Andrew St. Clair

Yes, I know I haven’t shot as many shows as I did last year and definitely have not been posting on my blog as often as I should be. But that won’t stop me from compiling a year end list that will polarize & alienate my readers. Without further ado:

• St. Vincent covering Big Black at Bowery Ballroom - Legendary performance
• Spending the day with Tokyo Police Club before and after their awesome sold out T5 gig
• Seeing Screaming Females live… anywhere. As Ted Leo said at 4Knots, “Best band in the world right now.” 
• Angela from Twin Sister telling me that she drew a picture based on a photo I took of her and used it on a flyer
• Wye Oak covering Danzig’s ‘Mother’ at the A.V. Club. “Wolfs Blood.”
• Heavy Cream… who are going to rip 2012 apart with their new album (produced by Ty Segall)
• Backstage with Ted Leo at 4Knots and listening to him tell stories about when he toured with Radiohead while in the band Chisel
• My photo of Oberhofer used on a Noisey.com show poster
• Hanging with Peelander-Z, The Narrative, and their crews for 2 days on the Warped Tour
• Anamanaguchi & Extreme Animals @ The Museum of the Moving Image
• Lucero. Their year end show at Brooklyn Bowl and hanging with them on stage on the Warped Tour. Plus chatting with Ben Shapiro about tattoos in the press area.
• Braids ‘Native Speaker’ getting on the shortlist for the Polaris Prize (after my predicting it would happen)
• Hanging with Marnie Stern, her drummer Vince Rogers, and members of Tera Melos at Winnie’s in Chinatown singing karaoke.
• Titus Andronicus & The Suzan @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
• Deervana @ Brooklyn Bowl and the swag I took home (thanks Deer Tick)
• Meeting and shooting Dee Snider on the Warped Tour (really sweet guy)
• Japanther’s 10 year Anniversary show at Music Hall of Williamsburg with Heavy Cream (my buddies from Nashville) & Shellshag - two of the nicest people I know. (John, you still owe me a custom t-shirt, btw).
• Lupe Fiasco’s 2+ hour record release party at Webster Hall - Which produced my favorite photo set of the year
• The Immaculates @ Death By Audio - Brilliant!
• Cheeseburger & (my buddies) Hard Nips at the Beekman Beer Garden
• Watching David Powell eat a fucking sandwich while JEFF The Brotherhood played on Jimmy Fallon
• Mueran Humanos @ Secret Project Robot
• Seeing Hunters at Death By Audio as well as constantly running into Derek and Isabel in my neighborhood
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs performance at Brooklyn Bowl to benefit Jonathan Toubin
• Making friends with Friends and seeing random members of the band at shows

It’s a great feeling walk into a venue and see so many friendly and/or familiar faces who make me feel welcome and appreciated. It makes all the late nights and hard work of early morning photo editing all worthwhile.

Obligatory shout outs to Laura Stevenson & The Cans, Bomb the Music Industry!, Oh Land, Lemuria, Fucked Up, Brian and Madeline from Cults, The Like, Cassie Ramone, The Ettes, The Suzan, Street Chant, The Get Up Kids, Grooms, Teen Witch, X-Ray Eyeballs, Thee Oh Sees, Oberhofer, Colin Langenus, Simon Henderson, Nikki Bennett at Columbia, Bryan Nelson, Eric Jimenez, Michael Azzarad, Rich Cohen & everyone at Foundations Management, Starscream, Maria Sherman, Joe Manzione, Bill Pearis, Julia @ Terminal 5, Doris Cellar, Stacy McIntyre, Alon Shapiro, Stephen Tanner from Harvey Milk, Eric Weiner & Nicole DeVita, Emily Greene, Susan Kamenar, Haley Dekle, Katie, Fred, & Dave at Brooklyn Vegan, Kristen Y. Kim, Alexandra Serio, as well as all of my fellow photography friends who are to many to list here (you know who you are). I’m sure I forgot to list a bunch of people, but I do want to get this list out before 2013.

A couple of weeks after I shot Lee Fields & The Expressions at Bowery Ballroom I saw Tennessee Thomas hanging out in the bar downstairs. Tennessee is the drummer of The Like, whose last album ‘Release Me’, saw the band shift into a 1960’s style complete with brit-pop guitar, hand claps, and 60’s style girl group vocals. Easily one of my favorite albums last year. I asked her when they were playing NYC next and she said they didn’t have anything coming up. Damn.

