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The Badlands have been doing Byron a noteworthy musical service recently, with their latest live efforts. After running a successful crowd-funding campaign, the band released their new EP on August 5th. and have begun a tour that is lighting up venues across the East Coast. With their biggest show to date just played at Byron Bay’s The Northern on August 12, the band are riding on a tidal wave of live support from their fans. There’s a murmur about the intensity and raw power of the band’s sound and they are living up to their name as being one of the Northern Rivers most exciting and  new bands.

Formed in 2014 as a group of musical talents from across Australia and New Zealand, The Badlands are rapidly becoming known for being the definitive emerging rock group to watch. Made up of NZ born Pauly Adams (Vocals), Mid-North Coaster Tommy Flint (Guitar), Melbourne’s Massimo Tolli (Drums) and The Sunshine Coast’s Alexx McConnell (Bass) the band have become increasingly tight as musical unit and group of friends.

Their recent gigs have seen fans hungry for the new tracks, which are now available on iTunes and Spotify, as well as physical CD online and at the gigs.  The word is spreading as The Badlands continue their upward musical journey, with dates due in Sydney and Melbourne coming up later in the year and ticketed shows indicating the rising demand for the band’s performances. As Lead singer Paul Adams says of the band’s shows:  “We are just best mates at the end of the day and we get excited. And whats more exiting than playing loud, hard music with your buddies.”

The new material was recorded through Byron Bay’s Studio 9, with the help of local producer Cameron Spike Porter, and marks a notable evolution in the bands addictive, mosh-inducing, grunge-rock sound. Local Byron artist NITSUA was commissioned to produce the artwork for their new EP, as well as for the debut single ‘Superstitious Wishes’, which was released on 05.05.2017, at what was deemed by one fan as:  “One of the best rock n roll shows to date at Woody’s Surf Shack. Elaborating on their sounds, Adams says: “It’s been a challenge to capture our sound over the years so we thought we should try a new process. It seems to be the best sound we’ve got in years.”

The Badlands are continuing with their run of gigs next weekend at The Sunshine Coast’s ‘The Basement’ in Nambour on Sep 1st and https://www.cialissansordonnancefr24.com/cialis-pas-cher/ followed on in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley at ‘The Bloodhound Bar’ on Sep 2.
Support comes from The Sunshine Coasts rockers Buck Dean and The Green Lips and The Los Laws.

Friday 1st Sep (The Basement,  Nambour)

Saturday 2nd Sep (The Bloodhound Bar, Brisbane)

Time: 9pm  Ticketed entry – $10

You can grab The Badlands new EP on CD, as well as other merchandise now available from the band at:

https://www.thebadlandsmusic.com

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When film director Marie Craven moved up from her very inner-city life in Melbourne to the Gold Coast in 2002, it was a bit of a mid-life crisis for her. “I always had an odd relationship with Melbourne,” she explains to me over a coffee in the coastal town of Palm Beach where she’s now living. “Artistically it was brilliant for me, but even though I had really walked away from background in the country it was such a primal place that I think that part of me always craved to be back in big space, if you like, where you can see the skies and the horizon,” she says. “Living within close distance of Mt Warning, the ocean scapes and the hinterland of the Gold Coast, I get that space, and for me it’s been a good compromise.”

The filmmaker who has really carved out a niche for herself with her experimental videos where she works in collaboration with poets, writers, musicians, and others to create miniature works of art, first started her experimental career, long before the age of technology, as a student in Melbourne.

“I originally wanted to be an actor,” she says. “I started in the theatre when I was only 15, but then unfortunately I was diagnosed with Chrone’s disease when I was 18, which can virtually destroy your immune system and to be an actor you have to have physical and emotional resilience and I simply wasn’t strong enough, so I began to pick up media studies, and it wasn’t long before I was making short Super8 film.”

Experimental filmmaker Marie Craven. Photo: Candida Baker

Melbourne’s grungy inner-city life quickly brought out the avant-garde in the country girl, and studying with filmmaking legend Arthur Cantrill, AM, further cemented her desire to make experimental films. “Film was my whole life,” she says. “I even married one of my teachers, Adrian Martin, who was a film critic for The Age, and I really plunged into the world of the Super8 experimental film. I worked in every way that you can on films, but one of the things I was very interested in was narrative form, which is not normally an experimental filmmaker’s interest. I tried to combine narrative form into my films, with quite a degree of success.”

