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3D radio rocks!

23/8/2011

3d Radio rocks! Where else do you turn when every other station is mashing your brain with the same old commercialism and shameless corporate spruiking... What other station embodies the spirit of pirate radio and can offer you insight and glimpses into otherwise hidden local life and beckon the hidden call of the great unheard?!
Where else can you hear some strange mash up of stairway to heaven and jazz interlaced with some religious rantings about Led Zeppelin being the spawn of the devil at 3am in the morning and wonder if your radio is broken or if you have just drunk too much... What better station would there be to go on when you have something to announce to the Adelaide arts community and spread the word about whatever your cause is? Wherelse can you stumble with your acoustic guitar at 11 o'clock in the morning, bleary eyed after sleeping in your car and play live on the airwaves to an audience of thousands of people?! And of course who else is the champion of home grown Adelaidian music and offers local artists a chance for exposure, recognition and publicity?

In my mind all of these things are well worth the effort to subscribe to 3d during their radiothon and help keep it alive and kicking out at the otherwise extrememy questionable radio waves we may be subjected to. Help to maintain the radio's oasis, its 50 bucks well spent to make sure that we have something interesting and adventurous to listen to and you get a free cd, Depthcharge 10, a collection of some of (r)adelaide's most rocking bands over the last year!

Subscribe before 28 August and be in the running for a megapack of 60 CDs thanks to Off The Hip records.
Phone 8363 3937 / Drop in to 48 Nelson Street Stepney.

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The Origins of the Myth of the Rainbow Serpent

20/5/2011

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Originally written for the good folk at Rainbow Serpent festival (www.rainbowserpent.net)

The Wagyl is, according to the culture of a certain aboriginal people, a snakelike dreamtime creature responsible for the creation of the major rivers and other waterways and landforms around their city & surrounding regions.
A superior being, the Rainbow Serpent created the universe and the people. The Rainbow Serpent delegated Wagyl, a lesser, but nonetheless powerful, deity to create and protect the rivers, lakes, springs and wildlife. The people were appointed as the guardians of the land by the Wagyl. The Wagyl was seen by certain tribal elders who spoke to the dreamtime being.
The rivers are said to represent the body of the Wagyl, which meandered over the land creating the curves and contours of the hills and gullies. The being is strongly associated with rivers and lakes and is supposed to still to reside in the waters deep beneath the springs.

As the Wagyl slithered over the land, his tracks shaped the sand dunes, his body scoured out the course of the rivers; where he occasionally stopped for a rest, he created bays and lakes. Piles of rocks are said to be his droppings, and such sites are considered sacred. As he moved, his scales scraped off and become the forests and woodlands of the region.
The rainbow serpent could also be seen in, and descended from the band of stars spread across the sky, which form the milky-way galaxy.
The “Wagyl stories” represent the survival of oral traditions passed down for tens of thousands of years by Aboriginals and many of them have their roots in, and are accurate documentation of certain historical occurrences, making them some of the oldest histories in the world, as we shall examine shortly...
Our story begins through the eyes a British anthropologist named Alfred Radcliffe-Brown. In 1926 he noticed a common thread that wove through Aboriginal myth across the Australian continent.

They all tell variations of a single (common) myth which speaks of an unusually powerful, creative & often dangerous snake or serpent, sometimes of enormous size. The serpent was said to be closely associated with the rainbow, rain, rivers, and deep waterholes.
The snake had many names across Australia, and parts of the story would vary from tribe to tribe, but essentially it was the same tale. Radcliffe-Brown coined the term Rainbow Serpent, a name which is still in use today by people and institutions all over the world to refer to the pan-Australian myth & as a symbol of Aboriginal mythology in general.
This 'Rainbow Serpent' is generally and variously identified by those who tell the 'Rainbow Serpent' myths, as a snake of some enormous size often living within the deepest waterholes of Australia's waterways; It is known both as a benevolent protector of its people and as a malevolent punisher of law breakers. The rainbow serpent's mythology is closely linked to land, water, life, social relationships and fertility. Descended from that larger being visible as a dark streak in the Milky Way, it reveals itself to people in this world as a rainbow as it moves through water and the rain, shaping landscapes, naming and singing of places, dreaming them into being.- wikipedia

