Digital Diversion

Could there be a worse day of the week to have a show than Sunday.  If I wasn’t covering it for Crypt Magazine, I probably would have kept my flu-ridden body at home and rested.  While the Regency Ballroom was no where near sold out, it was a good show except for Soulfly’s abrupt ending to their rather short 65 minute set.  I honestly can’t remember the last time that I went to a show (regardless of the day of the week) that ended before 11 pm.  Given that the schedule that I saw showed Soulfly playing until 11:15, I can only guess that something was afoot with the band but that’s pure speculation.

I arrived at the Regency Ballroom at 6 pm for a scheduled interview with Tommy Victor of Prong (you can read it here).  All of the dressing rooms were occupied so one of the staffers took us up to the third floor of the building in the elevator which, according to him, is the only manual elevator in San Francisco still being used.  I never even knew there was a third floor in the building and it turned out to be the space used by Freemasons for their rituals.  The photo to the left doesn’t do justice to the creepiness.  The stage in this room still had the original hand-painted back drops from when the building was built  over a hundred years ago.  One-by-one, the staffer lowered scenes from hell and Tommy was more than happy to pose for a few pictures.

After the interview, I shot opening acts Mutiny Within and Cattle Decapitation.  I find it’s always good to warm up and test the lighting before the bands I’m covering come on; best to make mistakes early on so I can adjust.  For the most part the stage was back-lit throughout the entire show.  There were plenty of lights pointed at the stage but they were rarely on.  One of these days I’m going to ask a lighting guy why they do that.  I suspect it gives the band a more ominous look from the crowd but often times it looks like they’re just playing in the dark.   I ended up a taking a bunch of black and white pictures which turn out much better than color when there’s no light or when there’s an abundance of red stage lighting (which seems to really get amplified in color photos).  I think they came out pretty well.

The people up front on the rail always crack me up and it’s always something different.  There were two enthusiastic guys that wanted me to take pictures of their Soulfly tattoos (I’ll spare you).  Another woman  started asking me how to use her camera (which she didn’t have with her).  Anyways, here are some pictures that you won’t see anywhere else …