Fiori/Echo Empire/The Shards @ The Kit Kat Club, Nuneaton

I've been to Queens Hall in Nuneaton before (above The Crew) but it was my first visit to the Kit Kat Club there. It was a great gig, packed out, fantastic sound (nice one Paul) and great lighting (once I'd asked them to switch the stage facing par cans on - which they very helpfully did!). If there's a line up like last nights then I thoroughly recommend popping along... last night saw fantastic sets by Fiori and Echo Empire and even the first band (The Shards) were impressive considering the fact they looked very young. Well done everybody and to A.K. who runs the night and kindly added me onto the guest list - top stuff!

Gig photos are here.

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Ministry Of Beaver @ The Beer Engine, Coventry

Continuing my own recent 'mini-photography-tour' of gigs in Coventry I went to see Ministry Of Beaver a rock covers band at the Beer Engine last night. I know the band fairly well as I've played in bands with Marc Yates (vocals) and John Chivers (drums) myself. It was Marcs last gig before leaving the band and handing over vocal duties to Ian Deering. The evening kicked off with a few technical difficulties with Andi's guitar amp head failing and then even his backup failed... eek.. they battled through a shortened first set and then headed off to pick up a replacement amp. A patient crowd waited and then they returned with a small (but meaty sounding) Line 6 Spider - dwarfed by the now redundant 4x12 stack. Anyway, the amp sounded great and they continued on through their sets. Special guest appearances by former Beaver bass player Rod and soon to be full time Beaver vocalist Ian Deering made the evening very special for the boys. Marc seemed to enjoy the gig and the audience did too. It was the first time I'd met their new bass player Patrick Dorgan (who replaced Rod) and he seems to fit in with the band effortlessly. I wish the best of luck to the Beaver boys and to Ian who seems to be a fine replacement for Marc. Well done chaps I really enjoyed the gig!

Photos from the gig can be seen here

On a technical note despite the lighting rig I had to use some flash but I think I still managed to capture the gig ok.

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Claptout and Acoustic @ The Tuns, Coventry

I went to The Tuns in Coventry last night (Kristy Gallachers acoustic night), mainly to see 'Claptout and Acoustic' (Malc Evans and Steve 'Skidders' Skidmore) - their Eric Clapton unplugged tribute but I'm ashamed to say that I didn't really see much of them... I spent a lot of time outside (as a lot of people seem to do down there when it's not raining) chatting with a young lady who photographs tuns of stuff around Coventry - see what I did there? Emm.. anyway, what i saw was very good and Steves collection of acoustics was nice too (including his fold-up-into-a-case guitar stand thingamajig and silent guitar). Others on the bill (that i actually saw and photographed) were Dave (from Marmaduke Hussey), Sarah Bennett and Lee N Retna & The Spirals (aka Neil Hunter) featuring Clive Layton on fretless bass! These two ambassadors of the Coventry music scene (pictured) were also out and as you can see they thoroughly approved of the evenings entertainment.

Photos from the evening are here.

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Songbird @ The Pheonix, Coventry

Last night i popped down to 'Songbird' at The Pheonix pub in Coventry. It's one of the newest acoustic nights in Coventry and it's hosted by an acoustic artist who's making a big name for herself on the local music scene, Emma McGann. The night started off with a set from Emma, then moved on to the featured artists Pete Willow, Ben Clempson and Huffy and then finally the open mic'ers got a chance to get up on stage and have a go. It's a great evening, candle lit, good stage lighting for photography and an appreciative audience. Although there were several noteworthy performances the hightlight of the night for me was Ben Clempson, it was the first time i'd seen him and was very impressed. Anyway, good work Emma, i think i'll be popping down to a few more of these over the coming months!

The photos are here

On a technical note this was the first gig i've shot in RAW and i'm really pleased with the results (except for the odd soft shot - boo hiss, that's probably due to my fairly cheapo Sigma lens).

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Photo Showreel Back In Place!

After tweaking the new website (blog) i've reinstated my photo showreel which was on the old site. Click on the 'My Photo Showreel' link on the right hand 'Links' menu to have a look. This one of Al Britten is probably one of my favourites. If you need any photos doing (music related mainly, i.e. gigs, promo, club nights) get in touch !

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Flickr and RAW is the way forward!

After publishing my photos on my Picasa Web Albums site over the last few years i've decided to start publishing them here on Flickr instead. Picasa Web Albums was convenient (for me and 'clients') but the fact that it always displayed the image in a 'fit to browser' size meant that people would download my photos by just grabbing it from the screen, this meant that various bands had horribly crunched up photos on their MySpace web sites. Along with this i just feel that Flickr is more professional as i'm sure lots of photographers will agree. Also after having various chats with my photographer buddy David Gover i'm going to start shooting RAW all the time now. I've not been shooting RAW? no, tut tut.. i've only been using RAW for promo shoots. RAW's just going to give the that extra quality and flexibilty (particularly exposure and colour wise) in editing - especially as i'm pushing my entry level Canon 400D to it's limits at a lot of gigs and events... Hard drive shopping is in order me thinks! Anyway, speaking of David Gover, his excellent work can be seen
here.

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Pint Shot Riot after show party - Dogma, Coventry

Photos from the Pint Shot Riot after show party!


Click here to have a look.

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Pint Shot Riot at The Kasbah, Coventry

Photos from the Pint Shot Riot gig at The Kasbah (6th of March) are now up.


Click here to have a look.


Support was from Delta Rush and The Strikes. Great performances by all bands, a very 'enthusiastic' audience and the after show party at Dogma all contributed to a great night out. I'll be going through the after show pics soon and may post a link to them depending on what Pint Shot Riot want to do with them !

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Music and stuff!

As well as photographing gigs recently i've played in a few bands over the years too. It's been ages since i've writen anything new but I plan to do some solo acoustic stuff very soon but currently my MySpace page has some songs old BAiT tracks on it (my last band).


Go to www.myspace.com/chrisjohnsonguitar to have a listen.


It's a bit of a selection of some acoustic and electric tracks we did - there's more information on the webpage about it.

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Website Changes!

As you can see, i'm now hosting my website as a blog. This way i can more easily keep it up to date from gig to gig and i'll put a link in each blog to the photos from the gig. You can also subscribe to the blog via RSS - lets see how it goes!

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