Heaven knows I'm happy now ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's incredible to think that The Smiths  first LP came out forty years ago this month. February 20th, 1984. I was 23 years old. The band has been a part of almost two-thirds of my life. I'll never forget their arrival on 'the scene', via John Peel, inevitably. They got accused of being depressing, but I hadn't heard anything as exciting and fresh in a long time. Indeed, it didn't take me long before I wore a string of beads around my neck when I went out for a pint. (God, the memory!) The band had split by '87 and, of course, poor old Andy Rourke is dead, but their music goes on and on for me, despite Morrissey's best efforts to make me dislike him. Here's my copy of the record, replete with a photo-pass for their 1984 gig at Manchester's Free Trade Hall ..

22.2.22

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two, two, two, two, two! Another excuse for a blog and what better than my lovely archive shot of Morrissey, lead singer of The Smiths, taken almost forty years ago at Manchester's Free Trade Hall. The Smiths? What've they got to do with .. ah, well .. wasn't one of their songs 'Vicar in a TU-TU'?

Groan!

Unknown ..

I was most amused yesterday when my iPod seemed to fail to recognise Morrissey, despite the fact that it displayed the track title and the album cover on the screen! Last night when I went to the opening of a Students' Art exhibition in Macclesfield, where youngsters from Macclesfield College School of Art are showing 'Sound (Track)' at Charles Roe House until March 6th. The theme of the show is music that is associated with the students' 'life experiences' - and they kindly invited me to show some of my Joy Division and Smiths photographs alongside their work. Now, for sure, these bands were part definitely part of my 'life experience' but I had a brief thought that the students might be looking at my photographs and thinking 'Unknown Artist - Unknown Album'!..

Then again, they might not! Like my iPod, the knowledge might just be in there, somewhere...

Life's too short ..

I had a rather poignant afternoon earlier this week. Booked in to the studio was a lady who wanted a nice family portrait because, in her own words, she "hadn't got long". She has a cancer that has reared its ugly again. As I was preparing the studio, I had a text from an old snapper pal. Morrissey, it said, had cancer! Well, that made for a thoughtful old photo-session, I can tell you, and it just drove home how important a role photography plays in our lives. I wish both my 'photographic subjects' well..

Speaking of driving, the O'Neill-Mobile came in handy when, for the first time, I used it as my roaming Sandwich Board, slapping on my new magnetic signs at both the Weddings I shot over the weekend. I hope it's not long before they start to work! ..

Treated myself to a brand new 26 mp Nikon the other day - you know, the one I absolutely need to do my job properly - and I finally plucked up the courage to tell Lesley about it at the weekend. She started talking to me again last night!
Only joking, life's too short ..

Unexpected treats ..

 Isn't it lovely when your day pings you out an unexpected treat? Mine last night was an email that popped up from New York and made me feel fantastic. A lot of my music photography is represented there by a gallery which is marking 30 years of The Smiths, and the email from them yesterday took me straight to this page! I've been belting out Smiths' songs ever since! They're actually offering Limited Editions of my photographs of Morrissey alongside those of renowned photographer Kevin Westenberg.What a treat ..

I shot a Wedding once down near Stratford, and went down the day before to have a good look around the venues. The church had a gorgeous cherry tree in full blossom alongside its outer wall, and I marked that as a great place to get some fantastic pictures. Next day, I whizzed the bride and groom round the corner to find .. three punks drinking lager in the shade of the tree! Unexpected treat of that day? They offered to hold my reflector, provided a really amusing shot for the album and .. gave the bride a swig of their lager! What a treat ..  

Heaven knows I'm (not) miserable now ..

On a good day I can be up and have three of my old Kodachrome slides spotted before breakfast and today was no exception but, just as I was wallowing in the memories of a back-pack trip round Oz, came the reminder - on Facebook, inevitably - that it's 30 years to the day since The Smiths' first album came out. OMG! 30 years! Thirty years? Where has 30 years gone? Thirty years!! OMG!..

