26th July 2014: Dotters’ Division featuring Jonathan Khor at The Bee, Publika. Here’s Jonathan!
The other four-stringer, Jie Er!
Rebecca, the metronome that wears glasses.
Linet the rock star.
Audrey taking a shaky break.
Melissa, the vocal powerhouse…
…turned into bokeh. Tonight was one of those rare evenings where I’d bring out the king of bokeh lens, the Sony 135mm F2.8/T4.5 Smooth Transition Focus. Everything is just smoother!
Audrey gets a little candidly funny.
Interestingly, Audrey, Linet and Jonathan were in a band called Juanophobia, who won Battle Of The Bands 2011: Passport To Fame (and first runner up in Library’s Got Talent Or Not.)
A friend of theirs gets called on stage to play a little saxophone.
The usual outsource-sing-along-to-crowd bit, but with Audrey and Melissa this time.
Meanwhile, outside, the August 2014 poster for The Bee’s happenings was out, and a picture I took is there for the 16th of August 2014!
2nd August 2014: Dotters’ Division featuring Russell Curtis at The Bee, Publika.
For this gig, I brought a different telephoto lens as well – my first one, in fact – the Minolta 70-210mm F4.0 “beercan”, so named because of its resemblance to a tall beercan. I rarely ever bring zoomable lenses to gigs!
I also used APS-C crop mode to get a further telephoto crop, resulting in a 305mm-full-frame equivalent maximum reach.
This enlarged the sign at the back due to perspective.
Tight crops!
Tight chops!
Extreme close up.
It’s not everywhere you can use a F4.0 lens comfortably.
On stage, after graduating from wizard school.
Much fun!
A birthday, not sung on stage.
Russell came on stage for the second set, and harmonized with Melissa for 4 Non Blondes – What’s Up.
It was awesome. This was Melissa’s expression after that!
Russell also digs into some serious licks.
Singing John Legend – All Of Me.
For some chords you just need a certain position.
He also sang his own originals from his Russell Curtis Project album.
A natural entertainer, working the crowd. I bought his CD and he asked me to write a review, so here is a short one: I am always in for a surprise when I hear a performer that is usually in a stripped-down setting of just guitar and vocals in a live setting, in a CD – a rock band may get vocal overdubs and keyboards I don’t usually hear, or a string section. I’d seen Russell as Curtis Blues Review mostly, many years back, or as him on guitar alone – so I was expecting Texan blues rock and soul as I’d heard from him before, or that one unforgettable gig where he just did only Stevie Wonder covers. Well you get the musicality of Stevie Wonder and Tracy Chapman, a sharp balladeer, in a modern pop production, produced by Aubrey Suwito. There are also dancy tracks like Close To You and Drive Me Crazy. It certainly sounded right for radio, though it wasn’t what I was expecting. The only time I saw Russell Curtis Project, was with an extremely funky keyboardist who took it to a virtuoso jazzy sound (if I remember.) The closest to what I remember would be Music’s Brightest Star, and it includes a little bonus live track at the end that shows his guitar-and-vocal-only prowess.
Then again, I don’t pick up on a lot of nuances that musicians do, especially when they discuss sound, and I consider myself a poor music reviewer.
Melissa took this!
The crew.
The tripod selfie.
Rebecca and Melissa swap glasses.
Everybody wants one with Rebecca’s glasses!
Yuuup.