Music

Photographing the Dublin Bowie Festival 2020 using an iPhone 8 Plus

2020-01-15 By @AidanEyewitness

DublinBowieFest-Tony Visconti Woody Woodmansey

Dublin Bowie Festival – Tony Visconti and Woody Woodmansey in conversation

In Jan 2020 I went to the Dublin Bowie Festival and I was capturing the people, sights and sounds of the event imusing my iPhone 8 Plus.

I had planned to bring my Panasonic TZ70 travel zoom compact but a few days before departure, it developed a fault (for the second time). I didn’t want to bring either of my DSLRs so I headed for the airport on 6 Jan with just the iPhone in my trouser pocket.

I wondered how I would get on with only a smartphone. All in all I wasn’t disappointed, despite the limitations, which I already knew about.

Here are the plus points of the iPhone, which will also apply to other types of smartphone.

It’s extremely compact. It slips into your pocket and is always available.

Its picture quality is extremely good, in some respects superior to most DSLRs

It handles contrasty scenes better than most conventional digital cameras, as it can adjust exposure in different areas of the image.

The Live View feature is revolutionary, as you can choose the moment of capture after you have taken the picture. This is great for photographing live music.

Its portrait mode can work very well indeed when photographing people. In fact I got to take several portraits of David Bowie, though sadly not the real David.

It can also shoot high quality video, rendering colours very well indeed.

The quality of the microphone is remarkably good, and it’s also possible to connect an even better quality microphone.

There are of course some disadvantages:

The lens on the 8 Plus is a standard iPhone lens with a wide field of view. If you want to zoom in you have to use digital zoom. It’s possible to use clip-on telephoto lenses, which I intend to try soon.The picture quality is of course not as good as the DSLR camera like the one used by the official photographer of the event, and you don’t get the benefit of a variety of high quality lenses.

Still the iPhone is very versatile and the most recent iPhones are even better.

So let’s take a look at what I did with the iPhone at the festival.

This video presents a short sample of the in conversation event with Bowie associates Tony Visconti and Woody Woodmansey. I shot the video from the front of the auditorium about 6 metres or 20 feet away from them. The sound and picture quality are good and it’s possible to zoom in by a moderate amount without loss of picture quality.

The London Boys in concert at the Dublin Bowie Festival 2020

The London Boys performing Bowie songs from the 1960s at the Dublin Bowie Festival 2020

The London Boys are a Dublin band who play David Bowie’s early music, from around the mid-sixties. By chance I got a seat directly in front of the band and was able to take some great close up images with the iPhone. Red light often poses a problem for cameras but the iPhone has coped well. They are a great band, by the way, giving an Irish spin on David Bowie’s very London-centric songs from this period.

The London Boys performing at BowieFest 2020

Panoramic photo of the London Boys made of 5 iPhone images merged in Photoshop

Another shot of The London Boys is a panorama. I took a series of overlapping shots from left to right and then combined them by hand using Photoshop. If you look closely you can see the joins.

I recorded this interview with Sara Captain, London-based artist who specialises in producing paintings and illustrations of David Bowie. I was so impressed with her work that I wanted to interview her to find out more about the paintings. I recorded this short interview on the iPhone 8 Plus, and edited it on the phone using iMovie. I used still photographs I took of her paintings and used the Ken Burns feature to zoom in on each picture. It took me about 10 minutes to edit the entire video and another 5 minutes or so to upload. It’s liberating to be able to produce videos without having to use a computer.

David Bowie sculpture by Maria Primolan, iPhone 8 Plus Portrait Mode

The images above and below are of sculptures of David Bowie, both made by Italian artist Maria Primolan. They’re incredibly lifelike and capture the subject perfectly. Though they don’t depict a real person, it’s possible to used the iPhone 8 Plus Portrait Mode to great effect.

Sculpture of David Bowie by Maria Primolan photographed using the iPhone 8 Plus

By the use of software it finds the areas of the picture behind the subject which are slightly out of focus and defocuses them further, simulating the effect of a prime lens at a wide aperture. The effect is not quite as good as a real lens but it’s still effective. The iPhone was able to cope well with the different types of light source.

The Dublin Bowie Festival was an amazing experience and I was glad to be able to capture it using the amazing iPhone 8 Plus. I’m already looking forward to next year’s festival and hope by then to have the newest available iPhone.