That success included getting funding for three short films that did very well on the international circuit, and with her career taking off Marie chose not to finish her degree but supported her film-making habit through teaching and assessments.

But unfortunately for Marie, her Crohn’s Disease – which causes very painful inflammation of the intestines – kept flaring up in the hotbed atmosphere of city life, and so she decided to make a lifestyle change and head north.

Life many of us, Marie found that work for creatives was in short supply and had to set about reinventing herself in order to make a living. “I found myself branching out into all sorts of things,” she recalls. “I entered a short film in the Currumbin Film Festival, I set up my own short screenwriting course at Kingscliff TAFE, and I started doing teaching work at Bond University. I had to work very hard to earn a living – I was even doing data entry for some lawyers in Brisbane, and at the same time I was starting to do the occasional video project.   Because I’d always been a director I’d never been really hands-on with the computer, but as I learned more about it, I started doing some quite wild experiments with what you could do, which really took off in about 2007.”

One thing led to another, and Marie soon also found herself immersed in a whole new world in which working on the internet with people around the world offered her a way of combining all her film and dramatic interests with extra layers of music, vocals and experimental video techniques. “I partnered with a musician from Cardiff, Paul Foster,” she says. “We started a project called Cwtch, which is a Welsh word meaning hug, or safe place, and we’ve now been working together for some years, creating music and video collaborations.”

I first discovered Marie’s work after she had put a poem by a mutual friend – poet Amanda Stewart – to music. Often Marie is inspired to work on spec, and hope that the people whose work she’s adapting enjoy it. “I love the process of making these videos anyway,” she says, “and when I present them to people they seem to really appreciate them.”

Our introduction led in fact, to our own collaboration of videos she created to two of my poems, which in turn led to an invitation for both of us to work on an international poetry project with well-known UK video and poetry collaborators Helen Dewbery and Chaucer Cameron (elephantsfootprint.com) which will be released in the next year.

Poem: Kim Mannix makesmesodigress.com  Music: Adi Carter soundcloud.com/adicarter
Images: Flickr Creative Commons; Video and Voice: Marie Craven pixieguts.com

Talking to Marie, it strikes me – not for the first time – how curious it is the way that our lives ‘shape’ us. Her early years in isolated country seems to have given her a rich internal life – what she describes as her “dreamscape”; her years in Melbourne gave her work an intellectual edgy quality; her move north necessitated a new way of working – one that led her to discovering a ‘family’ around the world. “I think moving north was very instrumental for me in breaking out of the way I’d been working into these new collaborations,” she says. “It informed my work in two ways – I was inspired by the light and the landscape I found myself in physically and at the same time I had to find a way to connect with creative people to stay sane.”

Over the past year, since I first worked with Marie she’s notched up some extraordinary achievements including winning the recent Ó Bhéal International Poetry Film Competition. Her films have also been screened at festivals around the world, in Portugal, Spain, Germany with the UK and the USA on the cards for later this year. Her latest project, with UK spoken word poet Lucy English, entitled The Last Days, has just been completed.

Marie is truly an example of how international borders these days mean nothing to the creative universe as she continues her worldwide collaborations from her home on the Gold Coast.

You can see Marie Craven’s work on vimeo here: vimeo.com/mariecraven

For our collaborations go to: vimeo.com/174154097 (In the Forest) and (In the Temple) vimeo.com/176593832

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When Splendour Producer Jessica Ducrou opened What a life! Rock Photography by Tony Mott for us on the 10^th of June, like many in the room, she spoke of Tony’s incredible warmth, and how he had become a bit of a personality in his own right.

I recall living in Sydney in the late 1980s and early 90s when Tony’s name seemed to be credited with every rock image published. The free street music papers, On the Street and Drum Media were vital means to organise your social life – particularly in the pre-social media world. So Tony’s images played a role in visualising that important part of Sydney’s live music scene.

For me, this exhibition is a bit of a roll call of bands that bring back fond memories of that time. Bands such as Falling Joys, Box The Jesuit, The Hummingbirds, The Celibate Rifles and the Psychotic Turnbuckles among many, many others. These bands graced the stages of places such as the Hopetoun, the Annandale Hotel, the Trade Union Club, and the Sandringham Hotel. For those that lived in Sydney at the time, I’m sure these names nostalgically take you back.