Yes, it came as quite a shock! It goes without saying, though, that the LP still sounds absolutely brilliant! I'm playing it as I write. It's as fresh and exciting and with just as much hair-raising-on-the-back-of-the-neck .. ness as it had when I picked it up as a 23 year old Manchester whippersnapper.
(And yes, I did call it an LP on purpose!) Oh, Morrissey...

Ahum! So, I took a bus to Nullarbor, in South Australia, 'cos I was really interested in seeing what was out there, in the middle of nowhere. Do you know what's out there? Nothing! You're in the middle of nowhere. Pretty much like the music scene before The Smiths, eh?...

Heart-warming ..

That joke, as Morrissey oft reminds us, isn't funny any more! Just look at that bloody temperature! It's the middle of flippin' June, for goodness sake! I'm back in long pants .. with my jumper on .. and I don't like it! However, you didn't come here to hear about the weather, so let's get on with the blog and Ya Boo Sucks to the so-called summer ..

Another full day at the studio today .. Painting! Can't wait 'til I'm at the studio .. Photographing! I had my first 'job' come in on Friday, when a lady brought an old photograph to restore, and there was another enquiry about a family portrait yesterday, courtesy of actually being seen as a photographer with a studio, so I'm absolutely delighted with the start its made! I'm actually in the middle of designing a flyer for the 'grand opening' next Monday. I'm going to bombard Culcheth with leaflets and .. but wait, what's this? Wow! Bring one of those flyers in before the end of July and you'll get a FREE portrait sitting. That's FREE, folks! As big as the zero in today's photograph! Now there's something to warm you up...

#culchethportraitphotography

Music, food ..

A great week for music this week with the new Queens of the Stone Age album coming out today, and The Meat Puppets playing in Manchester on Friday night. All that, and the discovery of a cracking band that .. erm, split up thirty years ago! (I'm blushing, I promise!) How the hell did I miss Bad Brains? It's so weird! I mean, I love American hard-core music, and they are so just that, but somehow I've never come across them! Anyway, I'm making up for it now as I've not stopped playing them for the last 48 hours! And what do you mean, you've never heard of The Meat Puppets?

I launched the June installment of Twelve for '13 on Saturday, and was delighted to see that the shots had already been viewed 41 times by 8am this morning. Don't forget that you can see another part of my archive - the exhibition called 'Photography - it's food and drink to me' at Smiths restaurant in Eccles. All the shots have something to do with .. well, food and drink - and, as you can see, I have very cleverly combined eating and music in today's blog shot, a picture from a summer fair in about 1979.

Speaking of Smiths, I posted a print of Morrissey to a girl in New York, and she emailed me this weekend to say she loved the print and was "so proud to own it". Now that is music to my ears...

It's the economy, stupid ..

Good to hear the Bank of England robot Mervyn King speaking in a slightly more upbeat way about the UK economy yesterday, but I'm afraid to say it came on the same day that a very good friend of mine had the bombshell of redundancy dropped on him from a bleedin' great height! He woke up yesterday and went into work, and today he's having a lie-in because the company can't afford to keep him on any more. He works - sorry, worked - for a company who teach other companies how to attract more business. No further comment needed! Fingers crossed for you, Dan...

Ironically, I had a call myself yesterday from a PR company who asked me to quote for a job. When I gave them a figure they emailed to thank me for the quote but had decided to "deal with it internally" - ie: not book me and take their own photographs instead! Are you sure the economy's recovering, Merv?... 

Anyway, on a chirpier note, I'm finally getting on top of things in the 'exhibition' department, and will soon have all the work ready to hang for my next event. I'm going to be at Smiths Restaurant, in Eccles with a show called 'Photography - It's food and drink to me!', a series of photographs each with an element of eating or drinking in them. Having said that, I can't exhibit in a place called Smiths and not show any pictures of you-know-who now, can I, so there'll be a couple of Mozzer shots up there, too. And some of my Florescence work as well...

Oh, and remind me to tell you about the Manchester Airport project that's just come my way. Hmm, perhaps there are signs of recovery, after all. Bodes well, Dan! Bodes well...

