Yes, SB6 again. They're consistently ace, I've raved about them before, and I will do again. Seriously, just go and buy their back catalogue and be done with it.
Sonic Boom Six, The Charlotte.
Posts Tagged Sonic Boom Six
Sonic Boom Six
Dec 16
Back to Basics with SB6
Aug 7
Last night was Grown at Home, 3 Storeys High and Sonic Boom 6 at the Vic Inn, in Derby. Despite the ludicrous temperature in there (as always) it was another good night. At the last minute I decided to take the camera along, but didn't want to carry much because I was cycling to the station. So, I went back to basics and took only the 50mm f/1.8 lens; no other lenses, and no flash. I shot all night at ISO 3200 and f/1.8, with the intention of all the shots being converted to monochrome.
Laila. (c) Haydn Williams 2008
The shot above was one of the first ones I got – they've changed the lighting a bit since I was last at the Vic, and there's now two yellow cans pointing right at centre-stage. It works pretty well. None of the shots on this page have had anything done to them except conversion to monochrome and sharpening for the web.
Ben. (c) Haydn Williams 2008.
I was stood right in front of Ben, and without the wide-angle it was hard to get much of him in the frame. As usual, the crowd were going crazy so there wasn't much room to manoeuvre. Even so, I've not cropped any of the shots on this page, and I'm quite pleased with the results.
Barney Boom. (c) Haydn Williams 2008.
I like the Vic because you can always get to the side of the stage, and pretty much behind the band. Combined with the lights in front of the stage, you can get some good crowd shots if the band have got them interested enough. As you can see from the shot of Barney above, the crowd were loving it last night.
It's all about the energy. (c) Haydn Williams 2008.
Finally, the last shot just sums up SB6 for me. Every time I see them, they give it 100%, and last night was no exception. I have no idea what the temperature in there was, but suffice to say it was very very hot. It was obviously really hard work up there on stage, and yet no-one in the band stayed still for more than about half a second throughout the entire set. To top it all off, they then followed it up with a cracking encore; an excellent new song (which I'll confess I can't remember the name of), and Monkey See Monkey Do to finish. Bloody brilliant.
Sunday night was a great lineup at Rock City, with Sonic Boom Six and Streetlight Manifesto supporting Reel Big Fish. An unfortunate combination of big queues, late door opening and unaltered stage times meant that I (and many others) only caught the last song of the SB6 set, but it seemed to go down very well with the people who did catch it. I make no secret of the fact that I'm a massive SB6 fan, and I'd encourage anyone who hasn't heard of them to check out their website. Next up were Streetlight Manifesto, who I'd never seen before. Thankfully they lived up to expectations and were very enjoyable; they played a reasonably long set too, which is always good.
Obviously the main reason most people were at the gig was to see the headliners, Reel Big Fish. I've photographed them a couple of times before, but last night was a great reminder of just how much fun they really are. After a long and tiring weekend I unfortunately couldn't stay for the whole set, but it seems there no chance of RBF gigs getting boring any time soon.
Edit: Photos are now online.