So, when I woke up early on Saturday, I checked my Twitter feed to find that @ILoveTheLike were playing a Fashion Week day party for Rachel Antonoff and had posted a link to an invite. I quickly RSVPed and got my gear ready. I could go on about issues I had with the train on Saturday, but I won’t. Regardless, I was running much later than I wanted to.

I ran from the subway to the gym because press check in for The Like was at 2 and the event ended at 2:30. That, compounded with the warmness of the gymnasium, made me want to jump in a swimming pool to cool down.

The theme of the party was ‘The Dance’. Complete with streamers, balloons, and a bunch of cute teens scattered around the gym posing for the camera showing off cute tights and shoes designed by Ms. Antonoff. The Like sounded pretty good considering they were playing in a High School gym. They played the majority of ‘Release me’ and as a bonus, a cover of ‘Will You Still Love Me’. I <3 them so much. Tennessee is also really good about smiling at me when I shoot her playing the drums.

Afterwards, I chatted with the band who, as it turns out, had played for about 3 hours during the day-party and actually repeated their tunes a couple of times. Bassist Laura Geronimo told me that she didn’t get a chance to eat before the gig. When I asked frontwoman Elizabeth ‘Z’ Berg if she had eaten, she replied “Of course not. It’s Fashion Week.” Fair enough, Z. Fair enough.

I last shot Lemuria this past winter at the Don Giovanni showcase and really liked them. So I made it a point to catch their performance with Superchunk and Off! at The House of Vans. To be really honest, I was most excited to see Lemuria. While I’m a Superchunk fan, I never heard of Off! so I didn’t know what to expect.

Getting my gear ready for the show, the battery cover hinge on my camera gave way right beforehand and broke off. Fuck. So, I ran to the hardware store and tried to hold it down with Gorilla Tape. But would it hold for the duration of the show…?

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If Nirvana and The Jimi Hendrix Experience had a baby, it would be Screaming Females. This intense punk rock power trio are not only one of my very, very favorite bands to see live, but on a personal level they’ve always been generous in giving me access to them off and on-stage. So, I’m always looking forward to them coming to town.

I got to the Seaport about an hour early to hang out and shoot some candids of the band. At one point, they were chilling out, tooling around on their phones (well, at least Mike and Jarrett were) and I asked them to sit next to each other for some shots, but otherwise, I was pretty undemanding. I chilled out with the band talking about how emotionally manipulative Pixar movies are, moving to new houses/apartments, Paula Cole and Limp Bizkit (haha)… while occasionally taking a candid photo here and there.

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The House of Vans warehouse in Brooklyn is a great venue to see bands. Nice big stage, large photo pit, and free beer and food! For me, as a photographer, the only complaint is that their lighting can be a little more backlight driven than I’d prefer (ie. Lots of silhouettes). It’s a minor quibble, however as the lighting is better than most venues.

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I think that the hottest ticket this week was the Fucked Up/JEFF The Brotherhood/Iceage show at 285 Kent. Fucked Up was not officially on the bill until after their appearance playing with Dinosaur Jr. at Terminal 5 had happened. However, this was the worst kept secret of the week, as JEFF has been touring with F’ed Up. Even the listing of ‘ke dcupfu’ on the Facebook event page was a thinly veiled attempt to hide this fact.

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On Friday, I went to McCarren Park to catch Yellow Ostrich, Sharon Van Etten, and Beirut. I didn’t shoot the show (outside of about 10 photos), but I did hang out with some friends, post-rainstorm/double rainbow. The organizers and crew did a bang up job because not only did all the bands start on time, but they all sounded great! Speaking of sound and friends, I saw sound man extraordinaire, Mark Knight, who was running the soundboard for Beirut’s set. In fact, throughout the whole festival, I ran into dozens of fellow photographers that I hadn’t seen in a while, old friends and acquaintances I’ve made from other shows, not to mention musicians I’ve gotten to be friendly with. Always nice to see a friendly face at a show, but this was x 20. Just a very nice atmosphere throughout the fest.

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I really wasn’t planning on attending the Northside fest this year. I was considering heading to The Governors Ball and maybe meeting up with some friends… But, fate had different plans for me. Turns out that I won a festival badge through the @VoiceStreet. And now that I live in Greenpoint, all of the venues were well within walking distance of each other and from my house. So, on Thursday afternoon, I picked up my badge, along with a totally worthless gift bag, and some free Heineken and was on my way.

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