Lez Zeppelin, an all-girl Zep cover band, at the Middle East Downstairs in Cambridge (Boston)

Lead singer Sarah McLellan

I wasn’t too sure how this was going to work out–an all-female band playing Zep?? But it was surprisingly and nostalgically good. And they sold out the Downstairs, which is a pretty impressive draw. They played the full Led Zeppelin 2 album, start to finish, plus a couple of encore songs. Really interesting to watch and listen; you’d not think someone (meaning a female someone–there must be a million male Zep cover singers) could do Robert Plant so well! Sarah has a really nice smooth voice, and I loved watching Steph Paynes work her guitar. I could see the individual muscles in her hands up close and it made me realize what a bad guitar player I myself must be. Sigh.

Continue reading for more pictures, full gallery, and shooting notes

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Shooting notes:

Well for starters, the Middle East’s Web site said they were on at 8:00, which I thought was strangely early, but whatever. Turns out they were on at 11:00–the doors opened at 8:00. But I don’t need three hours to set up, not even if I want to shoot the opener (which this night was Forgetful Jones, will have their pics up soon). So I had three hours to kill. Anyway I eventually got in and got things cleared with Security about where I could go (behind the barriers, on stage, and in the sound booth-YES!), talked to people in the front about letting me in get in front of them, and figured out which lenses would be best.

It was not completely dark in there but as with another recent shoot, I discovered afterward that a lot of pictures had their heads in the dark. It didn’t seem that way when I was shooting. I think I recently turned on Active-D Lighting in my camera, which is supposed to assist with strongly contrasting images (such as concerts, where there tend to be a lot of bright lights behind the singer, therefore putting his face in the dark as far as a camera’s sensor is concerned) and I think that is what’s causing this head-dark issue. I have to turn that off. Otherwise, pretty good light on everyone except Helen Destroy, the drummer. I could not get one decent shot of her. Sorry Helen.

Equipment used: Body, Nikon D300. Lenses: 17-55mm f2.8, mostly at wide open; 24-70 f2.8 wide open; and I think the 85mm f1.8 briefly at varying apertures. Didn’t bring out the 70-200 at all. EXIF shows I was at ISO 1250, 1600, or 2000 the whole night. Also for anyone trying to take shots of bands: you need to get to know your camera and use the settings to your full advantage. I always set it for spot metering; smallest autofocus area (6 points on a D300), exposure compensation at varying levels, and keep automatic noise reduction turned off. If you get noise, learn to love it or fix it in post. And read the manual–it’s provided for a reason. The D300′s is more than 400 pages long but it’s really necessary to devote the time to understanding it.

Acknowledgments:

Thanks very much to Alan at Magus for the pass and ticket. Really nice guy to deal with; and also to the various Middle East security personnel and the sound engineer, all of whom were very accommodating to me.

Lez Zeppelin on myspace • Lez Zeppelin official site

Hot Stove Cool Music puts on yet another foot-stomping roof-raising barn-burner of a show

Back from an incredible concert with the astonishing Buddy Guy; the proudly self-proclaimed “best bar band in the world” George Thorogood and the Destroyers; and the fund-raising fun-raising side project of ESPN sportswriter & Baseball Hall of Fame honoree Peter Gammons with help from some guy named Theo Epstein. You might have heard of him ’round here; he manages some kind of socks team that I hear has been pretty successful … or something like that.

In the spirit of the concert’s philanthropic purpose, the Red Sox Foundation along with the Foundation To Be Named Later (which was founded by Theo Epstein and his twin brother Paul) auctioned off several pieces of Sox memorabilia, one of which was a jersey signed by the team including Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz. It started at I think $100 and went to $3,500. Some guy made himself very happy with this tax deduction, and with the current state of the team it’s probably the last thing of Sox that Manny will ever sign, except for his trade contract.

I took more than 500 pictures and couldn’t go through them all last night. Click on “read the rest” below to get to the start of the gallery. I have more to put up later.

I’ll go over more of the tech specs later; most everything shot with either a 17-55 or a 24-70, with the exception of additional from-my-seat-shots with the 70-200 and a Canon G9. That is one really good P&S. I didn’t bring my Panasonic but it would have come in handy for the greater zoom. Interestingly, I never went over ISO 400 on the Canon and in fact got quite a few shots at ISO 200–from Row 31!

Huge thanks to Shaun Kelley at Iron Mountain, Allyce Najimy at the Red Sox & the Foundation To Be Named Later, Jonathan Fine at Elevate & especially Jay Anderson at Live Nation for arranging everything for me.

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