The Rainbow Serpent is traditionally associated with ceremonies to do with fertility and abundance, as well as the organisation of the community and the keeping of peace.
The belief in the Rainbow Snake, a personification of fertility, richness in propagation of plants and animals and rain, is common throughout Australia. It is a creator of human beings, having life-giving powers that send conception spirits to all the waterholes. It is responsible for regenerating rains, and also for storms and floods when it acts as an agent of punishment against those who transgress the law or upset it in any way.
Rainbow Serpent could be mischievous, swallowing and sometimes drowning certain people yet strengthening and endowing the knowledgeable with rainmaking and healing powers. It would blight others with sores, weakness, illness, and death. Australia's Bunyip was identified as a 'Rainbow Serpent' myth of the afore-mentioned kind.
"It swallows people in great floods and regurgitates their bones, which turn into stone, thus documenting such events. Rainbow snakes can also enter a man and endow him with magical powers, or leave 'little rainbows', their progeny, within his body, which could potentially also make him ail and die. As the regenerative and reproductive power in nature and human beings, it is the main character in the region's major rituals."[i]
The rainbow serpent is the closest thing to a unified symbol of Australian-Aboriginal native mythology and philosophy. It is one of their oldest and original concepts as it is part of their creation mythology. Thus it is spread throughout the tribes of the Australian continent as it was brought with the tribes as they frontiered the land after crossing in to Australia through Torres Strait 40-100,000 thousand years ago.
No one knows for sure when Aboriginals crossed into Australia but the oldest evidence is a skeleton called the Mungo man, which was found in Lake Mungo NSW. He is dated at between 40-68,000 years old. His exact age is still disputed, and New South Wales is a fair way inland...
Wonambi Naracoortensis
The myth of the Rainbow serpent is sometimes associated with Wonambi Naracoortensis, a large, ancient snake, one species of the now extinct Australian megafauna. Megafauna was a race of gigantic prehistoric animal species, many of which co-existed at the same time as ancient Aboriginals and can be found depicted in their rock art.
Named by M.J. Smith, in 1976 for the region of Naracoorte in South Australia where it was found, Wonambi Naracoortensis was a giant 5-6 metre-long snake. It's family of constrictor snakes contains only 2 known species in Australia.
The other species is Wonambi Barriei which has been found in Western Australia. Naracoortensis was first described from fossils collected at Naracoorte and Riversleigh in South Australia, it was the first extinct snake to be found in Australia.
Both Naracoorte and Riversleigh have turned out fossils providing crucial evidence of the evolution of the native fauna of Australia. These two sites in particular are especially important for the extreme diversity and the magnificent preservation of their fossils. These sites have helped scientists to understand the history of animal lineages in modern Australia, the world's most isolated continent. The Naracoorte Fossil Mammal Site was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1994.
The discovery of this snake provided scientific evidence to support the fact that Aboriginals had been handing down the history of this species through their oral traditions & had kept the tale alive in their memory for up to 50,000 years. There is also evidence that they did similar things, accurately documenting the eruption of ancient volcanos some 30,000 years ago in Australia. See Tower Hill on the great ocean road just outside Warnambool in Victoria. The rainbow serpent myths are another example of how great occurrences from history often tend to fuse with mythology over the course of great time.
The name Wonambi is derived from the description, told by the local Aboriginal people of Naracoorte, about a serpent of the Dreamtime. This serpent was of course the Rainbow Serpent. The Wagyl snake of the Western Australian Noongar people is thought to correlate to the South Australian people's Wonambi snake, indicating that this creature was once found across the continent. The family of this species of snake, Madtsoiidae, became extinct in other parts of the world around 55 million years ago, but new species continued to evolve in Australia, the last known to have existed, became extinct only in the last 50 000 years.Interestingly enough Naracoorte is not far from earth-grid point 44. If you are into that sort of thing.[ii]
Wonambi seems to have been an ambush predator. Rather than using venom, the animal would kill its prey by constriction. The head of the Wonambi was small, restricting the size of its prey but you can imagine the terror felt by aboriginal tribe members as they expected themselves (or their children) to be ambushed by a hunting serpent the length of 3 or 4 men put end to end!

Wonambi naracoortensis lived during the Pleistocene Ice age period, in natural sun-traps beside local waterholes (Sound familiar?). They would ambush kangaroo, wallaby and other prey coming to the water to drink. For this reason, children were forbidden in Aboriginal culture to play at such places, and only allowed to visit when accompanied by an adult.

