Disclaimer: It should be noted that photographers Abe Deyo and Jeremy Brenningstall used smaller cameras and stayed discreet. Fair play to them and they don't count in the upcoming rant.
Yes, yes, yes. Two excellent bands back in Shanghai and the night was half scuppered by the paparazzi. Let's get this out of the way. Pretty much the entire front row and the front 'wings' were taken up by a-holes, male and female, with large DSL cameras and powerful flashes. And every one of them took photos continuously through every single song beginning to end including of us, the audience, with no permissions or dampening of said flashes. Literally 12 or 13 of them.
These people are sociopaths with a complete lack of sense outside the self. They have no respect for the bands or for the fans who paid to see the show and have a good time. Yuyintang is a tiny club, it was plain stupid last night. I hope the lot of you die in a freak yachting accident and the last thing you ever see is the olive dropping out of your martini. Ok, so a bit of humour dropped in there. But come on, really, tone it down or f*ck off. I go to a rock show to hear loud music and let go a bit, I don't want to be photographed there several hundred times. Where's Russell Crowe when you need him.
Bands:
Moon Tyrant (newish, so no page yet)
Moon Tyrant are new but did a good job warming up the early crowd with their classic rock stylings. It wouldn't be fair to put them under any kind of scrutiny at this point but I'll say that the audience liked them. Good job guys.
Bigger Bang clearly toned it down a bit as they were officially supporting TooKoo, and sharing half its members, so we didn't get the video intro and explosive entrance like last time. I would link the video of the last time but Vimeo is gone here, well
here it is for overseas visitors. But of course, they are a high energy indie band who mix garage rock riffs and dance rock beats while each member is cool and has real rock presence. There was a good contingent of fans who knew the songs and were there to get down despite a generally mellow crowd.
I was already feeling the strain of two action shows in a row and have to admit not being able to last all of TooKoo's set. However, they opened with their most famous song Take Me Home, my favorite from the Seven Years CD, and the sound was loud and clear. The new sound guy at Yuyintang seems to have a fear of turning the guitar up but the opening choppy, percussive chords of Take Me Home rang out clear and ToKoo brought up a typically professional set.