While Mott was a strong advocate for emerging Australian bands, he also documented some of the biggest names in music – Björk, Madonna, Michael Jackson, KISS, AC/DC, Kanye West and the Rolling Stones.

Chrissy Amplett from the Divinyls in the first photography Tony Mott ever sold.

Mott credits Chrissy Amphlett as being the artist who gave him his first break. He initially thought she’d be impossible to photograph, but over a period of 5 months, he used her as his ‘muse’ to perfect the art of rock photography. When one of these images was used to promote her band, Divinyls, his career took off.

Tony’s photographs have appeared in more than 700 music magazines and street press journals including Rolling Stone, Juice, Drum Media, RAM and Juke. He has provided photography for more than 450 singles, EPs and albums.

What a Life! Rock photography by Tony Mott is touring from the State Library of NSW, where it was a massive hit over the Sydney summer. The last few weeks in Lismore have indicated it will be a huge hit here as well!

What a Life! Rock photography by Tony Mott is on at the Lismore Regional Gallery until August 12. For more info go to: lismoregallery

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There’s no point beating around the Bluesfest bush – Tom Jones is a legend.  Pure and simple, and as the closing act in the Mojo tent, thousands of people from 16 to sixty and more swayed and sang in happy unison.  “I’ve shot loads of Bluesfests over the years,” says local Byron photographer Evan Malcolm, who took the shot above, and the one below, “and I think what really stood out in this one was the diversity of the performers.  I mean – opening with Kendrick Lamar, and closing with Tom Jones?  Need I say more?”  We don’t think so.

Kendrick Lamar. The closing act on the first night. Photography: Evan Malcolm.

For photographer Kim Carey there were two soulful standouts during Bluesfest – guitarist Shane Fontayne and rock singer Melissa Etheridge. Shane Fontayne is the professional name of English rock guitarist Mick Barakan. Active since the 1970s, he was the guitarist for Bruce Springsteen during the 1992-1993 ‘Other Band’ Tour, and Bluesfest audiences were in for a double treat when the man who’s been dubbed the ‘transcendental guitarist’ played for Graham Nash and Jackson Browne.

‘Transcendental’ guitarist Shane Fontayne. Photography Kim Carey.

According to Carey, Melissa Etheridge’s energy was electrifying. “She gave us the full range of her musicianship, artistry and raw talent.” Amen to that.

Melissa Etheridge – electrifying. Photography: Kim Carey.

This year there was also the wonderful addition of the Boomerang Festival into Bluesfest, with Indigenous performers, dancers, singers and conversations on subjects rangng from music to displaced communities.  It was colourful, vibrant and thought-provoking as Brisbane’s LaVonne Bobongie Wall and Byron Bay’s David Young discovered.

Dancers at Boomerang – Bluesfest 2016. Photography: LaVonne Bobongie Wall.

Says Young: “I was walking past the Boomerang area when these indigenous women dancers caught my eye with their beautiful costumes and traditional moves.  It was a perfect photographic moment – the colour of the sky, the contrasting orange, grey and green.  Everything came together in what, for me, was a powerful moment.”

Indigenous dancers on Sunday at the Boomerang space. Photography: David Young.

From the sublime to the – well – extraordinary.  Peace Freeborn from Freeborn Films caught this great shot of The Residents. “The Residents penchant for anonymity adds an extra air of enigma to their already spectacular live shows,” said Freeborn.  “This shot for me encompasses that mystery.”

‘The Residents’. Photographer: Peace Freeborn/Freeborn Films.

In the same vein, Jade Hopley captured this amazing shot of the Pierce Brothers.  “This is my personal favourite shot from the festival.  It totally captured the energy and enthusiasm of this young duo.  They played to an over-capacity crowd in the Juke Joint – the crowd was literally pouring out.  They were so humbled and grateful for their reception, but in my opinion it was so well deserved.”

‘Pierce Brothers’. Photographer: Jade Hopley.