For more information go to www.dublinbowiefestival.ie

Portrait of Sara Rena-Hine, close friend of David Bowie, taken with the iPhone 8 Plus

Protected: Photographing Eric Bell co-founder of Thin Lizzy

2019-10-08 By @AidanEyewitness

Video: A Very Insecure Exhibition – with Karen McBride and Shari Denson

2019-02-26 By @AidanEyewitness

A VERY INSECURE EXHIBITION was an exhibition that took place on Friday, 22 February, 2019 in a skate park under the Mancunian Way flyover in Manchester.

It featured the photography of music photographers Karen McBride and Shari Denson, who joined forces to create this remarkable event.

A Very Insecure Exhibition was a very unconventional exhibition, in fact it was totally different to any exhibition I’ve ever been to.

I travel on or under the Mancunian Way almost every day and have walked past the skate park on numerous occasions. Never would I have imagined a photography exhibition taking place there.

The choice of venue was kept secret until the week of the event, when it was first announced on Radio Manchester’s Mike Sweeney Show.

The Mancunian Way is a by-pass road in central Manchester that was first built in the 1960s. This flyover was a later addition, opened in the 1990s. It carries the A57(M) urban motorway over the A6, where it continues as the A635(M) for a few hundred yards. I include these nerdy details as they are important in setting the scene and I know a bit about the history of Manchester.

This is the first time a photo exhibition has taken place underneath a motorway, at least in Manchester. The skate park with its walls of see-through wire netting has an air of New York.

It took about four hours to set up the exhibition. Shari and Karen worked with a team of assistants to place the photos on the sloping and curved surfaces of the skate park. Some of the pictures were cut out to fit into the available space. The photos were printed out at large format in black and white. Some were printed on conventional photographic paper at smaller size.

“Wow, they look great!” I thought as I peered through the wire netting into the skate park, transformed into an exhibition space. We waited in the hut that serves as a cafe and reception area for users. More and more people arrived, including John Robb, Badly Drawn Boy and others from Manchester’s music scene.

At 8pm we were allowed through into the exhibition space. It was great to walk around and explore all the photos – some photos familiar to me, others unfamiliar photos of famous people.

A lot of people came – more than 350. A mobile bar was set up and it provided an air of glamour and a focus. I thought the air might be cold but it was quite mild. It was surreal, looking at photographs while cars whizzed by along the slip road outside, and above, evening traffic moved in both directions on the flyover, drivers unaware of the art event going on underneath.

The music went quiet and John Robb started his In Conversation with both photographers. He asked the right questions, and we learned a lot about their respective interests, shooting techniques and preferences. At the end the crowd clapped, just like a gig. And then there was a surprise.

All attendees were invited to take away the photographs. But there was one condition: People had to put the photos up all around Manchester and beyond and take photos of them for social media.

We managed to find some superb prints which now adorn our walls. That’s not something you can do at the National Portrait Gallery – rip the pictures off the walls!

But this was more of a ‘punk’ event than a photography exhibition. It was meant to be like a gig, and people could walk off with photographs just like the set list at a gig.

Songwriter and guitarist Dave Fidler performed some of his songs. It was great to see a real life artist performing amongst the many images of performers.

The book of the exhibition was on sale and both photographers signed copies.

All I can say is – it was a fantastic event and totally unique. Karen and Shari truly did something new and amazing. Congratulations to them! And thanks for the great photos now taking pride of place on our wall!

A Very Insecure Exhibition was held at Projekts MCR Skatepark (The Pump Cage) · Manchester.

The PA and furniture were provided by James Casper-Mason and The Worx

Photos were printed by Entwhistle.

Music side show video: ‘Vergehen’ by Urbanstrasse – 80s-style electronica music and slide show video

2019-01-17 By @AidanEyewitness

Vergehen was first recorded in 1985 as a demo tape, and re-recorded 20 years later, in 2005. Words and music by Aidan O’Rourke, who played keyboards, guitar, programmed the drums and did the vocals.

The track is credited to Urbanstrasse, the musical identity or band name used by Aidan O’Rourke (who is not to be confused with Scottish fiddle player of the same name!)

The lyrics are in German and present a collage of images from the 1920s and 30s, touching on war, totalitarian regimes, the inevitability of downfall and more. The verb ‘vergehen’ means passing away or fading away.

In 2018 Aidan moved increasingly into the medium of video, making slide show videos using images from his photography archive, as well as new photos and videoclips.

