You want masochism? You want pain, suffering, torment, degradation, self-abasement, sniveling, grovelling, begging, pleading, and the ever-present threat of physical violence? Never mind being on stage -- just hop on down to the photographers' pit and acquaint yourself with those of us who REALLY understand the concept of suffering for the sake of one's art. Who else would voluntarily and cheerfully (well, actually, not all that cheerfully...) submit themselves to the whims of PR offices, tour managers, security guards, temperamental artists, roadies, and -- worst of all -- thousands of howling, froth-mouthed fans, all in the hopes of getting that one perfect photo that sums up an event and, if they're lucky, a small amount of financial compensation for their time and trouble? (If you're not so lucky, or if you work for a small publication such as this one, be prepared to pay for everything out of your own pocket.) Live concert photographers -- the few, the proud, the totally fucked up....
I was fortunate enough to be able to catch three different shows (Atlanta, Dallas, and Austin) on the Bowie/NIN/Prick tour, and even luckier inasmuch as I was actually able to finagle photo passes for both the Atlanta and Austin shows (all praise is due to Erin at Formula, who should be watching her mailbox in anticipation of something decadent and chocolatey). Of the three, I would have to say the Austin show was by far the best, in large part due to the unsurpassed enthusiasm of the crowd. All three bands were never less than excellent any of the times I saw them, but the crowd response varied dramatically -- Dallas was friendly but a tad distracted whenever anyone other than NIN was onstage, and Atlanta was...hmmm...while individual people were certainly into the show, the crowd as a whole seemed a tad noncommittal. (I'm sure it was much more exciting being in the middle of everything, but from where I was standing, it was the most laid-back pit I've ever seen at a NIN show...even a hard-core wuss like me might have been able to survive the experience.) Austin, however, had them both beat -- the crowd was wildly enthusiastic for all three bands, who in turn drew on that energy to give the best performances I had seen on this tour. People were not only moshing to Prick, but they were singing along as well; they stuck around for Bowie's set, singing and dancing, instead of heading for the exits; and as for the NIN set...well, you'll just have to wait to hear about that one....
The Atlanta show, for me at least, ran to both extremes. The show itself was excellent, as was the meet-and-greet afterward, but as for the photographic angle...well, let's just say it was one of those days where damn near everything that could go wrong did. Due to traffic and unforeseen circumstances, we were late to the show and missed Prick's set; due to running late, I wasn't able to hook up with the PR person at the right time. And due to a massive breakdown in communications between PR, the venue staff, security, and several photographers, I ended up missing the first two songs of NIN's set and was only able to shoot during the third song before the camera had to be put away (damn it damn it damn it). At least the show was good, and hanging out at the meet-and-greet backstage helped make up for some of my disappointment over my photographic adventures. I chatted with several members of Prick, including Kevin McMahon himself (who was not a "prick" to me, but was instead very gentlemanly and courteous in his dealing with a not only mad but totally flustered photographer -- chivalry is not dead!).
I was also lucky enough to run into Robin and Danny. I suspect poor Robin thinks I'm a raving loony after I asked him about some e-mail we had supposedly exchanged, only to find out that I had been severely trolled. (Nothing like having your opening conversational shot blown totally out of the water, eh?) But he was gracious enough to take the tin of brownies I had smuggled into the backstage Inner Sanctum, where I hear they were eagerly devoured. (Jason Patterson tells me that by the time he got backstage, all that was left were a few crumbs in the bottom of the tin, and one lone brownie that had somehow toppled to the floor unnoticed....)
As for Danny, I had already heard from several other people how friendly and considerate he was, and I was not disappointed -- if anything, he surpassed his advance billing by being even more sweet, friendly, and charming than I had expected. (Of course, his enthusiasm over the prospect of freshly baked brownies, coupled with his seeming to have at least a vague notion of who I was from a.m.nin, didn't hurt either.) Hope your shoulder is feeling better now, Danny -- I recommend heat and massage, and if you ever need any advice on herbal remedies, don't hesitate to get in touch with me, OK? (Oops, Mama Hen alert...you're about to be mothered to death!) I was also lucky enough to run into Gothgate, who occasionally posts to a.m.nin, and his friend Amanda, both of whom were in Atlanta to cover the show for their own magazine -- and who not only told me many colorful and amusing stories about life in New Orleans, but were kind enough to drive me back to my motel afterwards, even if we did get hopelessly lost looking for it that late at night. (Glad to hear you both finally made it safely back to the Big Easy, and thanks to Wolver and Brandie for putting up with me as well!)
