A photo experiment with Cat Power

I spent some time this week (too much time, really) tinkering around in Photoshop with one of my old photos. I've been meaning to try something like this for a while, and now that I lack a camera (a new one is on the way soon), my mind drifted toward experiments.

I took one of the photos I shot recently of Cat Power, split it up into 96 squares of equal size, and edited the squares independently, without worrying about whether they would match the adjacent squares. Then I reassembled all of the pieces. Click here to see the final photo.

I also arranged the squares into a film. If you're expecting a Cat Power concert film, you'll probably be disappointed ... think of this of an experimental film. It runs about a minute and a half. Click here to watch the film.

Cat Power at the Vic

(This review is also on the web site for the Southtown Star newspaper.)

Cat Power, the singer also known as Chan Marshall, was once notorious for abandoning songs or entire concerts before she was halfway through finishing them.
When she played at Chicago’s Vic Theatre two years ago, she gave an erratic performance, with some brilliant moments and lots of awkward silences. She was back at the same venue Sunday night (Feb. 10), but this time she exerted complete mastery over the music.

Although Cat Power is a strong songwriter in her own right, she focuses on cover tunes on her new album, “Jukebox,” and those songs dominated Sunday’s show. She chose a diverse lot of songs, ranging all the way from the Frank Sinatra hit “New York, New York” to Joni Mitchell’s meditative “Blue.”

Marshall showed a jazz singer’s sense of timing, letting her words drop behind the beat or run ahead of it. She almost always sings in a breathy tone, but she knows how to sing in a way that’s strong and breathy at the same time, pulling the microphone away from her face on the more forceful notes.

Freed from playing guitar or piano, Marshall seemed to feel an uninhibited freedom to roam the stage with her peculiar pantomime-like dance moves. She often crouched down low as she sang, making gestures with her hands that sometimes acted out the words of the songs – or just reflected one of her fleeting whims. She held her hands in prayer, she flicked her fingers with a fish-like motion, she pretended she was clicking a remote control, and she circled a finger next to her head (the universal sign for “crazy”).

One of the reasons Marshall probably felt so free on Sunday was the excellent band acting as her safety net. Billed as Dirty Delta Blues, the four-piece group plays a bluesy, rootsy style of rock music that evokes the days when Bob Dylan first went electric or the Rolling Stones recorded “Exile on Main Street.” The band also knows how to play simmering, quiet grooves -- perfect for Cat Power’s ballads.

In addition to the tracks from “Jukebox,” Marshall and the band indulged themselves in several other cover songs, including George Jones’ “Making Believe,” Patsy Cline’s “I’ve Got Your Picture” and James Carr’s “Dark End of the Street.” It was only late in the concert that fans got a chance to hear Cat Power do some of her own songs, including the new track “Song to Bobby” -- apparently, a letter of sorts to Bob Dylan -- and a few songs from her popular 2006 release “The Greatest.”

Cat Power may have mastered the personal demons that caused trouble at her past concerts, but she still refuses to play by all of the rules. Instead of doing the usual routine of leaving and coming back for an encore, she remained onstage as the band left, spent several minutes tossing T-shirts into the crowd, basked in the applause and then disappeared.

See my photos of Cat Power and opening act Appaloosa.

Favorite photos of 2007

Over the past week or so, I've been going through all those photos I shot at concerts in 2007, picking out some favorites. I tried to limit my favorites to one per band, with a few exceptions. Some of my choices are unconventional shots, not necessarily the photos that are technically the best, but the ones that capture a time and place for me.

There are three ways you can look at the photos.

Click here to see a gallery.

Click here to see a Flash slideshow.

Or click here to view it at flickr.

Best Concerts of 2006

As I mentioned in my post about the Waco Brothers, I ended up seeing 100 concerts and 305 musical performances (including festival shows and opening acts) in 2006. That's a lot to sift through, and the vast majority of those shows were enjoyable to one extent or another.
My favorites were:
1. Sleater-Kinney, March 14 at Guerrero Produce Warehouse, Austin (SXSW Film Festival closing night party) (original review / photos)
2. Tom Waits, Aug. 11 at Detroit Opera House (original review)
3. The Wrens, April 29 at Schubas (original review / photos)
4. Radiohead, June 19 at the Auditorium Theatre (original review)
5. M. Ward with Oakley Hall, Sept. 8 at Metro (original review / photos)
6. Art Brut, March 15 at SXSW (original review / photos)
7. Okkervil River, Oct. 8 at Schubas (original review / photos)
8. Randy Newman, Nov. 3 at Orchestra Hall (original review)
9. My Brightest Diamond with Pedestrian and Via Tania, Nov. 11 at Schubas (original review / photos)
10. TV on the Radio with Grizzly Bear, Oct. 9 at Metro (original review / photos)

And in honor of Sleater-Kinney finishing No. 1 on my list for their blistering, intense performance that night, I am posting many, many more of the photos I shot that night. I was positioned almost perfectly at the front of the stage (perfect except that it was hard to get shots of drummer Janet Weiss), I had my new camera in hand, the music was mind-blowing, and the sights of these three ladies rocking out were fabulous. Click here to see my new gallery of 123 photos from the Sleater-Kinney ... or, if you want to see all of the photos in sequence, click here for a Flash slideshow. Personally, I think the slideshow version is much cooler. Make sure to crank up "The Woods" while you're watching. It lasts about two minutes. I did very little editing on these photos – no cropping at all, just a little brightening on a few of the images.

Favorite Concert Photos From 2006

I've put together a page of my favorite photos that I shot this year at concerts. Click here to visit the photo gallery... Or click here for a Flash slideshow with all of the photos.

The page includes photos of: the 1900s, Acid Mothers Temple, Band of Horses, Brazilian Girls, Art Brut, Big Black, the BellRays, Bloc Party, Boredoms, Broken Social Scene, the Drive-By Truckers, Dr. Dog, Eels, Eleventh Dream Day, the Flaming Lips, Flat Five (Kelly Hogan & Nora O'Connor), Glossary, the Go! Team, the Handsome Family, Kanye West, M. Ward, Nickel Creek, Okkervil River, Lady Sovereign, Gnarls Barkley, Liars, My Brightest Diamond, My Morning Jacket, Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares, Neko Case, TV on the Radio, Oakley Hall, Oneida, Os Mutantes, Palliard, Pernice Brothers, Portastatic, the Raconteurs, Radio Birdman, Robyn Hitchcock, Ray Davies, Roky Erickson, the Sadies, the Shins, Ryan Adams, Richard Swift, Scratch Acid, Sleater-Kinney, Sufjan Stevens, Tapes n' Tapes, Tony Joe White, the New Pornographers, the Walkmen, Wilco, the Wrens, Yo La Tengo, Black Angels, Brakes, Bang! Bang!, Devin Davis and the Essex Green.

These includes photos I took in March at South By Southwest in Austin and at four big festivals this summer in Chicago: Intonation, Pitchfork, Lollapalooza and the Touch & Go/Hideout Block Party. And there are lots of photos from Chicago's concert venues, including Schubas, the Hideout, the Empty Bottle, Metro, the Double Door and others. It's been a blast taking all of these photos this year. I bought a Canon Digital Rebel XT in Feburary, and since then, I've shot more than 20,000 photos!

As a bonus, here's a slideshow of the Go! Team's Ninja dancing during the band's concert this summer at Lollapalooza.