Ben Folds and Lady Danville

Tuesday night, Amy and I had the pleasure of seeing Ben Folds at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. The night’s entertainment began with an opening set featuring a band new to me, Lady Danville. Though they play instruments, the band was formed out of an a cappella tradition in Los Angeles in 2007 and has been touring with Ben recently.

Not only do they play your standard rock instruments like piano, guitar, and drums, but they rock the glock and uke as well. After the jump, I’ve shared videos of their songs I Want You Back (featuring Ben Folds and the ukelele) and Bed 42 (featuring the glockenspiel). At the concert, I was struck by the band’s harmonies; even with only three voices, they managed to produce rich vocals. I recommend checking them out as they open for Dashboard Confessional on next year’s tour; feel free to leave the show before the main act performs.

Ben Folds is a masterful pianist. This might be news for anyone whose only exposure is his appearance as a competent judge on NBC’s singing group contest show, The Sing-Off.

For those who have never been to a Ben Folds show, there always seems to be a point when there is a lull between songs, and people start shouting song requests. What makes this different than other rock shows is that, through tradition, people often yell a request for Rock This Bitch. From what I can tell, this originated from a concert many years ago during which an audience member randomly yelled out, “Rock this, bitch!” (note the difference in inflection and meaning). Ben Folds proceeded to improvise a song based on this phrase and the song was eventually included on an official recording.

In Tuesday night’s concert, the request for Rock This Bitch was followed by the cliche drunken rock request of Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Although he claims to not know the song, he pounded it out on the keys, incorporating the first requested song, in a clever improvisation.

The last time I saw Ben Folds live was several years ago, and I don’t remember if he had his synth keyboard at the time. There were three of these red keyboards on stage, and they produced some amazing sounds. Searching the internet, I was able to find a photograph of the set-up that had enough detail to make out what it is. Along with his piano, Ben plays a Nord Lead 2 keyboard, although the branding has been somehow modified to appropriately read “Nerd Lead” instead of “Nord Lead.” I have found the next musical object of my desire.

His latest record, Lonely Avenue, featuring lyrics by author Nick Hornby (Juliet, Naked, About a Boy, Fever Pitch, High Fidelity) is really growing on me.

One annoying aspect of the concert was the security. There was no announcement regarding flash photography or video recording, but concert-goers should assume that this wouldn’t be allowed. Since we were in the fourth row of the orchestra seating area and on the aisle, we were close to the security guard who was sitting at the lip of the stage in the aisle, facing the audience. Every three minutes he stood up to reprimand one of the same four people in the immediate vicinity who were recording videos with compact digital cameras.

Of course, without stealth concert recorders, those willing to put their lives at risk through copyright infringement for the sake of sharing music, I wouldn’t be able to share the videos below.

Keep reading for some videos.

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Intellect and Romance Over Brute Force and Cynicism

A few days ago, I gave my notice to resign from my position at Prudential. I’ve been working at the company for almost nine years. While I never felt completely at home in a corporate environment, I enjoyed my time at Prudential. Many co-workers have now become my friends, and I am grateful for the opportunity to earn a master’s degree.

Outside of Prudential, I’ve been building a business for the past few years. I can only describe the business as one that is involved with internet publishing, and for several of the most recent years, the business has thrived.

I decided it was time to dedicate myself fully to my business.

The next chapter of my life is about to begin, and I’m looking forward to making the most of my short time on this planet, spending more time building my business as well as increasing my involvement with music and photography, while improving my overall health.

In celebration of change, I’m sharing the “lost” cold open from The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, which would have aired on November 16, the episode featuring Matt Smith during the week focusing on Doctor Who. Unfortunately, the producers were unable to obtain the rights to broadcast the Doctor Who theme music which would have been aired in this scene, so the segment featuring a dance to lead off the show was scrapped.

Perhaps they secured rights to publish the music online, because the clip is now available on Youtube. Craig Ferguson used Orbital‘s cover of the Doctor Who theme music, the same version you can hear on my defunct Not The Mind Probe Doctor Who Podcast. See the video, featuring a crazy dance as well as lyrics describing the history of this particular science fiction television program, after the jump.

