School of Seven Bells
Spanish Moon
Baton Rouge, LA
10/11/2010
Brooklyn band School of Seven Bells arrived in Louisiana this week, minus one member. As reported on their website the day after this show, Claudia Deheza has just left the band. Her departure may have been a factor in the somewhat sour tone of the evening. It wasn’t helped by a poor turnout — this was a late show on a Monday night (the band and openers Active Child even joked about it on Twitter). Please, Spanish Moon, move these shows an hour earlier! Worse still were the stupid antics of a few audience members.
It was hard for me to see exactly what happened from where I was standing, but a guy up at the front seemed to have tried to get up on the stage to touch Alejandra Deheza during “Joviann“; Benjamin Curtis pushed him back down with his foot while continuing to play, and the guy fell on the floor before being hustled out the door by security. That idiot’s friends ceremoniously walked up to the stage and flipped off the band before making their own exit. Someone else came up after the song to try and shake hands, but was understandably rebuffed.
The whole thing (as Curtis himself noted) was embarrassing for Baton Rouge, which has a hard enough time attracting good bands, though I suspect these guys might have come from out of town. I’d never seen them before. I was disgusted enough that I edited that whole thing out of this recording, which is otherwise a really solid set. If the SVIIB‘ers read this, I hope they’ll consider coming back to give it another try — and we’ll try to keep the assholes out.
Track listing:
1. Half Asleep
2. Heart Is Strange
3. Babelonia
4. Joviann
5. Dust Devil
6. Bye Bye Bye
7. Windstorm
8. I L U
9. My Cabal
10. Semipternal/Amarantha
Download: School of Seven Bells – Baton Rouge – 10/11/10 – 292 MB
Sample: “Dust Devil”
[jwplayer config=”CustomPlayerAudio” file=”http://www.thesoundofindie.com/archive/2010/20101018/School-Of-Seven-Bells-Dust-Devil-Live.mp3″]
Jbird, You need to drop the secret on how Carlie is able to get the killer live pictures. What is the camera and settings? My pictures come out complete ass in comparison. Please divulge.
The secret is to point and shoot until you get a few decent ones. I typically take at least 125+ pics at any given show, taking the time to delete the those that are crap later. To be honest, both this show and the previous one (Wintersleep/Hold Steady) were the first times I had ever used either of the two cameras. It seems to me that black-and-white might be more forgiving for concerts/low light/fast motion/just about any photo where sharpness is an issue.
So, my suggestion is this: play with the scene options, especially if you are not familiar with the manual adjustments (shutter speed, aperture, etc), and take plenty of pics. You are bound to come up with at least one decent shot. Not much science to it! I was also standing about 3 feet from the action for this shot, and that always makes a difference.
(Incidentally, this particular photo was 1/8 sec at f 1.4 and ISO 500 on a Leica C-Lux 3 — chosen by the camera’s Night Scenery mode.)
Killer. Thanks. One more question: Flash or no Flash?