, Midnite City, Blood Red Saints and more… and then of course there were the wonderful surprised like finally getting to catch Aaron Buchanan And The Cult Classics and being blown away by the performance, or having a band like The King Lot open up the Friday Main Stage and kicking everyone’s ass into gear from the first song, great stuff and all part of what turned out to be another brilliant HRH AOR weekend.
Lots to write up, just need the head to clear, and let it flow, and a hell of a lot of photos to get sorted through, but will get there, need to get some sleep the rest of the week and go at it again fresh, so far very pleased with how some shots are coming out and a bit disappointed with others…..but that’s the nature of things – will keep plugging away. Have to make sure I don’t get exhausted and bring on an episode, and damn have to hit Sepultura on Thursday and get some other reviews in, busy times.
Very very tired and not sleeping now, but trying to work through the photos, hopefully you will like them when I have the full galleries up, here’s a small taster.
Don’t know what it’s been like in your part of the world, but here in Ireland we’ve been hit by what is for us a very unusual weather event, we tend to get very small amounts of snowfall during the winter months, and even at that it grinds the country to a halt 😉 But from last Wednesday we got hit by a much bigger event, snow for a few days that was very heavy at times and blizzard like, the meeting of a storm and a blizzard decided to dump as much as it could on our little green island, and the havoc caused was crazy, from the near Black Friday frantic scenes as people scrambled to buy sliced pans of bread, literally stripping delivery cages bare before they even made it to the shelves, yes for bread and milk, it wasn’t like the conditions were due to last weeks, a day or two.
But with snow drifts up to 10 feet high it certainly was causing problems, no public transport of any kind, flights in and out of the country completely wiped out, and people told to stay in their homes and not venture out. Well this is Monday night and the reality is most of it is all gone, a thaw for a day and a half and that’s it panic over, the sliced pans are no longer on Ebay for €1,000 😉
The birds weren’t too bothered, they still came to the garden to get their treats from the feeders or try their luck with the frozen ground. It’s all back to normalish now, a couple of days stuck in the house and people were going stir crazy, the supermarkets are still bare shelved, their distribution centers trying frantically to restock. In fairness the snowfall was more than double the previous records, so for her, a place that doesn’t have a reason to invest heavily in infrastructure or equipment for such an event if it only happens every 30 or 50 years, it wouldn’t be that prudent, but maybe when they add up the total cost it might be worth doing more.
Poor Blackbird scavenging around the garden in the snow.
But hey we are rolling into Spring now and it’s time to look forward to better weather, more trips, gigs and Festivals, it’s really lifting the spirits, which have honestly been a little low of late. We start this week with the HRH AOR Festival in Pwllheli, North Wales which I will be shooting at for the 4th year running, this year for my good friends at Rockposer.com and will look forward to photographing and seeing some terrific bands and of course catching up with some wonderful friends along the way. This years bill includes headliners Joe Lynn Turner (Rainbow, Yngwie Malmsteen), Night Ranger and Skid Row. This is always a great weekend, and handy to be an indoor Festival at this time of year with lots of facilities on-site.
Busy month of gigs ahead, still have Sepultura, Steven Wilson, Cannibal Corpse, Gary Numan, Maverick and Danny Vaughn & Dan Reed to come this month, and HRH Blues in April.the year is pretty full with some great and very varied stuff, going to try and get to shoot more shows.
Eclipse – HRH AOR 2015
Another plan this year is to try and get out and get some decent photographs of Butterflies, but natural homegrown ones and some more tropical ones at Butterfly Gardens around the country, will try my very best to get this done. And then onto our holiday in Donegal, more Wild Atlantic Way sights, a different part of Donegal, so we will get to see the beautiful Fanad Lighthouse and area this time around.
Black Swallowtal with blue wings.
So bring it all on, lets hope it’s a great few months for us all and brigher weather brings brighter moods, with a lot of friends struggling through various illnesses at the moment, thoughts and prayers are with them all for speedy and full recoveries, and we all need to live life to the fullest while we have it, have fun out there.
So in the first 11 days of the year we have almost hit 10% of the number of gigs in total that were attended in all of 2017, ok the target may not be a very difficult one to hit compared to a normal year, but that aside it’s certainly been a better start.