Hands in gloves...

I've been away, and now I'm back. A big thank you to both fans of the blog who enquired about my whereabouts! (Hi T!) After a week away I have heaps of stuff to write about, but I wanted to be topical today and mark the .. wait for it .. thirtieth anniversary of the release of The Smiths' first ever single. Can you believe that? It was thirty years ago today that we first heard that jingly-jangly, harmonica-filled, yodelly, open-drummed slice of 45rpm heaven that was 'Hand in Glove'. Blew my head off! I was a Smiths fan from that day on, and I'm so lucky that I was around and just the right age to see 'em. I remember going backstage at the Free Trade Hall and photographing Morrissey with his Mum, and asking her if her name was Mrs Morrissey! Ha! And then the NME used the shot of them with picture corners around it, as if it had just been copied from a family photo-album! Ha x 2! I also remember queuing up at Virgin Records on the corner of Market Street in Manchester for 'The Queen is Dead', and being the first person in the shop to pick up a copy. It had Morrissey's autograph scrawled across the front in gold pen - something I thought was just part of the sleeve design until I saw other copies and realised I'd just got my mitts on something rather special! Speaking of mitts, my hands are freezing! It was rather warm where I've just been and the atypical May weather has caught me on the hop. Yo, Moz! Where are my gloves?...

Tell 'em about the exhibition, Martin..

It's like bloody buses round here! Having just teamed up with the chap that's making the Chris Sievey film I spent yesterday meeting with an artist who wants to involve my work in his future shows, and then checking out the venue for a new exhibition I'm having! Three new projects in the space of two days! Phew! Anyway, the 'new' venue is a restaurant in Eccles called Smiths. It offers wall space to local artists, and the owners invited me to exhibit after seeing my Twelve for '13 show at Eccles Art Gallery. This new show will start in the middle of May and, well .. Smiths? Guess what pictures I'll be showing! Correct! Although, as well as my Morrissey shots, the idea came up in conversation that I should show a few of my archive photographs that relate to food and drink. Restaurant? Food and Drink? Geddit? To be honest, I didn't think I'd have enough pictures for that to work ..  and then I started trawling! I've ended up with over a hundred shots that have something to do with food or drink. Today's image is one of 'em.
Have you worked it out?..

Funny story brewing ...

Life threw me one last funny story to end my music photography exhibition in Eccles on Saturday. When I arrived to take down my photographs there was a young chap looking at the work, and the gallery 'boss' introduced me as the photographer. "Great pictures.." he said to me "Fantastic! Amazing! Brill..." Ok, he didn't go that mad, he just said he liked the work, and asked the cost of a 16x12. "It's not for me.." he added, rather too quickly for my liking "It's for my girlfriend, she's crazy about Morrissey!" "Well.." I said "She's not alone. Did she see him on that programme last week?" (Victoria Wood made a programme about the story of tea, and interviewed Morrissey over a cuppa in New York) "See it?.." he laughed "She's so nuts about Moz that now she knows he uses a tea-pot she's gone out and bought one!!..."

Hmmm... Tea! Photography in Eccles! How am I going to tie those two together? Aha, a nice old picture of me dear old Dad, clutching the packet of tea-bags he'd just nipped out to buy on his lunch-break - circa 1979! It proved to be one of the more popuar photographs in the recent Twelve for '13 exhibition. Dad used to drink tea like it was going out of fashion. With five sugars! Sweet!...

Alright, flower?..

 Aaaah, normality has returned! The new series of Gardners' World starts on telly tonight, and my Wedding season is up and running at last! I thought a nice picture of a bridal bouquet would tie those two facts together nicely. On the subject of flowers though, my Florescence exhibition finishes tomorrow at Eccles Community Art Gallery but, just when I thought I was all done and dusted, I've been invited to take part in their next exhibition, and this time my theme is .. my music photography! Cue another flower photo! Yay! Yes, so this time I'll be showing some Smiths, some Joy Division and, er .. some other shots from my music archive. (Not quite got that sorted, yet!) This means I'll now will have had some of my photographs on display at the gallery for three full months! Bloomin' amazing!..