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Thanksgiving in Temecula, California

A few nights ago, I returned from visiting my family in California for Thanksgiving. I had a great time spending time with my brother and sister-in-law earlier in the week; one of the highlights was hiking at Echo Mountain outside Pasadena. For Thanksgiving, my brother departed for his in-laws’ home in Texas, and I stayed in California to visit Bill’s parents’ house in Temecula.

Along the way to a great Thanksgiving meal, we took some time to drive around Lake Skinner outside Temecula. There wasn’t too much to see; camping and fishing are the area’s favorite activities, and there weren’t many people around due to the holiday (and the chilly weather).

You can view a few of the better photos after the jump or view the set on Flickr containing more from Lake Skinner (and a nearby farm) as well as the hiking photos from earlier in the week. For these landscape photographs, a graduated neutral density filter would have helped in order to keep more detail in both the sky and the water. The problem with buying filters is that my variety of lenses have a variety of filter thread sizes, so the process of getting the right filters can be complicated and expensive.

With Canon’s professional lenses, I understand most lenses have the same filter thread size of Φ77mm, so was I upgrade lenses, I’ll develop a full set of filters.

I’m now back in New Jersey, ready to get back to work.

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Hiking at Echo Mountain, California

Almost every Thanksgiving, I visit my family in California. I was able to spend a few days with my brother and sister-in-law, and we packed those days with a number of activities. We spent a few hours hiking the Sam Merrill Trail to Echo Mountain. It was a tough hike for me — a reminder that I could use more exercise.

The weather was beautiful, however, and the views were amazing. I brought a small contingent of my photography equipment with me on the hike, including my Canon Digital Rebel XTi and two lenses: the 17-85mm and 70-300mm. I used only the shorter zoom, leaving the longer telephoto in my backpack for the entire duration of the hike.

My brother brought his new iPhone. The phone contains an amazing little camera that automatically combines three exposures to create an HDR image. The result is quite interesting, and someone could have a lot of fun with that feature.

I added the three best photos to Flickr, but I’ll include all three here as well, after the jump.

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Nothing Beats Medium Format

The photographs I’ve posted so far have all been taken with a Canon Rebel XTi, a 10.1 megapixel digital camera several years old. It’s small for a digital SLR, so it’s easy to carry around, particularly when I limit myself to just a few lenses. But nothing beats shooting with a medium format camera, like my Mamiya RZ67 Pro II. It’s a huge camera and inconvenient to transport, especially while hiking on the Delaware & Raritan Canal State Park trails, but the image quality is fantastic.

These photographs were developed by a local lab, who also scanned the negatives. I have since purchased my own scanner (an Epson Perfection V700), so I’ll be doing my own scans less expensively in the future. These photographs were taken on the campus of Princeton University and on trails that follow the canal near campus.

I love the quality of the image I can get with medium format. I’ll of course need to keep practicing my photography skills to make the best use of this, but there is nothing better than taking the time to create an image with a camera that generates a highly-detailed negative. I suppose if there’s anything better than medium format, which puts 35mm and digital cameras with smaller sensors to shame, it would be large format.

Continue reading this post for some photographs or take a look at my Flickr collection dedicated to medium format photography.

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Ben Folds and William Shatner

Musician Ben Folds, one third of the former trio Ben Folds Five (and medium format photographer), must be BFFs with William Shatner. The former captain of the Enterprise teamed up with Ben for the musician’s side project, Fear of Pop. Shatner has a distinctive style of singing that most people would not call “singing.”

Some time after this first collaboration, William became the spokesperson for Priceline. In one commercial, he played against an evil William Shatner, with the requisite goatee, reminiscent of the archetypal evil twin Spock in the classic Star Trek episode, “Mirror, Mirror.” But more importantly, one commercial featured Shatner “singing” with piano accompaniment. The piano was manned by Ben, practically unidentifiable in comparison with the legendary Shatner. The first time I saw the commercial, I was unaware of the actor’s relationship with Ben Folds and the combination struck me by surprise.

William Shatner is now continuing his domination of television with a show I expected to be horrible: “Shit My Dad Says,” the show spelled, “$#*! My Dad Says,” and pronounced, “Bleep My Dad Says.” How good could a television show based on a Twitter feed really be? Well, it’s not so bad. In fact, a recent episode featured a good criticism of self-help gurus — people for which I, like the writers of this episode, have little respect.

