ON FILM: SHINER LIVE IN LOS ANGELES 1997

DAVID BELLARD ARCHIVE PHOTO SERIES

FILM: KODAK P3200 T-MAX 35MM FILM
EQUIPMENT: CANON ELAN IIE w/ 28-80mm LENS

“I mean, they look like film stills from a b&w 16mm crime newsreel and what’s more L.A. than that? ”

Another post from the archives, this time going waaaaayyyy back to 1997 to my former life as a part-time music journalist and photographer in Los Angeles in the 90s. This is a photo shoot of the band Shiner, who were part of the “post-hardcore” music scene that emerged in the mid 90s and early 2000’s. The photos were to accompany an article I was writing about the band for a magazine (I can’t remember the name and couldn’t find it in my archive) and were taken prior to them playing their show at Spaceland in Silver Lake. In fact, the photos of the band goofing around were shot right in front of the club.

I shot the band on Kodak P3200 T-Max 35mm film, an ultra low light b&w film that I began using out of necessity because most of the live shows I photographed were of course in low light. T-Max film is not my first choice of film to use because its really grainy, but when shooting people with a flash at night it gave a fantastic 50’s film noir/True Detective magazine vibe to it - as you can see in the photos below. I mean, they look like film stills from a 16mm crime scene newsreel and what’s more L.A. than that? But most importantly, the magazines and record labels I was shooting for loved the grainy shots, so I worked with it quite a bit.

As previously mentioned I couldn’t find the magazine with the article, but I did find the cassette recording of the interview, and as luck would have it I recorded the show on the other side of the same tape. The recording of the show is what you would expect from a two-channel, handheld cassette recorder, but I digitized the cassette and cleaned the audio to the best of my abilities and posted the video below. I think its a great audio document of the band at their tightest - Shiner had just released their album Lula Divinia, and their set that night at Spaceland consisted mostly of songs from that album - and what the recording lacks in fidelity it makes up for in sheer energy of the performance.

Selfie, circa 1995

A bit of back story behind the photos and recording: I moved to LA shortly after graduating college in the early 90s and wound up working in the TV Animation division at the newly-formed DreamWorks studios. Though it was a super cool job and I got to experience many different aspects of the world of movie and TV production, I wasn’t working in a super-creative capacity at the studio. However I wasn’t directing my creative energy to that industry, I was really focused on indulging my vices and my music obsession through interviewing and photographing bands in the underground rock and rave scene in L.A. for record labels and magazines. I was heavily invested in this obsession for 4 or 5 years, writing dozens of articles and hundreds of music reviews for various magazines and zines, and usually took the photographs to accompany my own articles. Some of these photo shoots were better than others - I was still learning how to shoot and experimenting with different types of film and cameras. Probably half of the photos on every roll I shot were bad, but occasionally I would get some really nice shots. I’ll be posting more from this archive so you can judge for yourself.