-Wikipedia

Plotting the locations of the habitats & fossil locations of this snake in Western Australia has been found to closely align with areas the Noongar people regard as sacred sites.
Australian scientist Tim Flannery claims that this animal, along with other Australian megafauna, became extinct (partly) as a result of activities of the Australian Aborigines, for example firestick farming.[iii]

History of the Serpent

The word serpent was traditionally used in a specifically mythic or religious context, signifying a snake that is to be regarded not as a mundane natural phenomenon, but as the bearer of some potent symbolic value. Snakes have been associated with some of the oldest rituals known to humankind. The serpent is one of the oldest and most widespread mythological symbols.

The serpent was a very important social and religious symbol, revered by the Maya. Mayan mythology describes serpents as being the vehicles by which celestial bodies, such as the sun and stars, cross the heavens. The shedding of their skin made them a symbol of rebirth and renewal.

They were so revered, that one of the main Mesoamerican deities, Quetzalcoatl, was represented as a feathered serpent. The name means "precious serpent". Like Australian Aborigines’, Mayan Elders would also communicate with a being that they called the vision serpent through various means of religious ceremony & consciousness expansion including blood letting rituals involving the king, which they performed ontop of their pyramid temples along with the taking of entheogens such as Ayahuasca, cannabis and magic mushrooms.

Likewise, there are innumerable names and stories associated with the serpent over the world, all of which communicate the significance and power of this being within Aboriginal & global traditions.

Ancient paintings of the Rainbow Serpent have been preserved in caves across Australia. The earliest paintings appear in Arnhem land more than 6000 years ago. They perhaps could be present as early as 8000 years before the present, but we don’t know as the seas rose after the last Ice Age, destroying or covering up the evidence.

“The most recent image was painted on rock in 1965, and the tradition has continued in work on bark and more recently on paper...Among most tribes numerous Rainbow Snakes are said to populate the landscapes that make up their homelands. Two types of Rainbow Serpents consistently turn up in the culture of Aboriginal Australians; the female Rainbow Serpent, is the mother, the original creator being; and the male Rainbow Serpent, is the transformer of the land.”[iv]

Rainbow Serpent is named for the snake-like meandering of water across a landscape, and the colour spectrum caused when sunlight strikes water at an appropriate angle relative to the observer.

In the physical world the Rainbow Serpent represents the element of water and may appear as a rainbow, lightning or the lustre of quartz crystal as quartz crystal also refracts sunlight into the rainbow spectrum.

Interestingly enough, quartz crystal is what we use in modern computer chips to store and hold information & conduct electrical charge. Quartz crystals have piezoelectric properties; they develop an electric potential upon the application of mechanical stress. One of the earliest use of this property of quartz crystals was to make phonograph pickups. One of the most common piezoelectric uses of quartz today is as a crystal oscillator, The resonant frequency of a quartz crystal oscillator is used for very accurate measurements of very small mass changes in the quartz crystal microbalance. Thus it can be used to make clocks and other accurate & precise measuring devices. The basis of all mechanical clocks is a tiny little tuning fork made out of quartz crystal. As we also know, lightning is the original source of modern electrical power on Earth. We harnessed it and fully began to understand it from a lightning bolt that struck a key hung on a kite in America by Benjamin Franklin in June of 1752.

Government Studies
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has been studying the Aborigine’s connection to the land and their knowledge of the natural cycles of Australian weather patterns for many years. Here is a report from their department of Climate, Weather and Aboriginal Culture about the Rainbow Serpent;

“A common theme in all Aboriginal mythology is the Rainbow Serpent. The Rainbow Serpent is seen as the inhabitant of permanent water holes and is in control of life’s most precious resource, water. It is the sometimes unpredictable Rainbow Serpent, who vies with the ever-reliable Sun, that replenishes the stores of water. Serpent stories vary according to environmental differences. Tribes of the monsoonal areas depict an epic interaction of the Sun, Serpent and wind in their Dreamtime stories, whereas tribes of the central desert experience less drastic seasonal shifts and their stories reflect this.

The close affinity between water and snakes may stem from the presence of most snakes in the vicinity of permanent water. The Walmadjari people of the deserts of the Northern Territory see the spirit of water as the Carpet Snake. This is of scientific interest in that carpet snakes cannot survive long without water and are almost always found near water sources.”