This format, mixing images and music, presented an ideal opportunity to present ‘Vergehen’ and ‘Berlin Berlin’ to the public as it combines his three areas of creativity and expertise: visuals, i.e. photography and illustration, music and German language

And so ‘Vergehen’ was uploaded to the Explore Learn German YouTube channel on 16th of January 2019. It was the second video to be added to the channel.

Like other videos on the channel, ‘Vergehen’ is intended to help and encourage people to learn German.

There are some intriguing aspects to the song, which uncannily predicted the future. For those interested in finding out more about this, as well as the meaning of the lyrics and images, Aidan will present a special feature on his Patreon page, for subscribers only!

‘Vergehen’ is credited to Urbanstrasse featuring Aidan O’Rourke
Music and words © Aidan O’Rourke
All photos and illustrations ©Aidan O’Rourke
Keyboards, drum programming and vocals by Aidan O’Rourke

Original 1985 recording made at Cavalier Studios, Stockport. Produced by Lol Cooper.
2005 re-recording made in Vienna, engineered and produced by Rick Turner, with creative input from Isabella Turner.

Berlin Berlin slide show music video: Geschichte – history – in an 80s’ style pop song

2018-10-18 By @AidanEyewitness

In this video I present some of my best photographs of Berlin from around 1982 up to 2018 against the backdrop of a song I first created and recorded in 1985, in association with some other musicians.

The song is in the style of the 1980s and has overtones of bands like Vienna, Heaven 17 and The Human League. The influence of David Bowie can also be heard. It is a history lesson in a pop song, telling the story of the division and the reunification of Berlin – die Teilung und die Wiedervereinigung von Berlin. The lyrics allude to the devastation of World War 2, the construction of the Wall – die Mauer – in 1961 and look into the future to the fall of the Berlin Wall – die Wende.

The original song was written and recorded as a demo in 1985, along with my other song ‘Vergehen’, which means ‘passing’ with an English version ‘In Silence’ but as the original sound quality wasn’t very good, I re-recorded both songs in Vienna in 2005. I finally waited another 13 years before finally releasing them as part of my Aidan O’Rourke Productions YouTube channel.

Some of the words seem premonitionary. Before each chorus, we hear ‘it will not be long’. In reality it was not long after I wrote the song before the Wall came down – almost exactly four years. But there is another shocking event that the words seem to predict. I will write about this in more detail on my Patreon blog.

The photographs were taken on a wide variety of different cameras at different times in Berlin. I lived there from 1979 to 1980 but sadly I have very few photos from that period. When I returned in 1982 I started to take photos, including the wide panorama of Potsdamer Platz that can be seen at the very beginning.

Other images were taken on black and white film and on colour negative and slide film. Some of the slides lay forgotten in an old briefcase until I scanned them when compiling the slide show video in late 2018. The video presents a total of 75 photos and videoclips – enough to fill a book, though the video is five minutes long and the lyrics amount to just 324 words (excluding repeated choruses at the end).

Berlin Berlin song and video will be posted on YouTube in 2019.

View this post on Instagram

View from the Europa Centre Berlin looking west at dusk time. Scanned from an active chrome slide. Photo captured 1992. This photo will feature in my slideshow music video Berlin Berlin (November 2018). #Berlin #DuskPhotos #DuskPhotoShoot #Ektachrome #filmphotographyproject #filmfotografie #abenddämmerung

A post shared by Aidan O’Rourke (@aidanphotolinguist) on Oct 5, 2018 at 11:43pm PDT

Review of the Queer Noise exhibition, Pump House Museum, Manchester

2017-07-24 By @AidanEyewitness

Queer Noise is an exhibition at Manchester’s Pump House Museum about the development of the LGBT+ club and music scene mainly from the seventies and eighties. It’s just a small exhibition but it is very concentrated and presents a wealth of fascinating photos, artifacts, articles, posters as well as audio and video recordings.

One of the themes is the crossover between the mid-70s punk scene and what we now call LGBT. In those days members of that community remained mostly hidden. There were just a few places in Manchester city centre where they could be amongst themselves and enjoy a night out without the fear of ‘queer bashing’ or worse.

One of those places was the Ranch, a tiny basement club on Dale St set up by the prominent Manchester drag artist Foo Foo Lamarr. I went to the Ranch around 1977. A friend of mine was fascinated with the unbelievable costumes and make-up the girls were wearing and he took me along to see them. There I was confronted with punk rock in all its defiant and often nihilistic energy. This was a club where the motto was ‘anything goes’ but there was also an air of violence. Going up the stairs I to the exit, I was punched in the face. I think it might have been outsiders drawn into the club to witness the spectacle and indulge in a bit of ‘bashing’.