This weeks show was one of my favourite voices in Rock/Metal playing one of my (if not the top of the list) favourite albums of all time ‘Operation Mindcrime’, and having missed his solo acoustic show in Dublin at the end of 2016 I was even more determined to be there this time around to see Geoff Tate, and the reports of that night were spot on, his voice is in very good shape, he looks like a different man, more relaxed and much happier than when I last saw him fronting Queensryche back in 2011. That all led this to be an excellent show, yes there were some issues that meant there was a long delay in the start of the show and yes musically it wasn’t quite note for note, but I was there to hear Geoff sing the songs, and that brought a massive smile to my face, singing stupidly from the balcony after I’d finished the Photography work.
The set tonight was the album from start to finish plus the added bonus of “Silent Lucidity” and the excellent closing shots of “Empire” and “Jet City Woman”, what a great way to end the night.
Shooting twice in a week in a venue I think of as my nemesis wasn’t all that bad, managed to get through both shows and hopefully managed to get a couple of decent shots out of it, still a little work to tidy out the Galleries from Thursday, but we will get there, haven’t been immune to the many bugs going around the last couple of weeks and sadly feel like I haven’t really had a break over Christmas/New Year, but you gotta roll with it. Should be out at my cousins b’day celebrations tonight, but sick house today, and probably a much needed night in.
Thanks to LOR Productions for giving me the opportunity to shoot one of my favourite singers and mark another off the Photography Bucketlist.
Kamila Barber of The Truce, supporting Geoff Tate at the Button Factory – 11-01-2018
Next up, hoping to take in the first Heat of this years Bloodstock Metal 2 The Masses Ireland competition in Fibber Magees next Saturday night, might even bring along the camera, imagine that would make it 3 gigs in 3 weeks and 3 shoots 😉 getting a little ahead of myself there I know, but we shall see, be nice to get in there and meet up with some friends I haven’t seen much of recently.
We were a bit gutted that due to storm Eleanor kicking in on the day we were due to make our visit, the Wild Lights at Dublin Zoo had to be cancelled, really shame as we were looking forward to it and due to their scheduling an extra night couldn’t be added in to replace it, ah well, maybe next time.
But I have at least made a good start to the gig year, attending and shooting at The Dedication (a Tribute show for Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott, and what a great night it was. Each of the bands played great sets, but as with seeing them last August it was Black Rose that just nailed it on the night, excellent band that definitely has both the spirit and the skill to pay homage to the man himself. There were 4 band playing on the night, from Ireland and the UK –
We are lucky to have an abundance of Lizzy lovers and musicians that what to keep the music alive, it’s always brilliant to hear the classics, but even better to hear songs you wouldn’t normally hear anywhere but at home on your stereo. Hopefully next time around there will be a bigger crowd, but as with every event you have to start somewhere in year one. These events seem to suit the Button Factory.
Roll on Thursday night and the chance to see the wonderful Geoff Tate performing the full ‘Operation Mindcrime’ album with his band of the same name. One of my favourite albums of all time, can’t wait.
On the way home from what I guess you could call my other job this evening, I was rushing to get home as I did want to try and catch some of the Football ( ManUtd – v- Everton ), I noticed the size and clarity of the moon this evening, well it is a Supermoon isn’t it, almost mesmerising, so the first thought was lets get home and get the camera out. Don’t think I have done it much justice here at all, but it’s going to be a busy week so hopefully an early night tonight and hoping even more that I can get some sleep and the little guy won’t be waking us up at 5:30 – well we can all hope for these things can’t we.
Tomorrow evening we are planning on taking in the Wild Lights Exhibition at Dublin Zoo, have heard lots of great things about it and many families that have loved seeing it, so hopefully the weather holds up and his lordship manages to stay awake and take it all in 😉 He loves bright coloured stuff, so should be right up his street. will bring along the camera if it’s permitted. Either way hopefully it will light up his happy little face and we’ll have a fun evening out.
Of course there’s work this week, which will more than likely be very busy kicking off the new year, and there’s a lot of other external obligations that will take up a lot of time this coming year, and have to always ensure that I don’t push it all too far and try and improve health wise over the next 12 months, it is very easy to try and do everything and run into a brick wall, but I’m also determined to do as much as I can with the camera and a lot of music, listening to or checking out live. To this end will be starting by shooting The Dedication show on Saturday at the Button Factory, some cracking bands on the bill once again and will be fun to catch up with some friends as always, that being followed up with the wonderful voice of Geoff Tate, with his band Operation Mindcrime, again playing the Button Factory and specially playing what is in my revolving top 3 albums of all time, ‘Operation Mindcrime’, should be a cracking show, the last acoustic Tour that Geoff did was very well received indeed and can’t wait for this one. The music on this album still creates tingles up and down my spine, and I have no doubt at all when the intro’s kick in the same will happen.