Here is a report on their findings about Indigenous Seasonal Descriptions;

“Australia’s climate is diverse. Monsoon tropics, desert, savanna, alpine and temperate regions can all be found in various locations. The sheer diversity of ecological zones negates the concept of a rigid European seasonal calendar for the entire continent. The Aboriginal people of Australia inhabited distinct regions that were usually concordant with geographical and ecological regions. An intimate knowledge of the environment was paramount for survival and the resulting meteorological view of the Aboriginal people is one of great diversity, where the nomenclature of the seasons is often dependant on localised events or resources.

The ability to link events in the natural world to a cycle that permitted the prediction of seasonal events was a key factor in their success. These natural barometers were not uniform across the land but instead used the reaction of plants and animals to gauge what was happening in the environment. The presences of march flies, for example, was an indication to the Gadgerong people that crocodile eggs could be found, to look for native honey, and it was approaching the late dry season.As a result of all this, seasonal cycles as described by the various Aboriginal peoples differ substantially according to location. This produces a far more intricate and subtle overview of Australia’s climate than the 4-season European climate description of Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring, applied as it is across most areas of the continent.” [4]

It is through an incorporation of Aboriginal & other ancient native knowledge that we may find the answers to issues that modern people are searching for so desperately in order to deal with climate change and sustainable living techniques.

The rock art images discussed before, are probably the oldest living representations of the rainbow serpent. The images in western Arnhem Land have been studied in detail by scientists at Cambridge University in Britain, and by Meredith Wilson at the Australian National University. They have analysed 107 images, and say they have found convincing evidence that the first snake images were inspired directly by climate change and also claim to have identified a living model for them.

Dr’s. Paul Tacon and Christopher Chippindale from Cambridge say that the first images of Rainbow Serpents appear in the rock art around 6000 years ago. Their findings say that these original carvings set the pattern for all following images. Their distinctive characteristics include; a snake-like body, curved horse-like heads, at least two types of tails (pointed or spiked), and an assortment of plant and animal appendages, including wispy tendrils and ear-like projections.

At first the researchers thought of a seahorse, but after talking to Dr John Paxton, a fish expert at the Australian Museum, they refined the model to a mores specific animal; the ribboned pipefish,Haliichthys Taeniophora. Haliichthys Taeniophora is found around Irian Jaya and the coast of northern Australia from Shark Bay in Western Australia to the Torres Strait (where the aboriginals crossed into Australia).

"This creature would have been unfamiliar to people living inland until the sea began rising after the last Ice Age and crept steadily inland, flooding familiar features and causing great disruption to climate, hunting and traditional patterns of life. Traditional food plants and animals dwindled and war increased as groups of people from diverse language and cultural groups were forced to share the diminishing landscape.

Because of this stress, the researchers reasoned, the serpent became a symbol of unity and peaceful cooperation, as well as of creation and destruction. From this they conclude that the Rainbow Serpent represents the world's oldest continuous religious tradition."[vi]

But what does it all mean..??

There is very little evidence of genetic mingling from outside influences once the Aborigines reached Australia. It seems as though once they made it here and established themselves, they became cut-off from the rest of the world, enabling them to continue & evolve their traditions in isolation without ideological pollution or conquering from outside sources. Native Australians evolved in relative isolation compared to other parts of the world, which suggests that developments in language and tool use were not influenced by outside sources.

This means that whatever knowledge & stories they brought with them represent one of the purest links to the memories and ways of ancient man that we have. If we consider the integrity of their oral traditions & indeed learn how to decipher and understand their myths from the way that they are told, then we will be tapping into a vast source of ancient knowledge about the planet that will help us heal some of the most ominous & devastating problems facing our world & global society today. This is especially so in relation to areas such as water conservation & sustainable agriculture and dealing with climate change.

The continent of Australia still has this ability to distil and brew things unpolluted in isolation to this day. I see Australia as a place to take the knowledge & the best ideas from the rest of the world and advance them in our paradise so that we can pass them back to the rest of the world to see how they work on a large scale after we have demonstrated them successfully here on a small scale. That is what I see as Australia’s role in the future on the world stage, especially in the areas of sustainable industry, alternative energy sources & water conservation. We may see our country become a world leader in that area over the next 10-15 years if we pay attention and respect to the ancient traditions along with the gravity of the current global climate & ecological situation.

So what does it mean that the Aboriginals brought this ancient symbol of the snake with them into Australia tens of thousands of years ago, and where did they get it from?