Every Bluesfest there’s a surprise – anybody lucky enough to wander past the Delta tent during Bluesfest this year when Fantastic Negrito were playing would have caught the resurgence of Xavier Dphrepaulezz, a major-label R&B musician in the 1990s who worked for nearly 17 years across a myriad of genres in Los Angeles, leaving music, seemingly for good, in 2007. But last year he re-emerged as Fantastic Negrito, playing “black roots music for everyone,” and it sure was for everyone.  LaVonne Bobongie Wall caught him in action.

‘Fantastic Negrito’. Photography: LaVonne Bobongie Wall

But if there was an act that truly stood out for pure action it had to be Vintage Trouble whose cool brand of  rhythm & blues brought the tent down . The band formed in Hollywood, California in 2010 and have had hit after hit since then.  This great shot is from The Music.

Vintage Trouble put on a vintage show. Photography: The Music.

And then.  There was this young man. Hans Christian Nordin, who’s been making waves since he was 13, and is only 17 now.  Kim Carey was, she said, “in awe of his talent.”

Hans Kristian Nordin. Photographer: Kim Carey.

Last but by no means least, we finish with an Australian band, The Cat Empire, a ska and jazz band who first played Bluesfest in 2003 at the old Red Devil Park (remember when?)  Evan Malcolm captured the headlining act in happy form – pretty much summing up how we all felt.  Bluesfest 2016 had everything we’ve come to expect – heat, rain, mud – and glorious, out of this world music.

The Cat Empire – perennial favourites at Bluesfest. Photography: Evan Malcolm.

Contact details for photographers:

Evan Malcolm Photography: evanmalcolm.com  Email: [email protected]
phone: +61423625540

Kim Carey: www.kimcarey.net/ kimcareyimages.com/ kimcarey.wordpress.com/

LaVonne Bobongie Wall: 0418285916 facebook.com/LaVonneBobongieWallPhotography

David Young: Tel:  0428 187 025  Email  [email protected]
davidyoung.com.au byronbayimages.blogspot.com  davidyoung.com.au/david/portraits/
FOR STOCK LIBRARY IMAGES       https://www.davidyoung.com.au/david/stock/

Peace Freeborn: Freeborn Films 0400080551 facebook.com/freebornfilms/

_Jade Hopley: Cofounder/Photographer HL Magazine Email: [email protected] hlmagazine.com.au_https://www.verandahmagazine.com.au/wp-admin/[email protected] facebook.com/holisticlivingtv

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What more beautiful place to get married than the beaches or hinterland of the Northern Rivers?  Verandah Magazine’s photographer Vanessa (The Lioness) Moore, showcases three of her recent personal favourites.  From a wedding on the beach to a Hills Hoist hitch – there’s nothing like a like a little romance on Valentine’s Day.

Says Ness: “I’ve been photographing Weddings and portraits for the past couple of years in Byron.  It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world to work as a photographer. Especially as a wedding photographer because there’s so much love and beauty in the area.”

Moore is launching a wedding photography business in combination with local videographer, Terry Brown from Byron Video, creating individual packages for their clients.  She’s also a talented family portrait photographer, and delights in taking the candid, natural shots that are her hallmark. “I’ve got four children of my own,” she says, “and so I realise the importance of capturing those special times.  For me my photography is about striving for a natural, truthful beauty within my images and that is exactly what wedding photography and family portraits give me the chance to do.”

If you’re interested in talking to Vanessa Moore about her photography packages go to: thelioness.photography

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“It wasn’t on my list of things to do,” says Derrett, over a cup of coffee. “It was just one of those things that fell into place.” Derrett, who recently retired as a senior English and Drama teacher from Trinity Catholic College in Lismore, received an email from Melbourne-based author Suzanne McCourt (whose first novel, The Lost Child was published last year). She’d written a book – Old Dogs, lessons in loving & ageing, and she needed somebody to photograph the dogs for her. “She’d heard from a mutual friend that I do quite theatrical photos and so we talked about what she wanted – and that’s how the project came about.”

The Lismore dogs were well-behaved in comparison to the Melbourne ones, Derrett says. “I did ten up here in my home studio – and they were great, very easy to work with. In Melbourne I went down to shoot 40 or so dogs. I must say they were very punctual – they turned up at half-an-hour intervals on the dot, rain or hail, which isn’t our strength in the Northern Rivers! We’d made a studio in Suzanne’s spa room and one huge Old English Sheepdog with hair all over its eyes, bounded into the room leapt straight into the pool and sunk to the bottom. We did CPR on it, took it down to the beach for a run and it was fine.”