The Ranch is featured in the exhibition, and there is a remarkable photo of members of the Buzzcocks staggering out the front entrance. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the photographer, in fact I wasn’t taking photos at that time. If I had been I might have a prime collection today, but now is not the time for regrets! There some excellent black and white prints by Linder Sterling, Kevin Cummins and Dave Kendrick, Jon Shard and Al Baker.

The exhibition is also about artifacts and I should mention that it is based on a collection of items from the Manchester Digital Music Archive, of which I’m a trustee, though I had no involvement in putting together the exhibition. That honour goes to fellow MDMA person Abigail Ward, who has tirelessly worked to document all aspects of Manchester’s music scene, presented in the MDMArchive.co.uk website.

The exhibition takes up a small footprint as part of the exhibits on the second floor but is packed with interesting material. I love to hear recordings of people and I listened to a fascinating description of the club scene by a speaker who came over from Ireland. In her very appealing Irish accent, she talked about the pub on Princess Street, the Union, later known as the New Union and other venues where people from the LGBT community gathered.

I was also interested to hear an interview with Pete Shelley, whom I interviewed myself at the Russell Club in 1979. Sadly I lost my notes, scribbled on paper and my interview was never published. My lack of success of documenting those times is one of the reasons why I appreciate exhibitions like this.

When you’re off out for a wild night on the town, most people don’t bother to bring a pen and notepaper to jot down the venues they go to, the people they meet, the music they listen to and the antics they get up to, though today’s technology can record what is happening and may be valued in the future as a record of present times.

My memories of the seventies are mostly a haze, though a few key events stand out in my mind including my visits to the chaotic Ranch club.

Reading the articles, watching the video footage, interspersed with snippets of music, I felt a sense of nostalgia and wanting to go back. We can’t go back but at least we can build a picture of what it was like in a time when there were very different attitudes and social conventions to today. The advances made by the LGBT community in asserting their identity and rights has led to the much more relaxed and tolerant atmosphere we have today and perhaps take for granted.

Queer Noise gives us a great insight into different times, but I understand that it’s just a pilot for what could be a much bigger and more comprehensive exhibition. I can’t wait to see it.

The Manchester Digital Music Archive was extensively redesigned and modernised in 2017, making it device-responsive and vastly improving its functionality and visual appeal. It contains an astonishing collection of artifacts related to popular music in the Manchester area. The screenshot on the right shows just a part of the Queer Noise online exhibition. Some of these items are on display at the Queer Noise exhibition at the Pump House Museum. Click on the image to go to the Queer Noise online exhibition.

Jane Horrocks performing in Cotton Panic

As I understand it, one of the aims of the MIF is to stretch artistic boundaries, to encourage people, both performers and audiences, to move out of their comfort zone, to experiment, take risks and try out new things.

That’s certainly true of Cotton Panic, a unique combination of theatre, music, on-screen projections and sound effects, narrated and performed by Jane Horrocks, created by Jane Horrocks, Nick Vivian and the electronic band Wrangler. The show was fittingly held inside the decaying Upper Campfield Market hall on Deansgate.

I looked at a few reviews in mainstream newspapers and as usual I found them unhelpful, as they didn’t understand the concept and contained petty criticisms.

I decided to write a review myself to give proper credit to this very powerful and inspiring musical-theatrical creation.

In fact, I was so impressed with Cotton Panic I went to see it twice.

So what was it about the show that grabbed me? There are many reasons, many aspects overlooked and ignored by the reviewers.

One of the most striking things is it is self-contradictory, a merging of opposites. It combines modern electronic music and imagery to tell a story that takes place in the mid-19th century. Folk songs are combined with contemporary techno, produced on stage by the three musicians working behind the semi-transparent screen. It was exciting to see an old computer with glowing lights on the left, and a reel to reel tape recorder on the right. What would the people of 1862 have made of these instruments?

A couple of the reviews describe it as ‘gig-theatre’, a term I find condescending. It’s a mixture of music, drama, dance, on-screen imagery presented on a stage in front of a standing audience.

This is a story that’s an important part of the history of Manchester. It’s our history and it’s still relevant today. The cotton famine came about due to the American Civil War. Southern American ports were blockaded by the north. The supply of cotton was stopped, causing the Lancashire cotton industry to grind to a halt. This caused huge poverty. But the workers of Lancashire remained in solidarity with the American president due to his opposition to slavery. This fact is documented in Manchester’s Abraham Lincoln statue, which appears on screen.

