The Faint get the crowd moving, almost wreck my camera

The Faint played their own brand of techno-electronica at The Roxy in Boston on Wed. 20 August to a highly enthusiastic and energetic crowd. (More on that later.)

Hot on the heels of their fifth and latest CD, “Fasciinatiion,” (yes those double i’s are intentional, the product of a broken typewriter) and touring from their Omaha base to California, Boston, Europe, and from what I can see ending up in Tokyo–if not going beyond–they played to a charged-up audience who was obviously very familiar with their music. Not having seen them before, I don’t know how they usually show up but this time lead singer Todd Fink appeared with a set of goggles and a doctor’s lab coat, which taken together were vaguely reminiscent of a mad scientist or possibly an alien frog. (No disrespect to Todd, scientists, or frogs intended.) It worked somehow though, especially against the scrim backdrop onto which various images were projected at hyper speed all night. I think sometimes there were lyrics and other times reels of past shows, or possibly even images of the band on the stage that very night. It was hard to tell. But it all made good pictures, which is naturally something I appreciate.

Some pictures below. For full galleries:
[svgallery name="2008-08-20_TheFaint" link="Click here for The Faint"]
[svgallery name="2008-08-20_JaguarLove" link="Click here for Jaguar Love"]

All pictures and content are copyrighted, All Rights Reserved. Please don’t use without my permission.

Johnny Whitney, lead singer of Jaguar Love

Supporting The Faint were both metal/experimental outfit Genghis Tron (not “Gerghis Tron” as the Roxy had mistakenly spelled it) from Philly and Jaguar Love out of Seattle, who just released their debut CD “Take Me To The Sea” only one day before this show. I did not get there in time for Genghis but saw all of Jaguar Love. At times they vaguely reminded me of early Bowie, not at all visually but rather with the pitch and harmonies. I actually got quite a few good pictures of them, including some during their set-up; in fact I probably got more in total of them than of The Faint, because it was impossible to take any shots whatsoever during the entire second song and most of the third song of The Faint’s set: I was pinned in the center of the crowd in front of the stage and jammed so tightly that I could have lifted my feet off the floor and remained suspended in mid-air. It was all I could do to hold my camera to my chest and pray for deliverance. At one point my lens hood popped off and by sheer luck I caught it as starting sailing over the pogo-ing heads never to be seen again. After the second song ended, I managed to get over closer to the relative safety of stage right but I still couldn’t manage to hold my camera with the viewfinder to my eye, so I just held it over my head and pressed the shutter repeatedly. I did get some good ones from that but mostly not. Sigh. Sometimes I see those barriers most big bands have up and think “man it’s gonna be tight between that and the edge of the stage!” but when there are no barriers at all I realize how much easier they make things for photographers. Ha, maybe I need to get better at jabbing people in the ribs with my elbows in these kinds of crowds.

Oh these boys in bands can be funny. They’ll never change, no matter if it’s 1958 or 2008. During their pre-show sound check, Jaguar Love’s guitarist tested his mic with the dulcet melody of “Marriott, Marriott, that’s where we’re staying and we’re here until Friday … ” I’m sure he was of course just making a public service announcement for all the serious journalists in the house who might be interested in scheduling some scholarly discussion on the state of the music industry and would never expect any of the hot young ladies gazing up adoringly at them from the front row to take one bit of notice of this information.

Technical: Although I figured I’d be pretty close to the stage, I was hoping to be able to go into the balcony for some telephoto shots with my 70-200 VR. (As said before, I use Nikon cameras and glass.) Alas the management wouldn’t allow this. Without a barrier I could see that I was going to be really close so I only used the 17-55mm f2.8. When I came in at the end of Genghis Tron, the lighting was positively horrible: extremely dark, purple and green cans …not even an f1.8 could have gotten anything in there without upping the ISO to levels that could not avoid horrendous noise, even with the fine high-ISO capabilities of the D300. Thankfully both Jaguar Love and The Faint used a lighting design much more friendly to picture-taking, i.e., more lights, more creatively arranged lights, and more bursts of fairly bright light. Some pictures look like they were taken during the day outside. Word of advice to anyone else photographing there: you’ll be pressed against the stage and if you want to be in the center front, you either have to get there early or make a point of talking to the front row beforehand and asking if you can cut in front for the first three songs. I spoke to about 6 or 7 people and they were really nice about letting me in, but it wasn’t far enough; every shot I have of The Faint’s keyboardist is from the same angle and he’s got the same expression. Just impossible to get over to stage left. Never thought I’d miss a barrier so much!

Many thanks to Carla Senft at Press Here Publicity for arranging things for me.



The Roxy’s marble staircase looks more like a museum than a club

Lo & Jackie, who were nice enough to let me take their front-row-end spot so that I could take pictures

Jaguar Love setting up

Framing hands

Todd Fink was all over the stage