Anatomically modern man, with a brain capacity equivalent to ours first left Africa about 150,000 years ago after kicking around the motherland for about 50,000 years or so previous to that. Theoretically they had as much capacity to understand and make sense of the world as we do, they just did not have access to such a database of recorded knowledge as we do today to study from. Nor did they have ways to reference things in a scientific manner, so they created mythologies & art to symbolically represent and pass on their concepts. All humans on Earth can be traced genetically back to Africa through our DNA.
The Aborigines have occupied this continent for at least 40,000 years. They came originally through South East Asia, entering the continent from the North. Prior to European settlement / invasion, it is estimated that there were over 200 different languages spoken. Aboriginal oral tradition meant that information was passed on from generation to generation through storytelling, song, dance and visual art. Aboriginal art is the oldest continuous living artistic tradition in the world, with paintings in rock shelters dating back 6-8000 years and rock engravings dating possibly as far back as 20-40,000 years.
This means that the story of the serpent & it’s role in the creation of the universe is older than civilisation which science tells us originated in Iraq & Egypt 6000 years ago, & must be one of the earliest stories of humanity, possibly originating before we migrated out of Africa and kept alive as humans evolved and spread all over the world.

The Flower Of Life

The modern parallel to a unified symbol representing our philosophies and science of creation is something that is called by some “The Flower Of Life”. The Flower of Life is a geometric pattern formed by interlocking circles within a larger circle. It is said to be the most basic pattern that all the knowledge the universe can be broken down into in order for it to be deciphered and brought back into existence again. The language is mathematical, symbolic & geometrical. It can also be extended into the realms of sound & form. The famous Golden ratio (Phi) can be found within the pattern, so can the Fibonacci sequence.

It is considered by some to be a symbol of sacred geometry, said to contain ancient, religious value depicting the fundamental forms of space and time. In this sense, it is a visual expression of the connections life weaves through all sentient beings, and it is believed to contain a type of Akashic Record of basic information of all living things.

There are many spiritual beliefs associated with the Flower of Life; for example, depictions of the five Platonic Solids are found within the symbol of Metatron's Cube, which may be derived from the Flower of Life pattern. These platonic solids are geometrical forms, which are said to act as a template from which all life springs.Within the Flower of Life pattern, among other things, are the symbols of the Vesica Piscis, an ancient religious symbol, and Borromean rings (John Bonham's symbol), which represents the Holy Trinity.

- Wikipedia

Modern research into the Flower of Life is being conducted in certain parts of the world and was conducted by kings & scholars from ancient cultures of the old world.

The symbol predates the bible. The oldest known physical example of the flower of life comes from the palace of King Ashurbanipal, an Assyrian King. The palace step (now in the Louvre) is dated to 645 BC. There are claims that the carvings in the temple of Osiris in Egypt are much older but they may have been carved by the Copts who were Greco-Egyptians. Although Ashurbanipal’s step is the oldest dated carving of the symbol, evidence of the knowledge gained from the pattern is wide spread throughout the architecture & art of even older temples & monuments throughout the world.

The messages and meanings within the Flower of Life pattern are understood by studying the relations and proportions & sequences of the circles within the design and the advanced mathematics that they express. The depth of knowledge contained within the pattern allows for continuous study by an observer through to a theoretically infinite or at least incredibly sophisticated & advanced capacity of knowledge & understanding of the universe.

The symbol has been found on ancient objects in Egypt, France, China (in the forbidden palace), Japan, South America, Tibet, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Norway and quite a few other countries that supposedly never communicated with each other. Researchers are baffled. Many, if not most of the religious symbols of the world are derived from the flower of life.

Leonardo Da Vinci was fascinated by the symbol and studied it intensely;

Leonardo da Vinci studied the Flower of Life's form and its mathematical properties. He drew the Flower of Life itself, as well as various components such as the Seed of Life. He drew geometric figures representing shapes such as the platonic solids, a sphere, and a torus, and also used the golden ratio of phi in his artwork; all of which may be derived from the Flower of Life design.
- Wikipedia

Rainbow Serpent festival will honour and celebrate both of these symbols as a bringing together of Ancient Aboriginal knowledge & teachings from all over the world. Both traditional, ancient and advanced modern sciences will be represented & taught here. If you really want to learn about the culture of Australia & the world, this is where you will find it. Look out for a giant illuminated Flower of Life mandala made out of mirrors & crystals while you are there.

www.rainbowserpent.net

Arthur Radcliffe-Brown saw the aim of his field to study primitive societies and determine generalizations about social structure. For example, he saw institutions as the key to maintaining the global social order of a society, analogous to the organs of a body.

