Andrew St. Clair

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…?

When I got to the HoV (yeah, that’s what I’m gonna call it from now on), I saw Max and Sheena from Lemuria right away. Then, out of nowhere, I see Marissa P. from Screaming Females, who was there to support her friends (awwww!). Everyone in Lemuria were really excited to see Superchunk and to be playing alongside their heroes. They were all kind of nervous beforehand, but their set went really well. They sounded great and I got some nice shots. At this point, the tape was holding the battery cover on pretty well.

As previously stated, I never heard of Off!… but I did know who Keith Morris was. Keith is the singer/co-founder of Black Flag & The Circle Jerks. I didn’t realize that he had formed a supergroup of sorts back in 2009. When he took the stage, I was kind of in shock that I was about to shoot a fucking punk rock legend. This is when the battery cover wasn’t holding properly and I missed a few shots. I pushed the tape against the battery cover hoping that it would connect properly and that my camera would turn back on. It worked for the most part.

I didn’t have as much luck with Superchunk. The taped battery cover wasn’t cooperating and I only got to shoot about a song and a half. Everyone was taking pictures while I broke out my roll of tape redoing my MacGyver-esque handiwork. For the most part, I’m pretty happy with my pics. But, there were shots that I wanted that I didn’t get thanks to my jerry rigged battery cover. I didn’t get any Mac McCaughan jumpshots. (fuck)

So, I watched the rest of the Superchunk set from the side of the stage with Sheena from Lemuria and her friends from the band Cheap Girls and snuck a bunch of photos from behind the stage. During the break before the encore, the stage tech told me that Keith Morris was going to join Superchunk on stage and “do Black Flag.”

So, I made my way out of the cozy side stage area and into the crowd. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a lot of shots off because I was fighting with not only the amped up crowd, but my fucking battery cover. I got a couple wide shots of all of Superchunk with Keith onstage. 

I kind of wish I could shoot this so all over again, so if you have a time machine at your disposal, let me know. But seriously. Despite the problems, I fought through it and did a pretty decent job. And, besides, I got to meet Keith Morris backstage and get a quickie portrait of him with Lemuria. I also saw Ted Leo and thanked him for retweeting my blog post about his show at 4Knots. He told me ‘it was funny’. I’m not sure if Ted and Marissa eventually ran into each other.

So, yeah, It was the best show so far in the Vans House Parties series. Screaming Females, Cro-Mags, and Fucked Up are performing there on July 29th. It’s going to be a fucking mad house. But before them, check out my photos on BrooklynVegan.com