Not a bad way to kick things off with January normally being a quiet month, lets see how we get on and hopefully I’ll have some decent shots to add to the site and pass onto the guys.
Ok, back so quickly, yes but it suddenly hit me just how much I already have in my thoughts or actually organised for 2018. Current count is a total of 32 Gigs, of them 4 Festivals that I think are already organised, 6 Trips to the UK, and we haven’t even gotten things started yet. So the question comes flying at me again in big capitals –
ARE YOU MAD ????????
The answer is clearly yes, but hey, I’ve a lot to make up for, and I really want to get as much done this year as possible, as I think it may be the last year I can do much at all for a while. So lets throw caution to the wind and see how it goes. Really looking forward to it, lets keep the energy as high as possible and see where it takes us.
Today another one got added, the wonderful Pat McManus Band playing in Dublin in Feb. Hell Yeah !!!
Really it does, as we grow older and our circumstances change, along with the demands on our time from not only our work but also family or other external influences, it becomes harder to see what you have gotten done in a year.
Personally, well I would say on the Photography/Music front, less than I got done last year, but at the same time considering all that has changed in my life this year perhaps a lot more than I could have expected.
Attended at least 2 Gigs/Festivals a month (yes a significant drop on anything in the last 8 years – but still some awesome shows)
In reality I have only been able to shoot a few shows this year, and luckily also a number of Festivals, which helped a lot. But those I have done have been terrific to be at and even better to shoot, some of my favourite Artists, some from the Bucketlist that have been crossed off, and some for fun that really were that.
Reviews wise – well even with a few days to go I’m still trying to get over the 36 mark for albums, and perhaps only 10 Gigs/Festivals, again a noticeable drop on three or four years ago when I started Writing, but at the same time 3 per month isn’t all that shabby. It’s still an honour to cover Albums and Gigs for a number of Sites.
At the end of the day these are just figures and don’t mean a hell of a lot, but it’s always an easy way of seeing how busy you have been with other things. Perhaps not a fair comparison but in 2014 the figures were 69 Gigs/Festivals and 61 Reviews, and pretty much the same in 2015. perhaps they were the exceptions 😉
But there are many other things that have happened that can be marked as success stories, and even winning small battles should never be ignored.
Still 2017 has been a difficult one, and here’s to 2018 being a much better, happier and healthier year for us all.
Well personally, it’s been a bit of a mess of a year, so much stuff going on and less and less time to do stuff I’d like to get done. The year has flown by, and although I’ve missed so many more gigs than I’d ever like to, through illness (of everyone) and other commitments taking precedence, additional responsibilities and just less time in general. But having said that I’ve still managed to attend, and shoot some amazing events with some Artists I’ve always dreamed of seeing. And although there’s not much left of the year, there’s still a couple of gigs left to get in.
Really would have loved to have gotten back over to Bloodstock again, but sometimes family stuff just has to take priority and that was certainly the case in 2017, but there will always be other gigs, and boy oh boy does next year look unbelievable – so many Festivals with stellar lineups, gigs and Tours getting announced every couple of days, it’s going to be a complete blockbuster.
Highlights of this year so far have got to have been – Click on an image to go to the Gallery.
Jo Harman/Elles Bailey – Jo’s stunning show at the Jazz Cafe in Feb, now available on CD – do go and check it out.
Jo Harman – Jazz Cafe London, Feb 2017
Elles Bailey – Jazz Cafe London, Feb 2017
Shooting HRH AOR again, with some brilliant performances as always and getting to see bands I have not seen in almost 30 years, the likes of Lita Ford, Michael Monroe, Slaughter and Autograph, or some newer bands like The Radio Sun.
The Radio Sun – HRH AOR V
Shooting HRH Blues in Sheffield, some terrific artists and performances and a number of whom I hadn’t managed to see before.
Sean Webster Band – HRH Blues 2017
Rockingham 2017 – another absolutely kick ass weekend with great bands and people, this Festival has definitely become a highlight of the Calendar, roll on 2018.
Vince Neil – Rockingham 2017
Here’s to more next year and a number of Bucketlist bands to cross off the list, already have some excellent shows lined up for the New Year – and looking forward to shooting a couple of shows early in Januray \m/ \m/