You weren't there, man...

I was minded last night of that old Vietnam war saying "If you can remember the sixties you weren't there!" The reason? I was reading the Q magazine '10 Greatest Gigs' list last night, and they've included a gig by The Smiths, which they called 'The Homecoming'. It was at Salford University's Maxwell Hall, on the 20th of July, 1986. "It all came together that night" sayeth John of The Marr. Apparently, when The Smiths came on the mosh-pit transformed instantly into a 'heaving human vortex' and the event was 'so tumultuous' that the floor below the gig suffered serious structural damage. They even had to tie the speakers down with rope to stop them falling on the audience! Man, I'd love to have been at that one! Oh, I was! I went! I saw it all .. except, I can't remember a bloody thing about it! I can remember their gig at the Free Trade Hall, 'cos that's where I shot my iconic - he said, modestly - images of Moz and his gladioli, and I can remember their gig at The Palace Theatre in Manchester, 'cos they came on to that tune from Romeo and Juliet and I was yacking to Kevin Cummins at the front of the stage, but can I remember this Salford gig? Can I buggery! Yet, I was there .. I have my ticket stub! I kept it! (Well, it does say To Be Retained!) Damn, I just wish my memories had been!..

Oscillate Wildly..

It's a Smiths song, in case you're wondering, but it's also what I don't want to do this weekend, despite my best wishes. I'm caught in a quandary, see! Tonight's the opening night of a fantastic Morrissey and Smiths photographic exhibition - in which I have a selection of prints - but it's in Bedford, and tomorrow I have a Wedding in Warrington! So, what to do? Well, I'm afraid the Wedding wins every time! I've never been late for a Wedding in all the years I've shot 'em, and I do not want to start now. Panic is a Smiths' song, not a state of mind I want to get into tomorrow morning! I'm not getting into a flap in a traffic-jam! Not even for Morrissey! So, I'll stay at home and watch Gardners' World tonight instead of hob-nobbing with my fellow snappers, and just hope I get to see some shots on Facebook over the weekend!

It's behind you ..

I know, I know .. but he was asking for it! Couldn't resist this shot at one of the Labour Party soirées I shot last night. 300 shots, one MP and a lorra lorra champers! It helped, too, that all I had to do was give the memory cards to the client (although I backed them up on my cameras' other cards, of course!)

So, that's my PR head off and my archive head back on for the rest of the week. I've just sent my Morrissey images across to Rock City Art - I'll feature in their exhibition later on this month -  and another set of 'social documentary' shots has been selected by Getty Images, so they're heading out later this afternoon. After that, it's back to the scanner again to blaze on with digitizing all my lovely negatives. Looks like my past ain't behind me .. it's blazing a trail into the future and everything's looking good!

All right on the night...

Flippin' 'eck, that was a bit good, wasn't it? Danny Boyle's opening ceremony? Very good indeed, especially the magical chimneys and the parachuting Queen! One is most amused! Could have done without Paul McCartney, but apart from that it was pretty much all right on the night! Cripes, I'll have to be careful here - there's a little bit of a positive vibe coming out of all this, and I might just have to knock one Z off the Olympiczz ... it's starting to wake me up! Speaking of a great show, this shot was taken back in day when 'they' tried to introduce American Football into the UK. These young Manchester Allstars fans were up behind the posts at Salford Rugby Ground! As you can tell, it didn't quite take off!...

So, I went to see Morrissey on Saturday night. First time I've seen him in absolutely yonks, and damn near enjoyed almost his whole show, the rabscallion! It was practically all right on the night! (Meat is Murder went on far too long!)
By sheer coincidence, that afternoon I was approached by a Photographic Gallery in Bedford, asking if I'd like to contribute to an exhibition of Smiths and Morrissey photography, scheduled for October. Er, that's a yes, please! More details to follow...

