Nightlife

'Young Nightlife' was the photography brief this week. Me and Helen went to a gig at the Fringe Club where there were three bands playing as part of the HK Live series of gigs. One of the features as always at the Fringe is the number of people taking photographs and videoing. It really seems that every little event is so recorded and documented nowadays. There were half a dozen photographers and two or three people with video cameras, plus people taking photos with their mobile phones etc. At the start there were more people documenting the gig than there were in the audience and at one point a kind of mini queue of people waiting to take close-up shots even developed.

We went to HK Live a few months ago and it was pretty good, especially a local band Innisfallen who were excellent, but overall this wasn't a great gig. The first artist was ST, a Hong Kong electronic artist who was by far the strongest of the three in the sense that he at least had his own sound and style and a bit of 'edge'. The second band, Marfa & Ne-af from LA, was visually the most interesting and most of the shots are of them but musically they were pretty dire. They were a 'we're crap but in a knowing, ironic kind of way so that makes it OK' kind of band. Unfortunately being knowing and ironic doesn't change the fact that they were still crap. The last performers were Snoblind - two accountants showing us their photo albums over a generic, wishy-washy electronic soundtrack does not an engaging multimedia experience make in my book, so we left.

Maybe I'm just getting too old for 'young nightlife'.