For example universities are like brains as they store, create and pass on the knowledge of our society& prisons are like the liver as they filter & recycle (supposedly) ‘toxic’ parts of our community.

His studies of social function examine how customs aid in maintaining the overall stability of a society He also espoused the notion that a major goal of social anthropology was to identify social structures and formal relationships between them, and that qualitative or discrete mathematics would be a necessary tool to do this (this was in 1926!). In that sense Radcliffe-Brown may be considered one of the fathers of social network analysis.

Socratos

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Bob King, The Road to Australia's Premier Rock Photographer

22/4/2011

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The road to Australia’s most prominent rock photographer…
partly published in http://www.kryztoff.com/issues/022/#/16

Bob King has been around on the Australian rock photography scene since 64 when he photographed the Beatles in Sydney. His unique collection includes shots from the early days of AC/DC, Bob Marley through to the early big day outs and soundwave festivals. He’s been around on the scene a long time and is now the tour photographer of choice for a host of prominent bands. He knows what’s going on around Australia. Recently he chose two of Adelaide's own rock photographer Craig Beaumont's photographs for a shortlist of 20 out of 3000 live music shots for Jim Beam's Label behind live music program.

Craig runs Studio Crossbow photography in Adelaide (www.studiocrossbow.com.au)

I was lucky enough to catch up and chat with Bob King and had the opportunity to talk about the competition and his history as an australian Rock photographer since the 60's

Check out Bob's amazing archives at www.bobking.com.au
Socratos.

Being in the right place at the right time seems to be one of the most important skills for the job, you have had a knack for it throughout your career. How did you organise yourself into the situations, can you explain that or are you just lucky?

Oh no, a lot of late nights and early mornings! It’s made now a lot more difficult because there’s so many more kids doing it because of digital. The rise of digital cameras has created a lot more people that want to shoot concerts.
From in the 60s I can recall photographing the Rolling Stones in 65 and I was with 2 mates we were amateur photographers, we were into rock and roll and people were going “why are you photographing the concert? what do you want to do that for!?” The only person photographing it would be the newspaperman who would run out holding his ears after taking his shots. We were in the audience photographing and people couldn’t understand why. These days everyone’s got mobile phones and small digital cameras.

Back at those early gigs did you always photograph from the crowd or did you sometimes get yourself in a good position?

I used to oddly enough the Horton pavilion? Was the main place in Sydney, this was before computer tickets so I’d get up at 4 oclock, drive down to the box office, get there ar 6 o'clock to join the queue the morning the tickets would come on sale and I would get the front row, you know, row a and they couldn’t kick you out cos' you were there!

But later on when a few magazines started to surface I started working for them and you’d get a photopass and then you’d be in the pit which would be infront of the audience so you’d get access to the act that way. Up until 1988 you’d be allowed to shoot the whole show, after '88 they became more selective and you’d only be allowed to shoot 3 songs and that held true to today. And quite often sometimes some bands will give you only one song. Some bands want you to stand back on the sound desk way away, you know the older ones, people like Fleetwood Mac and Rod Stewart and a few others you know they’re getting older so they figure they don’t want close up photos taken of them so you’re banished to the sound desk! And then a lot of bands wont let the accredited press in to their acts. They will only let people attached to magazines and websites and it knocks all the guys like myself that have been doing it and are still doing it, it keeps us out! Who does it? Greenday does it, Kylie Minogues does it. Half of them only let accredited magazines in. Which makes it more difficult.And then sometimes people are in the audience with gear as good as mine and they don’t stop them from shooting the whole show so you know, it’s a little bit disconcerting but anyway that’s the way it goes.
I can’t understand their reasoning., I mean we’re giving them free advertising you know? I really can’t understand why this has never happened up until mid to late 90’s it started occasionally, now it happens quite regularly.

Do you see a big division between printed press and online publishing or do you think they are the same thing in a different guise?

Sort of yeah, but I mean the people who get in for these small magazines and websites you only see them once in your life and then you never see them again! Its confusing in how they can get in, but they do get in, when the major acts say no freelancers and no agency photographers. I’m an agency photographer I shoot for Corbis, a big American library which my shots go worldwide through.

Did you finish all that scanning you were doing yesterday?

