The Waterslides @ The Crown ‘N Sceptre, August ’09

I’d been trying to catch The Waterslides since shooting Luke (drummer, sometimes bass) for the Hot Six cover for Rip It Up earlier this year.

Every gig they booked I already had something else on. Tonight, worlds aligned and I was finally free to see them play, getting to the Crown N’ Sceptre in perfect timing for their midnight show.

I wasn’t looking too forward to shooting at the Crown N’ Sceptre again, as while the band room is nice and intimate with great sound, it really has nada stage lighting. I thought about shooting with flash, diffused, off camera via cord and even fired a few frames but was disappointed with the results. Second song in, and the Waterslides fired up their own stage lighting: a series of gelled portable 500 watt lights (the kind mechanics use in garages) triggered on stage. This was great that it now lit everything nicely for the punters, but to shoot directly into that amount of backlight was proving difficult. All my shots needed black/white conversions to add contrast to otherwise very silhouetted images. It’s a shame I couldn’t capture the colours on stage as a massive part of the Waterslides show is the visual element: tonight they also brought smoke machines and bubble machines!