prolific.org

Bat for Lashes, originally uploaded by Caroline.

Natasha Khan’s tom-boyish, goofy performance was alright and the music was solid and I loved the way she dressed her stage… but I wasn’t feeling it. I hear so many other artists in her music and voice, and I’m not sure what makes Khan’s music hers. I kept thinking ‘Sounds like Tori Amos sounding like Kate Bush, not as distinctive’, ‘Sounds like Sinead… not as other wordly’, ‘Gosh, this is very Olwen Fouere’, (Who?), ‘Bit of Bjork, not as barking…’ I left before the end of the show. Ben Christophers played keyboards in the band. I wouldn’t mind seeing him again.

Classic compact 35’s, originally uploaded by Caroline.

This is my small collection of 70s compact 35mm rangefinders.

They can be yours for very little. I bought most of them off eBay for prices between 50 and 100 dollars. I’d like to keep one (not sure which one yet, but probably one of the Yashica’s). Make an offer.

Some of them work, some of them don’t. Some of them have sticky shutter problems (the Canons) and need servicing.

Find out more about these camera’s here:
www.cameraquest.com/com35s.htm

If anyone knows a place in The Netherlands where I can get the Canon sticky shutters fixed, please drop a line.

Grace bares her teeth, originally uploaded by Caroline.

My first concert of the year was a bloody great one.

She’s 60 years old and her body puts the rest of us to shame. Fashionably late, fabulously wearing a different Philip Treacy hat for every song and - mostly miniscule - threads over her fishnet panty hose. In between songs she’d disappear to the side of the stage, all the while making lewd comments to entertain us: ‘Give me something to suck…’

Ms Jones played a lot of songs from her surprisingly good new album ‘Hurricane’, but she didn’t forget her greatest hits: ‘La Vie en Rose’, ‘Pull up to the bumper’ (with on stage audience participation), ‘Nightclubbing’ and of course, ‘Slave to the Rhythm’, which she performed while gyrating a hula hoop.

It was the newer, more personal songs that touched me. The autobiographical ‘Williams Blood’ in particular, in which she channelled her mother talking to her daughter disapprovingly: “Why don’t you be a Jones like your Sister and your brother Noel?” But amazing Grace is blessed with the blood of her musician granddad Williams. She’s “wicked”, she says: “You can’t save a wretch like me…”

She closed the set with ‘Hurricane’ dressed in a flowing black robe, while a wind machine of giant proportions blew us and herself away.

View my Grace Jones photos on Flickr

Richard Harwood, Finghin Collins, Elizabeth Cooney, Carol McGonnell, Ian Wilson and Gavin Friday during rehearsals.

One more time before the new year I followed the music abroad, bringing me to a bitter cold Paris for a third time this year.

Though I found the second part of the concert, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, a little hard going, I did enjoy Gavin Friday’s narration of Marquez’s ‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’ as set to music by composer Ian Wilson better than I did the first time I saw it, in Brighton. It was the venue’s ‘recital’ setting, placing the musicians amidst the audience, that much improved the sound and intimacy. Gavin, hindered by the low lights and the yellow marker ‘popping’ on his print out, fluffed up a few times, but he also hit some sweet marks. Particularly the part of the text that goes ‘and the hidden strength of his heart popped the buttons on his shirt’.

Afterwards musicians, crew, friends - among which the lovely Fiachna O Braonain - and yours truly retired to a restaurant cellar where rustic food, sangria, wine, calvados and hearty laughter kept us warm, happy, handsome and quite, quite drowned.

Surrounded by Irishmen and women, I sometimes got a little lost - this Dutch fallen Prod doesn’t really ‘get’ the holy Host or Mise Éire, but it’s endlessly fascinating nonetheless and somehow I always feel more at home than I do amongst my own.

“While they fought for the privilege of carrying him on their shoulders along the steep escarpment by the cliffs, men and women became aware for the first time of the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams as they faced the splendor and beauty of their drowned man.” Gabriel Garcia Marquez - The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, set to music by composer Ian Wilson. Performed at the at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris on October 9, 2008.

More pictures of The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World

dEUS’ frontman Tom Barman ignoring the smoking ban at the Paradiso in Amsterdam. Seen on December 4, 2008.

View more of my dEUS photo’s on Flickr.

Excellent! Flickr slideshows are now very easily embedded using a ‘Share’ link in the top right corner. Read more about it on the Flickr blog. I like how the slideshow also plays the video’s you might have in your set.

It’s not April 1st, is it? Because this is funny enough to make me switch to Nikon.

Crunchgear reports Canon is releasing the Powershot E1, a camera for women. It comes in ‘vanilla white’, ‘aqua blue’ and ‘cotton pink’ (i.e. baby colours), and has fewer ‘unnecessary’ buttons… ’cause the little lady gets confused easily, yes?

The company created the E1 using ‘relaxation, positive feelings and friendliness as the main guidelines for the design of the camera’. It’s ’soft’ and ’rounded’. Like a tampon.

There’s a thought. Stick it up your own hole, Canon.

Cranes in the Antwerp docklands

I nearly got my head kicked in taking pictures this weekend in Antwerp. I escaped with a few bruises, mainly to my ego. I don’t want to go into the whole sordid tale, but the moral of the story is: ask people’s permission before you take their picture in the street.

Or, you know, stick to lovely, peaceful cranes.

Red reader, originally uploaded by Caroline.

No, I didn’t need another lens. But I thought it was an ok deal, exchanging my 3rd-hand 50mm + 175 euro for a pristine Canon 28-105mm. It’s the Japanese version, which is supposed to be better than the ones made in Taiwan.

I think it’s a very nice travel lens, as opposed to my rather heavy Sigma EX 24-70. I have to say I like the range, and it’s small enough not to attract too much attention. This one’s coming to Antwerp with me, alongside the 50/1.4 for low light situations.

I took this shot almost immediately after walking out of the shop.