On to Texas! After two days of adventures in Dallas -- which included not only the concert but my first trip to a sushi restaurant and Procyon's rental car being rear-ended on the way (as if losing her prized Porsche, the Raging Queenie, wasn't bad enough...I was genuinely worried for about 30 seconds that she might strangle the other driver with her bare hands after her second wreck in less than a month, but luckily I didn't end up the eyewitness to a murder as well as a fender-bender) -- we all set our course for Austin, the Embassy Suites, and Southpark Meadows, in roughly that order. ("We" in this case refers to the H&V contingent, consisting of KT, Procyon, Kitaro aka Bill, Nancy the Brewmistress, and yours truly.) The hoped-for aftershow/backstage passes were not forthcoming, but at least the photo pass was there as promised, and I took my place along with about half a dozen other photographers and press people to wait for the PR person (who turned out to be none other than Mark O'Shea, the former tour manager) to give us our briefing for the night. (Warning: Listening to a group of battle-weary press people bitching, moaning, and swapping horror stories is not a pretty picture, and the faint of heart and/or stomach are well advised to steer clear of such a gathering.)
A side note: Permit me to comment here that, in nine years of taking concert photos, the guidelines within which photographers had to work for these shows were possibly the most Byzantine I've ever dealt with. You were not allowed into the venue with your camera before the show under any circumstances (including hitting the concession stands, T-shirt booths, or restrooms). Instead, you had to wait outside the will-call window for the PR rep to make an appearance. Fifteen minutes before Prick went on, the rep would count heads, check off names, and then lead everyone into the venue, down the embankment, and to the photographers' pit. You were allowed to shoot during the first three songs, with no flash (a pretty standard rule). The instant the third song ended, you were hustled out of the pit and back up the hill. If you had a ticket and wanted to watch the rest of the set, you had to leave your camera at will-call; otherwise, you had to wait outside until 15 minutes before NIN's set, at which point the whole business started over again. (Needless to say, you missed quite a lot of the set while in transit.) Also, the photographers' pit was not in its traditional place just below the stage (which confused me to no end in Atlanta, as I had shot there several times previously, and thought I knew where to go), but instead was roughly 50 feet back from the stage, behind the main mosh pit, between two rows of barricades heavily populated with security guards (the reasons for which became manifest later).
In addition, Southpark Meadows is not designed the same way as your more conventional outdoor arena; it's not much more than a glorified dusty cow pasture, with no seating (strictly general admission), rather steeply sloping sides, and a stage at one end of the bottom of the bowl. Considering that the distance from the audience to the main gate and will-call was (by my guesstimation) as much as a quarter-mile, it's no wonder that my feet and legs were killing me by the end of the night. One more thing: You were only allowed to shoot whatever was happening on stage, with venue and crowd shots completely forbidden (hey, half the fun of a show is getting pictures of the various people and settings!). Anyone with ideas of photographing the next tour (whenever that turns out to be) should hereby consider themselves warned, and plan their lens and film inventory accordingly.
After a few nervous moments of thinking I would be stuck toting around six dozen brownies in three large butter cookie tins all night, I finally managed to unload all of them on Caroline the Virgin Records rep, asking her to take them back to Danny and Kevin. (Both of them had put in a request for more goodies after Atlanta, with the latter also asking for a heater shirt after I described them to him.) She came back a few minutes later, bless her furry little heart, to let me know that she had turned everything over to Danny with the proper distribution instructions. Knowing what a sugar junkie he is, though, I'm still wondering if he passed everything on, or snarfed it all down himself. I now have this mental image of Danny or Trent (another hardcore sugar fiend, or so I hear) huddled up in the back of the bus, twitching violently all the way to Denver as the result of a massive sugar and caffeine OD....