Yes Its never ending though Im scanning all my old stuff from way back to the 60s 70s and 80s there’s a lot of interest in all my old stuff, which is good, that’s what I make a lot of money from selling through agencies. Onto people that are doing books and what not.

You have some very unique shots that not many people would have

This is true and they keep selling which is great

What is Jim Beam's Rockography? Do you think its a good format, Tell me about how you picked 10 out of 3000 shots!?

Jim Beam approached me to be the curator of the exhibition, they had, well their website has people sending in their rock photos from various places around Australia and for this competition out of I think it was almost 3000 images they wanted me to select 15 at first and then they came back and made it 20, out of the 3000 so it was quite a mammoth task to go through them.

I had my family help me, my wife and my son aswell, he does a lot of photography, he works for Nikkon, he’s a Nikkon rep for NSW and my daughter is a graphic designer so the four of us, after I’d whittled them down to about 150 we then sat down and whittled it down to 20 and the culmination was last week at the Oxford arts factory where it was launched, they had all the accepted prints on display Ken Taylor came up from Melbourne to design the wall and he did a great job of setting them out in the exhibition together and that’s basically my involvement with it. I think it’s going to be a yearly event. Whether they get me back is irrelevant but it looks like they’re going to push it on a little bit further.

You must have seen some awesome photos when you were whittling the list down… What makes a great photo? and what made these make the grade?

There was a lot of great stuff, the use of light, a lot of the photographers have got down light, action and its not just a photograph, you know? They’ve involved them selves in the action and in the way they’ve created the image, there was a lot of beginner stuff which is natural and it’s a shame that you cant pick them but there was so much that shined through.

The other thing that I did with them, once we got down to the 150 was to download the images off the website and of course they all had names on them so I went and renumbered them so that I wasn’t influenced by the names all we saw was shot number 22 and shot number 80 that we’ve selected and then when we picked our 20 with the names and that’s what we sent to Jim Beam, We let them speak for themselves, a couple had 3 or 4 four of them so you know it’s good, good to them, they turned out some really really good work.

You picked out some photo's by a mate of mine here in Adelaide, do you remember a shot where someone’s kicking the camera?

"Oh that one that was great yeah, that was a great shot, he turned out some nice stuff. Rock photography is alive and well and has a great future ahead, with lots of young talent,” Bob has said about all of the photographers chosen to exhibit their work.
"There are some great action and creative shots, with well thought out use of light and movement."
Do you think the aspect that’s been lost in translation between the old style and the new style that’s been brought about with all this access to technology and stuff is the craft and the care that’s taken in setting up the shot?

I’m not knocking people but a lot of people shooting today have not learned photography. Like the older photographers that are around that have actually physically learned how to process black and white film, make prints all back in what we call the analogue days now, pre digital, where you learned how light works and this sort of thing. So very few of them have been to technical courses but some have and it shows through their work.

And stringently in this exhibition that I just had a hand in for Jim Beam there’s a lot of talent out there, a lot of great talent

When you are photographing a concert do you try to blend in to the scene and read the stage, read the lights and let the shot come to you?

Well it was different, now that we only get three songs to shoot. Prior to 87/88 when we shot the whole show and there weren’t that many photographers there’d be 2 or 3 of us would end up shooting whole show, maybe 4 or 5 and we were all mates and yeah you would read the stage. You would read the lighting and you’d look for the pairings you know? When the bass player gets with the singer the lead singer jumps up on the drum riser. The lighting is not on the full stage most of the time, it’s with the lead singer so you’ve gotta wait for the time for that to happen, I might shoot 2, 3 rolls of colour then 2 or 3 of black and white, about 180 shots. Now with 3 songs and digital you shoot everything you go for it! I might shoot 6-700 frames of an act in 3 songs. Its made it easier but its made it more difficult.
I can shoot at 4000 iso where back in the early days the most we were shooting with was 400 or 800 iso so you’re really fighting with the light you had to push the film in processing and now you don’t need to and its not costing you anything. The bad shots you can delete, you can see where you’ve gone wrong straight away and I’ll just shoot a lot of shots and then edit them out and I’ll only send 20-25 shots to my library, and end up on their website. So that’s the difference between then and now. Plus you might have 22 people next to you in the pit like sometimes happens at the Big Day Out and Soundwave. These days you gotta sign lots of contracts which is a problem which you didn’t have in the early days. Its more of a problem for a young photographer starting out in the business these days?