The story is told by Jane Horrocks, sometimes singing in her very high voice, sometimes narrating, and occasionally shrieking, against the loud, techno musical backdrop,

The three huge screens, one behind the performers and two on either side, show images projected by industrial size digital projectors. Cotton dust like a snow storm is a constant feature as well as a ghostly female figure that could be called ‘Queen Cotton’.

At other times, we see quotations by authors describing the events of the time and the terrible poverty. We see a gigantic face of Glenda Jackson, reading a dignified description of terrible poverty that’s still shocking after a century and a half.

Later we see a facial close-up of an African-British actor – I’ve not managed to find out his name – delivering more powerful quotations.

Great review. The name of the very talented actor who recited the Frederick Douglass quote is Fiston Barek.

— Eimear O'Donovan (@EEmur) July 17, 2017

It’s always very interesting when new connections and juxtapositions are made. The deafening roar of the factory machines is echoed in the industrial beats of the electronic music. Could it be that Manchester’s electro sound was inspired by its industrial heritage? Maybe. A woman in factory overalls does a traditional clog dance to a contemporary beat. The clogs looked like they are very good quality, I wonder where they were made.

There were many transatlantic echoes. In the early part of the show, the Lancashire cotton towns are read out in time with the music, and later, towns in the southern US states. Jane Horrocks waves a mid-19th century US flag. Later there are contemporary media images of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, interspersed with glimpses of mayhem on the streets, Donald Trump and Brexit.

Jane Horrocks is the lynchpin of the performance, holding it all together from beginning to end. She is a unique actor, a talented singer and a powerful narrator, her voice often amplified with a megaphone. She can transform herself from an angry agitator into a helpless child beggar, emphasised by her very high voice.

In one section, she wanders into the audience, repeating the words ‘Can you help me a bit?’, over and over again, and then then she is lifted up on the shoulders of fellow performers. It was moving – you could see it in the reactions of audience members.

In the reviews I gather that commentators found this and other sections a bit long and perhaps self-indulgent. I totally reject this criticism. The long sections emphasise drudgery and repetitiveness, whether of a 10-hour working day in a cotton mill, or a long day spent begging in the streets for a few pennies. The architecture of the piece is spread out and not curtailed in order to pander to a short attention span.

Hall of the Upper Campfield Market before its conversion for ‘Cotton Panic’

I’ve heard people complain films are too long, like 2001 ‘Oh, it was too long’. No, that’s wrong! Its length is the whole point! It’s like complaining that The Cruel Sea has too much sea in it, or Lawrence of Arabia has too much desert. Cotton Panic has long, repetitive sections that help to tell the story. If they are longer than the three second sound bite editing culture of today, so be it.

What other interesting juxtapositions are there? I loved the use of Slave to the Rhythm by Grace Jones in connection to the rhythm of the cotton spinning machines. In the latter stages of the story, the cotton workers decide to go for a meeting at the Free Trade Hall, which is just around the corner from the venue. She sings the words ‘Anger is an energy’ from the song by Johnny Rotten, co-founder of The Sex Pistols, who performed at an infamous gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976.

I was astonished at the statistics and learned a lot. Whilst there was much poverty, some cotton Lancashire workers earned very high wages, the highest in the country. Seeing Cotton Famine has encouraged me to find out more about this forgotten period in Manchester’s history.

I saw the performance twice – on Thursday 14th and again on Saturday 16th and both times I was captivated. The second time I stood near the front, close to the stage and watched as Jane Horrocks came out into the audience just a few feet away. On both occasions I saw it, it was absorbing and the time flew.

It’s a shame the reviewers failed to appreciate these qualities. I often think that reviews should be mostly written by people who know how to appreciate a piece of music or theatre, rather than those who don’t, or perhaps they were asleep, or thinking about going to the pub afterwards.

This was a show about our city, Manchester, our history, our region, presented using the medium of the music that came out of our city – techno / electronic, presented by artists from around here. It has a clear and simple concept. It was very powerful musically, theatrically and historically and was perfectly in the spirit of the Manchester International Festival. I unreservedly give it a five star rating.

I couldn’t make it to Manchester so I watched it online, it made me want to dance, to cry and it was utterly moving in many ways!

— Jule Sverne (@s_jule) July 16, 2017