The best part of the show is that the theme music and all of the interstitial music is performed by Ben Folds. Check out the short opening credit sequence after the jump. The full song, “Your Dogs,” is on Ben’s latest album and collaboration with author Nick Hornby, Lonely Avenue.

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TheGoodLife at City Streets

Earlier this year, my first attempts at concert photography produced a lot of garbage. City Streets Cafe in East Windsor (New Jersey) is a bar and restaurant that has become the home for Bryan Douglas’s band, TheGoodLife. The band performs covers of today’s hot hip hop and pop music. I suggest seeing the band this coming Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, at City Streets in celebration of their first anniversary. I’m going to try to make the show, but I’ll be flying back from Los Angeles earlier that day and may not make it in time.

Getting quality photographs is a struggle at this venue. Like most bars, it’s dark, and with the band’s colorful and hyperactive lighting set-up, you never know what color you’re going to get. In the future, I’ll need to look out for stray spotlights.

Particularly with this shoot, it’s evident that the photographer’s job is not done once the memory card is full and the lens cap is placed back on the lens. My first attempts at post-processing shots from City Streets did not result in normal-looking final products. You can see some of the earlier attempts in the Flickr set linked below.

My post-processing skills have continued to improve though I’m still working on developing (get it?) the best methods.

View some of the selected photographs after the jump.

For the full set — not the full full set, because that would be about 1,200 photographs over three nights — take a look at the best 81 shots in this set on Flickr.

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Beck in AT&T Blackberry Torch Commercial

This is the latest in a series about good music in commercials, if two posts does, in fact, constitute a series. This is Beck, known worldwide for his memorable guest star stint in an episode of Futurama ten years ago. Also, his albums with groovy beats are quite good. Even Sea Change had a number of excellent tracks.

The music in this ad is from the song “Black Tambourine” on Guero. Listen to the music after the jump.

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Portraiture Class

A few weeks ago, I completed a class at the Arts Council of Princeton on portraiture, conducted by Peter C. Cook. Most of our class time was spent talking about portraiture, looking at photographs created by famous and non-so-famous individuals, and critiquing each other’s work.

We did, however, spend two sessions working with a model and one session in the darkroom developing our own black and white photography. This was my first opportunity to work with a model and my first time in a darkroom in the last twenty years. The last time I developed my own work was when I took a short session on black and white photography at summer camp as a kid.

I hope the model, Rebecca, doesn’t mind that I’m posting a few of my better shots (after the jump). My XTi produced the less appealing of all the photographs, so I won’t include them here. The best photographs came from my medium format Holga with black and white film and my Mamiya RZ67 Pro II with color negative film.

For the full collection, view the set on Flickr.

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The Doctor and a Dalek on Craig Ferguson

Matt Smith is the latest actor to portray the Doctor in the long-running British television show, Doctor Who. He was on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson the other night, during which the British actor highlighted his insight on American society.

If you know me, you know I’ve been a long-time Doctor Who fan. I didn’t have high expectations for the latest series, but I was pleasantly surprised. Most of the stories were well done.

In an interesting move, speaking to the globalization of television (and to the fact that most American fans simply download the episodes from file sharing services, distributed by kind British folk, so they don’t have to wait too long before seeing the episodes air on SyFy or BBC America or whatever network airs the show on delay), this year’s Christmas special, “A Christmas Carol,” will air on Christmas Day both on the BBC and in the United States.

With the time difference, the five to eight hours between the airing may not be enough time for British viewers to record the show, encode it, and host it on bittorrent, and for American viewers to download it. Speaking of the latest Doctor Who news, the Children in Need special is airing Friday on the BBC, so check your local bittorrent server this weekend (if that sort of illicit activity appeals to you).

Back to the Craig Ferguson interview, which is available here in its entirety after the jump. Here were some of the highlights:

  • Matt Smith places Las Vegas on “the coast.”
  • He expected to meet more bears in the American suburbs.
  • Bow ties are cool.

Apparently, the cast and crew have been in Utah, filming the two-part Season Six premiere, set in the late 1960s. They should have chosen Zabriskie Point.

Here’s the video of the interview with Craig Ferguson. For those who aren’t familiar with either Matt Smith or Craig Ferguson, they are both a bit wacky. The interview is followed by a trailer for the next episode to be aired.

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