Well it is and a lot of them ask me how to do it and I tell them but they probably don’t believe me but quite honestly there’s no money in it! Even the 90’s there might have been 4 or 5 music magazines in the country and now they’ve all gone, you’ve got the street press and they’ve got their own shooters and they don’t pay much. The major music mag is probably Rolling Stone and they source most of their images out of the US. I sell them the occasional shot, oddly enough I’ve just sold them 3 shots in the last couple of weeks and they pay $80 a shot. Which isn’t going to make you rich and as I said earlier my major earnings from music today are shots that I’ve taken in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s as they get older the more popular they become so it is difficult a) for young shooters to get into gigs because the major tour promoters have their publicists and unless you can prove to them that you’re shooting for somebody its difficult to get access and then to the point where they refuse or the acts refuse access to the major shooters so what’s left is some of the pubs and clubs and I’ve even been refused to shoot in some pubs and clubs by management cause they don’t want people shooting in their clubs and you’d have to explain that you were with the band and you were working for them and as long as you were working for them they’d let you in.
I don’t know if the same holds true today but its not easy for a young photographer today. This is why I applaud the ones that have put this stuff into the exhibition and I think they’ve done very well.

At the start its about building up a collection of work that’s unique and has your character and that’s basically the art, that’s what it is. Another way to get into it is to work for the band specifically and that works out well. You get accreditation through that and then another band will pick you up. I’ve had stuff like that in the 80’s and 90’s where I’ve worked for different bands. There’s always that way in. you know, you don’t have to know a lot about photography to take shots.

I see new guys come and go over the years. You’ll a face at a concert then you’’ see them again and again and again and then all of sudden you don’t see them which means either they got sick of it, or they’re not making money out of it and to live you’ve gotta make money and if you’re not selling you’re shots you gotta try something else or do it another way. It's cut throat in a away.
Tour stories
I like Tool they’re a great band. He’s a difficult man to photograph is young Maynard! I’ve done them a few times but I didn’t do them just recently at the big day out because again they wouldn’t give access to the agency photographers. When you saw him was he behind a white sheet?His tour manager or stage manager generally comes down (he’s done it twice when I’ve been photographing him) He jumps down into the pit before they come on and say “You’ve got 3 songs, NO FLASH, and if you shoot flash Maynard will jump down and thump you!” So you’re standing there shaking trying to get shots of him!

Mick Jagger is very much in control of his empire, he has his assistants pour coke over the stage. The black kind, not the white kind so that when he is running around in his nikes he doesn’t fall over
One time they came over and someone had built a revolving stage for them enexpectadly and unbeknownst to the them, mid concert began to revolve which threw off the bands equilibrium

Is there something that fascinates you about rock and roll? how would you map its progression over the last 4 decades to where it is today>? What would you consider your most historic moment?

Oh its changing I mean you look at what the stones were playing on stage with, the amplifiers, even a garage band today has got bigger amplifiers than the stones or the bands did in the 60’s so there’s that aspect to it, the equipments got bigger and better but then there’s so many more acts out there trying to do it. That’s the other thing! Back in the day there was rock and roll and that was it but now there’s so many talents out there all finding their own niche
That’s the other thing that upsets me too is Australian idol! They’ve made the record companies lazy! They then pick out the acts they want to sign and they’re not going out to the pubs and clubs and they’re not going out to see all the bands that are trying it out on their own. There’s that aspect to it but a lot of bands that are doing it on their own are kicking off well yet the idol system has made it a lot harder to get in it and the radio stations are not playing much Australian content, they’ve don that for years! They’d rather play an unknown band from Scotland than an unknown band from NSW or somewhere in Adelaide! They’ve got that against them so it’s difficult.

Its strangely limiting the way that music comes out compared to how free it was when it was all starting. In the sixties they thought it would last a couple of years then they’d all go back to art school

The competition was run through Jim Beam’s music website www.TheLBLM.com.

“Our new initiative Jim Beam Rockography is just another way we can celebrate the The Label Behind Live Music. Rockography is a great way in which we can showcase the work which goes on behind the scenes. We have enjoyed working with up and coming photographers and look forward to showcasing their artwork to the general public. Jim Beam would like to congratulate them on their great work of capturing amazing moments of live music”, says Ray Noble, Brand Director, Jim Beam Bourbon Portfolio
The exhibition will be running for 6 weeks for Oxford Art Factory patrons to enjoy.

Brought to you by Bowie at studio crossbowwww.studiocrossbow.com

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