After much anticipation on the part of us press people (and much hopping around on the part of those in desperate need of a potty break), Marco finally made his appearance and led us to the photographers' pit, where we all set up and waited for Prick. Fortunately, it wasn't a long wait, and they hit the stage to the warmest crowd response I'd seen or heard about so far. Not only were people watching their set, but they were actually moshing during it, and enough people were familiar with the material that a good portion of the crowd was actually singing along -- most unusual for a little-known opening band, and very heartwarming, to say the least.
Finally, the appointed time arrived. We all lined up (well, most of us -- I think the photographer from Hit Parader got disgusted and quit), and after the obligatory head-counting/name-checking/order-giving, we set off again -- this time with several very large security people in tow, and Marco, our slightly demented and rather sniffly Pied Piper with a clipboard and a two-way radio, in the lead. By the time we reached the outskirts of the crowd nearest to the pit entrance, I was beginning to understand that there might be a rationale other than rampant paranoia for our being marched around the way were were. The security guards literally had to force their way through the crowd so that the rest of us had a fighting chance to claw our way into the photographers' pit without undue bodily harm. A lone shutterbug trying to shove his or her way in wouldn't have stood a chance.
We took our places, loaded our cameras, checked our settings against the stage lighting, and waited. A huge cheer rose from the crowd when the smoke machines were turned on full blast; peering through the ever-thickening chemical fog, I thought I saw Chris mounting the drum riser and various black-clad figures scurrying around in the murk. All eyes were fixed on the stage...waiting...waiting...the lights flickered as the smoke grew thicker...then, without warning, "HEY GOD!" erupted from the stage, and there he was -- Trent, the man of the hour, the Prince of Darkness, the Demon Lover, drenched from head to foot and screaming as if he were trapped in the lowest level of Dante's Inferno...
...and all hell broke loose.
Planting a bomb beneath the mosh pit couldn't have produced a more explosive effect than Trent's appearance from (seemingly) nowhere. The entire audience erupted into a sea of flailing heads and fists, bodies flying through space, screams, squeals, moans, and howls...and several hundred desperate souls trying to get the fuck out of the mosh pit as a veritable sea of humanity began pouring over the barricades all around us. Swooning girls were pulled from the pit by security, hardier souls were scrambling for a foothold on the barricades to boost themselves over, and the hysterical and out-of-control were clawing their way over the heads of their fellows in a desperate quest to get as far away from the madness as possible. And there I was in the middle of it all, a black-and-white-calico-clad rock in the midst of a seething stream of flesh, trying to keep a toehold on the barricades, Nikon clenched in a death grip as the bodies poured around, below, and occasionally above me, trying desperately to keep shooting, with but one thought uppermost in my mind:
"IF I GET KILLED, THIS IS ALL YOUR FUCKING FAULT, REZNOR!"
(No wonder they had us so far back behind the pit...I shudder to think what it must have been like up front....)
Thankfully, the mad onslaught was over almost as quickly as it began, with the over-the-barricade flood ebbing to a trickle by the end of "terrible lie". After fiddling with my camera some more (and not being able to get up for a moment as the result of a security guard standing on my skirt while he was pulling someone else over the barricade), I hopped back up on my post and began firing away again -- only to encounter a new obstacle in the person of a screaming-mimi alternateen who was shaking my section of barricade with all her might, jumping up and down, and hysterically squealing, "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" I was standing on the platforms on the back of two individual barricade sections (strictly speaking, you were supposed to hop up and then back down again -- but when you're 5'4" in your thickest-soled shoes, you gotta do what you gotta do to get that picture), trying to hang on to my camera, and I was at no small risk of being bounced completely off the platform. I tried yelling at her to stop and finally was forced to reach down and smack her on the shoulder to get her attention (not too hard, but hard enough). "STOP THAT! CALM DOWN!" She keep on screeching -- but, thank God, she finally let go of the barricade before she succeeded in knocking me ass-over-bandbox to the ground, camera and all. I was finally able to concentrate on the more mundane aspects of live photography, such as trying to shoot under weird lighting conditions from way too far away. (A word to the wise: Do not mess with the Mad Photographer when she's trying to concentrate on doing her job. I get extremely singleminded and more than a little testy when shooting under difficult conditions, and on one occasion I had to haul off and slap a drunken frat boy at a Violent Femmes show who thought that the height of hilarity was trying to grab my flash and yank it off my camera body. "When I said 'cut that shit out,' I MEANT cut that shit out, goddamn it!")
