Andrew St. Clair

I haven’t been so excited about seeing and shooting a show in a while. Titus Andronicus blew me away when they opened for the Pogues on St. Patrick’s day and I couldn’t wait to see them with a rowdy crowd that were all 100% TA fans.

As usual, the lighting at the venue was hit or miss at MHoW. Dinowalrus was basically playing in the dark, so I took roughly 35 shots of them and went to grab a beer. The Suzan took the stage and killed! Lots of energy. The crowd loved them. When lead singer/guitarist Saori told the audience to clap their hands, they did. When she told them to jump, it was only a matter of how high! I’ve seen a lot of bands ask their audience clap along to a song only to be ignored and/or rejected. So, for an opening band to be able to pull that off to a crowd that has probably never heard of them means something. I used a flash for about 25% of my shots. I was looking to capture some of the bands energy and sometimes the combination of a flash and slow shutter will do the trick.

As for Titus Andronicus, it was one of the best live music performances I’ve ever seen. The band was tight, but energetic. As a whole, they seemed more comfortable playing tonight than they did opening for the Pogues at T5. Mostly because they got to play in front of a crowd of TA fans. In the last few months of shooting bands like Screaming Females, Jeff the Brotherhood and Heavy Cream, I’ve come to appreciate a wild crowd as they are really fun to shoot. Plus, most bands will feed off the energy of a crowd and, in turn, it affects their performance in a positive way. It’s a lot of give and take on both sides of the stage.

Speaking of which, the crowd was rowdy but respectful (partly due to Patrick Stickles, at the beginning of their set, asking the crowd, to be so of each other) and surprisingly cooperative to my wading through them with my camera to shoot. I think it helped that I connected with the crowd earlier by getting on the stage between sets and shooting them. About 4 songs into TA’s set, I took a break from shooting, left my camera bag by the stage entrance, grabbed another beer, and joined the crowd in the “trust circle” during ‘To Old Friends and New’.

They played for an hour and 45 minutes which included a new song (currently without a title), and 4 classic punk songs including the Ramones’ ‘Swallow My Pride’ and X-Ray Spex’s ‘Oh Bondage, Up Yours’ with Amy Klein on vocals (sans guitar and/or violin). Total ownage!

I shot with a flash the for most of not all of their shots. Out of the 500+ photos I took over the course of the night, 300 were dedicated to TA. With my photo pass I was able to shoot behind the band from stage left (where the band entrance is) as well as shoot from stage right (where the sound board is). Keyboardist/Guitarist David Robbins tends to face to his right and slightly away from the crowd, so it was nice to shoot him without his keyboard blocking my view.

I try to give band members equal photo coverage and drummers are usually the hardest to give varied shots. From the audience or pit you can only see them from one angle and often times I’ll only include one or two drummer photos in a photo set because they usually look pretty similar. So given the chance, I like to shoot drummers from the side. At Bowery Ballroom or Music Hall, you can get on the stairway to get that angle. But at this show, I went the extra step and snuck onto the stage behind Julian Vernosi’s bass amp to get some choice shots of Eric Harm. Pretty happy with how they turned out.

After the show, XL Recordings had a little get-together to celebrate the end of the tour. There I met music writer Michael Azerrad and introduced him to Amy Klein. While it was fun chatting with Michael about music, it was even more fun to see him geeking out with Amy, who is definitely more of a student of music history than I am. I told Michael that I would have loved to have been able to shoot bands like The Pixies & Nirvana back in the early 90’s and he told me that I was lucky that I’m doing it now because it’s an exciting time for music. Michael said that tonight’s show was one of those special shows that will be remembered for years. At that moment, I never felt more proud and privileged to be a live music photographer and be a part of the scene in the “here & now”. Check out the coverage on BrooklynVegan.