Well, I wanted to blog about the photography of Chris(tine) Boarts Larson who, in my mind, was/is THE live music photographer. I used to love opening up a new issue of Slug & Lettuce to see her ultra-energetic, atmospheric photos on newsprint. Sadly I couldn’t find enough of her work to post here. You can see her MySpace here although it doesn’t do justice seeing it on a computer screen, it looked even better in print.

Also, really sad to see the Wood St premises of Open Eye in Liverpool has shut. I know it’s re-opening elsewhere but I always liked that space.

I’ve been listening to Ben Folds a lot lately. It’s strange that I’d like his work, he’s really not what I usually listen to at all: he doesn’t sound like he has woke up on a strange sofa with a mouthful of cigarettes and a stomach full of whisky. He does, however, have some of the best first lines in music.

“I met this chick/she looked like Axl Rose”
“Well, I thought about the army/Dad said, “Son, you’re fucking high”"
“Sara spelled without an ‘H’ was getting bored”

He isn’t without fault, his songs can run into boring when he relies too heavily on his middle-class persona and the quality control of his albums could be better.
When he is on form: he really hits. One thing I’ve always liked about him is his piano playing – really percussive and aggressive sounding. I can’t fathom the Billy Joel/Elton John references, he’s surely much closer to someone like Little Richard.

I did look on YouTube for a decent video of one of my favourite Ben Folds songs (probably Kate, Gone or Annie Waits) but could find nothing but bad quality live footage (with his back to the camera, no less!) or terrible home-made videos people had made to his music. Sorry.

Allegedly this is my photoblog. Y’wouldn’t know this considering how little of my work I post! Here is something from the seemingly never ending Isn’t Anywhere series. Nobody should be surprised about the subject matter.

Isn’t Anywhere (2009)

You should all check out Surrender. I saw them supporting Lemuria last night, very impressed.

I’ve been working on my website lately, the new stuff should be updated in a few weeks. I’ve also started work on a new project, the plan is to show bits and pieces on this blog piecemeal.