The situation at Ground Zero had calmed down considerably (although the mosh pit was still seething to "march of the pigs"), and I was finally able to devote my attention to what was happening onstage -- and, more specifically, on how the guys looked. (*grin*) Everyone looked very spiffy and well put-together in their basic black shirts and pants (much nicer, in my opinion, than the shorts and tops of the previous tour) -- and quite handsome, if I do say so. Robin had shaved his head sometime between the previous night in Dallas and this evening's showtime, and the combination of his shaven skull, tight black clothes, and lack of eyebrows brought to mind a baby-faced version of Nosferatu.
As for Trent...ah, yes, Trent. Ooh, baby. Those lips...those eyes...that hair...that BUTT! (Professional objectivity? What professional objectivity?) For a normally shy and withdrawn fellow, he certainly knows how to turn on the charm and turn up the heat on stage in front of an adoring audience. (Dr. Jekyll, it's a Mr. Hyde on line 2....) He prowled the stage with an air of being supremely confident of his own allure, and of being more than willing to flaunt his appeal as much as he could. He wriggled; he writhed; he grabbed his crotch (they're still there -- you didn't lose them when you hit that high note, dear); he straddled the mikestand suggestively (when he wasn't screaming into the mike, or draping himself over the stand in the langorous manner of a leather-clad St. Sebastian); he wiggled his butt around, pointed it at the audience, and even started stroking it for good measure. ("So turn around/Stick it out/Even white boys got to shout"...oh dear God, I'm quoting Sir Mix-A-Lot in a NIN concert review! Help!)
He had the entire audience under his spell, and it was obvious that he was loving every second of it. ["He's an absolutely shameless power tripper!" I fumed, while in the midst of a blessedly short-lived burst of anger. "He doesn't care what happens to them -- he's just getting off on having total control over all these people!" I fussed and fretted for a moment, until I finally reminded myself that (a) every performer in the world gets off on having an audience under his or her spell, and any performer who tries to claim otherwise is a damn liar; (b) prancing and preening is part of the rock-star job description, so he'd be a dreadful slacker if he WASN'T doing it, and (c) since getting up in public and holding sway over a large crowd is one of my favorite fantasies, how can I criticize anyone else for doing something I would love to do if I only could?] About the only trick he didn't pull was bending over and grabbing his ankles, but I suspect that's just as well...the way that crowd was whipped up, I seriously doubt they would have been able to control it if he had pulled a stunt like that.
Oh...my overall impression of his performance, you said? Hmmmm....let's just say this was one of those occasions where I was glad to have a nice long 80-200mm zoom lens with decent optics, and leave it at that, eh? Nothing wrong with THAT view...nothing at all. (Hence the new nickname for my trusty Nikon FG, which KT has dubbed the AssCam [tm].) As for those of you who can't understand why I would devote so much space to something that amounts to a detailed critique of somebody's ass, allow me to point out two things: (1) Considering the amount of trouble Trent was going to in order to flaunt his well-toned physique, it would be a pity for him to think that all his hard work had been for naught, and that no one had noticed anything; and (2) hey, lighten up -- after all, you've got to give the people what they want, you know.
Suddenly, the third song was over (and for those of you wondering how I managed to both take pictures and ponder the mysteries of the universe, keep in mind that "the becoming" is a fairly long song), and we were being hustled back out of the pit. Not wanting to miss any more of the show than I had to, I dumped my camera bag at will-call like a good little girl (it was nice not to have to lug it, but I hate being separated from my gear when I can't keep an eye on it), and ran back down to where most of the audience was, stopping en route to rent a pair of binoculars so I could keep up with the action. Alas, they were only cheap rental binoculars, and trying to see over people's heads is harder when you're not standing on something...ah, well, c'est la vie. (An observation: You know you've spent a lot of time peering through the viewfinder of a camera when you inadvertently find yourself trying to turn the binoculars so as to frame the scene vertically rather than horizontally.) Cheap binoculars can't hold a candle to a decent zoom lens, but it's still better than wondering what those ants are doing onstage....