Photographer Peter Derrett turns the camera on himself…

Never one to miss an artistic opportunity Derrett turned the incident into a photograph in the book with the shaggy sheepdog shaking its hair while being blowdried.

The book, with its quotes about what old dogs can teach us, came about because of McCourt’s experience of her own dog’s ageing. It made her wonder how she would age, and it spurred her interest in the relationship between old dogs and their owners. It was a project that appealed to Derrett. “We’d had an old dog, Dante,” he says, “so we’d travelled that road, and I’d taken lots of photos of him. I loved meeting the owners of the dogs when we were doing the shoots, and listening to their stories.”

McCourt rustled up the dogs from everywhere. “She stopped people on the beach, she asked dog-rescue people, owners of vineyards, friends and friends of friends,” Derrett says, “and she ended up with this wonderful collection of mixed characters and breeds.”

There’s a wonderful photograph in the book (page 27) of an elderly Boxer looking longingly at a doughnut, which, I have to say as the owner of two small and very naughty dogs is very impressive. “That dog stared at the doughnut without moving for 30 minutes,” Derrett recalls. “Then the owner snapped his fingers, and bam, the doughnut was gone in one mouthful!”

Rags – ageing gracefully. Photograph: Peter Derrett

Did he think, I wonder, that some of the owners looked like their dogs, or vice versa? “Absolutely!” he says. “Not always, but a lot of the time there was a similarity at least between dogs and owners that was very endearing.”

The book, published through McCourt’s personal publishing label, Posh Dog Publications, was the first of four projects McCourt and Derrett have created together. The next one, Old Dogs, Mindfulness and Meditation, like the first, raises funds for the Black Dog Institute to help aid research into depression. It was a chance for Derrett to use some of his personal favourites from Thailand, where he and wife Ros are based for much of the year these days.

“The Thais have a lot of temple dogs,” he says, “and many of the temples are sanctuaries for dogs. The photographic opportunities are endless there, and the monks pay the dogs a lot of respect. I think it’s a beautiful little book – and certainly if there’s one thing dogs can teach us it’s how to live in the moment!”

The inside cover of ‘For the Love of Elephants’ – another Derrett McCourt collaboration.

The Derretts first started going to Thailand regularly almost twenty years ago, and as Ros, an academic specializing in cultural tourism, began to get work lecturing at Naresuan University. A visit to an elephant sanctuary in Ayutthaya, 80ks north of Bangkok, led to an enduring friendship with the two Australian women Ewa and Michelle who run Elephantstay. Originally a graphic artist and zoologist respectively, the pair now run the biggest breeding program in the world for Asian elephants. “The sanctuary is owned by a Thai,” says Derrett, “but our friends run it. People can stay there for at least three days and are assigned an elephant. We’d been going there for years and it occurred to me that with Susan’s words and my photos we could make a great book.” The collaboration produced the beautiful little book – For the Love of Elephants which was also published last year.

Last but by no means least is the delightful Dogs in Venice which came about from the Derrett’s regular visits to the Venice Biennale. “We go every two years and stay for a month,” says Derrett, “so when Susan and I agreed that Venice would make a lovely book, I spent every day photographing dogs to demonstrate the city’s essence.   I had a little sign translated into Italian asking people if they wanted to participate and every single person answered me ‘yes’ in English!”

According to Derrett there are literally millions of dogs in the residential area of Venice, and basically dogs rule ok. “They’re everywhere,” he says. “Dogs sit on people’s laps at cafes and restaurants, or on the vaporettos (water taxis), or even on their scooters. They are literally everywhere, and part of people’s everyday lives in a way we don’t see in Australia.”

But whether they’re in Venice, Lismore, Melbourne or Thailand or hail from elsewhere, it would seem that at least for the dogs in these books, it’s a dog’s life.

All the books are available from poshdogpublishing

or Amazon, Book Depository or good local bookshops.

More of Peter Derrett’s photographic work can be found at peterderrettphotography

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Clarke took his photograph of Corymbia ficifolia flowers through his new Zeiss Makro Planar 100mm f/2.0, on the Sony A7. (“Probably the nicest lens I’ve ever owned,” he says.)

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