Bettye LaVette at Joe's Pub 3/8/09

Bettye LaVette revealed herself once again as a brilliant voice in R&B in a special set of songs that wove deeply through her personal history. She performed only with piano accompaniment at Joe's Pub this Sunday.

I sometimes find it hard to pay attention to the content of a performance when I'm photographing, the visual observation takes over and the music slips back into a hypnotic, subconscious part of my brain. What struck me about this performance is that Bettye's masterful narration of a song could take me through every single word of a lyric. 'Elanor Rigby', the Beatles song already covered to death in the soul circuit, became fresh and vivid. 'A Change is Gonna Come', the mournful Sam Cooke civil rights anthem that has become diluted as as a torch song for countless artists, was transformed into a crystal-clear story of painful suffering and redemption. Of the hundreds of times I had heard this song, I don't think I was even made to listen as closely as I was that night.

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble Joe's Pub 1.10.09

2009 Resolution #7- always experiment and make pictures to please yourself, not others. (more on that below *)

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble at Joe's Pub. Thanks to Jennie Wasserman for suggesting that I come see them. The short story: 7 brothers (plus a drummer), son's of Philip Cohran ( Sun Ra/AHE/AACM) - -funky - from the heart, no pretense - just hustle, chops and showmanship - worth seeing.

* Concert photography gets old, and fast. It's a limited relationship with the subject, limited perspectives to shoot from, limited light and limited financially unless you're shooting big concerts with even more restraints - putting it very close to paparazzi territory. So I now say, officially, screw it, all further photography will be done for my own reasons and going to shoot shows will be an exploration of music I like / am curious about. The approach of making pictures will be an experiment, it doesn't won't if I don't come away with a good picture as long as I don't come away with a boring one.