The rest of the set pretty much followed the typical set list for this tour, the sole exception being that "closer" rather than "closer to god" was played. The more serious fans (at least, the ones who were hoping for the latter song) were disappointed, but the Freddies and Susies loved it -- especially when Trent tossed the mike out into the mosh pit and let whoever was close enough to grab it have their say. (Is it just me, or is it always meatheads who yell stupid shit who manage to get the mike in these situations?) For a brief moment, I thought he was going to dive into the crowd during "down in it" -- but apparently common sense and the urge for self-preservation won out over the need to make a grand dramatic gesture, and he contented himself with racing around the security pit, where only the fortunate few in the front row were able to lay hands on him as he flew past. (Do you suppose he had a Dallas flashback and thought better of the whole idea? Just wondering....)
I thought about heading to will-call to see if I would be allowed to shoot during the duet sequence, but figured that I probably wouldn't and decided to stick around on the main field and actually enjoy that part of the show. (There was a clause in the contract mentioning duets, but the word among the press corps was that you had to have permission from both Bowie's PR people and Formula. Since the DB logo on my pass was crossed out, it seemed to me that I wouldn't be allowed to shoot and would only end up wasting time and missing more of the show. Sorry about that, folks.) The duet was wonderful, although I still don't think I'll ever get used to hearing Bowie singing NIN songs. Also, hearing him sing the opening line of "reptile" as "she spreads her LEGS wide open" was a bit jarring -- wasn't the original version explicit enough? And the sax solo...ah, yes. Saxophone has always been one of my favorite instruments, so just hearing Trent play at all would have been a wonderful treat, but to hear him play so well.... (blissed-out smile here) As amusing as all the butt-wiggling was, I would have gladly traded all of that for another 10 or 15 minutes of listening to him play the sax as beautifully as he did. (Hmmm...how does "Big Man with a Horn" sound as a BFPT idea?)
And then, with a friendly wave to the crowd, he was gone...
...and Bowie took over for the rest of the show. To the crowd's immense credit, even though 80 percent of them were obviously there to see NIN, the vast majority of them stuck around for Bowie's solo set and cheered him on. It seemed as if more of this audience were reasonably familiar with the material from Outside than had been the case in either Atlanta or Dallas. At any rate, both the new and the older, more obscure material were well received by the crowd, who sang and danced along to everything (although the biggest crowd-pleaser was "Under Pressure" by a mile...it was probably the one song that EVERYONE in the place was familiar with). To be honest, I listened to the set more than I actually watched it -- I was mainly occupied with trying to find my party in the crush of people, which ended up taking most of the rest of the evening. I almost literally fell over Nancy (she was sitting on the ground and spotted me walking by), and eventually ran into the others just before the end of the show, not too much the worse for wear. Oh, yes, and I got a T-shirt as well -- the white one with the gargoyle on the front (or, as yours truly the unregenerate wiseass put it, "the one with the caricature of Trent having a bad day").
That's pretty much the whole story. We dragged ourselves back to the Embassy Suites, stuffed ourselves on Czech pastries freshly nuked in the microwave (we hit a bakery in West en route to Austin), and took a slew of silly pictures before toppling into our beds. I flew back to Atlanta from Dallas the next day and caught a nasty cold on the plane, Procyon accidentally left her new jacket at the hotel and had to have it FedExed to her, and my second roll of NIN film turned out to have been improperly loaded and was thus a total loss. But the rest of the pictures didn't turn out too badly, so all's well that ends well.
I only hope that you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them -- because in spite of all the bitching, whining, and complaining I do, I obviously still enjoy SOMETHING about concert photography well enough to keep on keeping on.