Now, I'm going to say something I've never said before! I'm off to shoot a Wedding .. on a Monday! Feels weird! I've never shot a Wedding on a Monday before but hey, bring it on! Sunny Peckforton Castle here we come! Last time I was there I was a 'guest' at a Wedding, and that felt weird too, but normality is restored today and I'm back behind the camera where I belong. Actually, did I say sunny? It's pouring with rain as I write this, so it's safe to safe at least one thing is back to normal, unlike the spelling on the back of this kid's head! Not quite all right on the night!..

The Big Day is here...

Well, the big event is almost here! Yes, folks .. it's time for that amazing, one-off event that's got everyone buzzing with excitemement and flocking to the arena. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you .. Morrissey! Oh, you thought I meant the Olympiczzzz? Sorry, still can't get excited about them! To be honest, I wish I could, 'cos I feel like everyone else is having a groovy party and I'm not invited, but they're just not floating my boat! Bit of running? Bit of swimming? Nah, not interested! And the fact that it's the London Olympics, and you hear people say things like "Oh, I'm sure such and such an event will be fine, even though it's not in London" just makes me feel even less a part of it!

Anyway, back to the important stuff. Yes, the Moz is back in Manchester tomorrow night for his only gig of the year, and even though it's at the MEN arena - and I hate the MEN arena - some things just have to be done for His Mozness. Ironically - given the fact that I've just had 100 of my music images selected for a gallery in New York - this is the first gig I'll have been to this year! How bad is that?
I remember once going to three in a night in the 'old days' .. ! And how mind-mushing is it to think that the shots I did of The Smiths at the Free Trade Hall are twenty-eight years old! Blimey, if I'd had sex that night - which didn't actually happen until I was 47 - I'd be the proud dad of a strapping almost-thirty-year-old, who could be queueing up with me to see Morrissey for the first time in their life! (Pause for shudder!)

Anyway, I know now I've turned into my Dad, so just to save you the time and effort, I'll fill in the dotted lines for ya!.. Two, three, four ..."I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I'm miserable now..."

Tra la la......

Do you copy? ..

So Moz has popped up on my radar twice today already, and it's still not half past ten! Firstly, the MEN is running a story about the precious little darling having blunt razor blades and.. oh, read it here, I can't be bothered .. (and no, it's not what you think!) The second reason he's appeared is because someone seems to have ripped off one of my images of him and is selling it as T shirts on ebay! The pesky varmints! How very dare they! I am investigating...

By the way, this image of mine is from a design being launched in Japan at the end of this month. It's a 'proper' T shirt! It is legitimate, legal and not in breach of copyright! (Are you reading this, dear image thieves?)

Fanfare!! Botany Bay is Open! My new unit is up and running and looking mighty fine, with its collections of place-mats and coasters, framed flowers and, yes, Morrissey pictures! Jeez, I'd buy them myself if I didn't already own the complete set! Get down there before everything sells out, but please don't rip them off!

A PR friend of mine has emailed to ask for some images from a shoot I did for him in ... 2001. He can't find the disc anywhere. Do you know why? It was shot on film! Ah, the good old days, when your images were yours and not out there for every Tom, Dick and Harry to steal and use as they liked.
Copy that?..

But I'm still fond of you...

Oh, you know you want it! I've put together a montage of photographs of Morrissey, shot as he twiddled his gladioli with The Smiths in 1984. Featuring nine images, it's printed on superb Fuji Pearl paper at 18x12 inches, and it's yours - yes, yours - for a mere £15 plus P+P...

(And you can buy the images individually, too!)

I've been looking at the pictures a lot lately. Firstly of course because two of them have just gone up as part of my exhibition at Corvino's Wine Bar in Culcheth, and secondly because the images will soon be on a new range of t-shirts launched at the Paris Fashion shows. Oooh, la la.. Can't wait to see 'em!

So, an exciting day coming up, as I've sourced a great new supplier of Wedding Story-Books, and I'm about to design my first one. 100 images, 30 pages, acrylic photographic front cover. What's not to be fond of?...