Mike Broadway – PhotoBlog

Tattoo In Blue Jeans

Sorry to disappoint, there’s no pictures of Norah Jones here but we did see her at Stubbs’ last night and a great show it was too. The photograph, taken this afternoon, is from this weekend’s Old Pecan Street Festival. Austinites have invented many justifications for a party and this twice a year, spring and fall, street art market is one of them.

I had only acquired Norah Jones latest album, “The Fall”, a few weeks ago in order to be up to date with her latest material before the gig on Saturday. From the album I knew that this was not to be the butter melting voice and lounge jazz pianist Norah Jones of “Come Away With Me” and “Feels Like Home”; sure the voice is still velvet smoke and the piano is still a major component but the new recordings are as much about guitar as piano and the keyboards are as likely to be electric as acoustic. Even with this preparation the live act was still a surprise; I did not expect a Norah Jones band to rattle my lungs against my ribs with drums and bass. And Ms Jones did not touch a key, ivory or plastic, until the fourth or fifth number. For those first tracks, four of the six piece band, including Jones, were on electric guitars (no bass) laid over drums and a Hammond style organ tone reminiscent of 70’s rock. On a couple of numbers, Sasha Dobson, whose vocals are too rich to be called “backup”, swapped her guitar for drum sticks to double up the percussion.

It was all still unmistakably Norah Jones, even when the band enthusiastically covered a Neil Young song, but she certainly doesn’t fit in the jazz lounge pigeon hole that some wanted to consign her to anymore. It’s hard to say what her sound is, but that is fitting for someone whose father sat cross legged on stage and introduced America to the sitar at the ’67 Monterey Pop Festival. Why would anyone expect Norah Jones to fit in a pigeon sized box.

A handful left during the announced final song to avoid the crush at the gates, a larger number left when the encore did not instantly materialize after a few seconds of clapping and yelling; and they all lost out big time. Taking advantage of the outdoor setting behind the southern two story porch restaurant building, the two final numbers were delivered as an unplugged quartet gathered around a single microphone on the cast iron staircase landing; forty feet deeper into and six feet above the heads of the audience. Now thats a memorable way to end a memorable evening.

Trumpet, Preservation Hall, New Orleans

As promised, the final image of the low light blur jazz player triptych from Preservation Hall, 1990.

More than 18 years has past since this photograph was taken and I wonder if he is still playing? Is he still alive? Is he still a member of the Preservation Hall band? Knowing that this was taken around Easter of 1990, an expert on the band’s long history could probably tell me who he is and answer these questions. Me, I’m feeling the noeme of Roland Barthes: all I know is that “That has been“.

12/8/2008, Addition: Ron left a comment to say that this is a photograph of Wendell Brunious and that he is currently living in Sweden but may return to New Orleans. You can learn more about the Preservation Hall Jazz Band at their web site: http://www.preservationhall.com/home.php; if you are visiting New Orleans, Preservation Hall is a must see.

Trombone, Preservation Hall, New Orleans

Second of three low light blur jazz player images from Preservation Hall, 1990. One more to come in the next post and then I’ll add some new images made this morning.

Clarinet, Preservation Hall, New Orleans

Sometimes I move the camera to create motion blur, sometimes the subject does it for me. The lighting in jazz venues is rarely bright but, in 1990 at least, there was little more than a couple of table lamps in Preservation Hall, New Orleans; with Kodachrome 64 in the camera the blur of the musician’s movement was as inevitable as it was welcome.

Disinterested rider, Star of Texas Fair & Rodeo, Austin

Who I am is flattered that someone chose this picture for the cover of their first CD titled, “who i am”

I know why I took the photograph but I don’t know why the boy bothered to get on the ride; it does not look like he found it thrilling. What we read into photographs rarely has much to do with what was actually happening or how the people present felt about it. This exact photograph taken as a family snap would carry a different set of possible meanings than it does presented in this blog context as an art object.  

As ‘art’, images are tools for us to understand ourselves; Rorschach tests. Maybe the empty seats speak of isolation, maybe the endless dull circling is an analogy to our 40 hour week lives, maybe the chains speak of the fragility of our existance or, maybe, about trust, faith and hope? Making and looking at photographs is one of the ways that I find out who I am.

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If you happen to live around Austin, Texas, you can find Central Time Jazz Collective playing in town once or twice a week at local restaurants; check out their gig list at http://www.centraltime.org/gigs.html. If they still have any in stock, you might be able to collect a copy of the CD from the group while you are there. Or you can get MP3s of their tracks from Amazon.com; I particularly like the cheat.