Diary of a worker at Stagefright Photographic Studios.
All opinions are their own and not necessarily accurate.

CLAY

March 12, 2019 • Leave a Comment

CLAY

My garden has two things of worth
gifted from my day on earth

The axe is sharp as any thorn
to cut you down if you are wrong
Head grounded until such time
as circumstance dictates
Then round and round
cutting through or cutting down
your tangles or your grandest plan
to clear a path for you
Unyielding and true
as a blade should be

The rose will wind its way around
insinuate and decorate
Ascend and scent
create a better place on Earth
New blooms from ancient roots
Thorns riven from the past
from far below, from underfoot
to catch the flesh and feed the flower
blood’s perfume
sweet and rare

The rose grows round the axe
It knows the shaft
The axe upholds the rose,
It knows the thorn
It knows the bark

These two things alone
Will mark my time on earth.

07.03.19 MM

NEW Exhibition - An Eye For Music at Eden Court, Inverness.

April 23, 2018 • Leave a Comment

To Not Have Loved

January 08, 2018 • Leave a Comment

It would be easier to not have loved

To not be blown by feral winds

Or fall to earth for fickle ones

It would be kinder to not have known

Loneliness born of not alone

Nor stand between these trees

A stone.

MM 7.1.18

Stagefright #3 Plus ca change, plus ce n'est pas la meme chose

June 02, 2017 • Leave a Comment

Maria La Gorda, CubaMaria La Gorda, Cuba
05 December 2014

Picture by marc marnie

WORLD RIGHTS
Apparently (one of The Boss's favourite words, apparently).

Apparently he has been working on a cunning plan, disappearing for days at a time to a place where, he says, the temporal and the geographic mingle uncomfortably.
This is the sort of thing we have to put up with, but still he goes on;

A place by the sea where Grand Hotel has given way to Granny Flats and frozen families huddle round ice cream cones while others indulge the optimistic misery of mini golf. Where signs warn of surveillance cameras long since stolen. A place we go to kill time, only to discover that it is time that kills us.

Kitty corner from his old high school is a bar where he bought his first drink, a "Black & Tan" (understandably known in Ireland as a "Half & Half"). His young accomplice in crime sidled up to the bar with exaggerated nonchalance and asked, in the belief that this was what people ordered in bars, for "The Usual, please...".

45 years later and the bar is unchanged. Prices are higher. The barmaid is younger, probably somebody's grand-daughter. He has not one, but two daughters older than she. A group of men he may have shared a classroom with sit where they always sit and discuss a recent tour they've just completed. He tried to eavesdrop for a while, assuming they were musicians, but gave them their privacy on realising they were golfers.

In the main street small shops doze like somnambulists from a previous century. The great Ballroom where he sneaked in underage to hear his first live bands is boarded up and could have been written by H.P. Lovecraft. That it was successful in the 1960s and 70s is testament to a different societal attitude to live music, now overwhelmed by Simon Cowell and his soul sucking social asset strippers to be replaced by the junk food of X-Factor. Once upon a time we believed The Blues, Jazz and Rock were the Devil's music. While we were distracted The Devil took Cowell's form and made media deals.

And if you think The Boss can rant, here's what Hunter Thompson had to say:
"The music business is a cruel and shallow moneytrench, a long plastic hallway where thieves & pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

Apparently there is also a beach of long and level sand, keeping time like John Bonham to soothe all things.

Apparently he has found a property there, going at a reasonable price.

Stagefright #2 My black T-shirt.

May 31, 2017 • Leave a Comment

Gregg AllmanGregg Allman at The Usher Hall, Edinburgh
6th July 2011

Photograph by marc marnie
WORLD RIGHTS
The Boss is not a clarty man, but has spent much of the last week in his favourite T-shirt, a souvenir of the only time he saw a real live Allman Bro.

Nearly the whole front row of Edinburgh's Usher Hall was block booked by friends, many more were dotted around the auditorium. Everyone loves the Allman Bros.

It was the 6th of July 2011.
Photo passes had been arranged weeks in advance, Getty Images were awaiting images. The only worry was a delay in the train returning Janet from a work trip to London.
Texts flew.

Texts also flew to America where there was sudden confusion over the photo pass...

Here's the system: Photographer applies for pass, pass is arranged, photographer arrives at venue, collects the pass and spends the first three numbers making photographs. This is a wonderful example of a universe in harmony with itself.
Just occasionally, though, there is a bump on the event horizon and the photographer arrives to find that nobody knows anything about a pass. Not only that, but nobody really cares very much about the pass. Other, that is, than the photographer.

The most annoying thing is it's entirely understandable. Only the photographer really imagines that, in an evening dedicated to a stage full of Olympian heroes playing actual live music, his role is of any great significance. It really isn't. At least not until at very least the next day when the photos appear in the press or, better still, forty years on when they have become history.

Imagine you are a Tour Manager:
The get-in and get-out are probably the least of your worries; there's also accommodation, meals, transport, per diems, equipment, merchandise, ticket sales, backlines, lighting, sound, accounting and much, much more. And this assumes the band to be automata - not a wavy brained bunch of artists who are appropriately behaviourally challenged. I don't mean to imply they are all Keith Moons, but certain artist related needs must also be catered for.
Anyway; now you have the band behind the curtain.... the audience, hopefully, in front.. and you get a call to say "there's some guy out here with a camera asking about his photo pass..."

Even as 'some guy with a camera' I know the Boss's sympathies are usually with the T.M. (There are some notable exceptions which will undoubtedly appear in later blogs)
To cut a long story short, if it's not too late, after a number of gut wrenchingly expensive mobile calls to London and New York, a pass was grudgingly forthcoming and access permitted from a distance for two numbers only.
The backstage portrait got away.

Yet the abiding memory is of the beautiful show
It may have been mellower and sadder than anticipated but from the opening Statesboro' Blues it was clear that the former wild man's heart and soul were more than a match for any aging of the bones. Gregg Allman's voice remains one of the most recognisable and finest in the history of music.
And he wrote Whipping Post.

To cap things off Janet rushed in direct from the train and just in time for the final, and best, four numbers.
Afterwards, claiming she needed a change of shirt after the train journey and despite protestations from the ever financially challenged Boss, she bought an obscenely expensive T-shirt.

Of course, it later turned out to be a gift for him.
He is wearing it now.

RIP GREGG ALLMAN (8.12.1947 - 27.5.2017)

A.C.