In May of that year, she came back to town to play her first Chicago show, at the Park West nightclub. I stopped by to say hi before the show, and she thanked me for making the ordeal 3 months earlier fairly painless. Fifteen minutes later, she took the stage and a voice like nothing I had heard in a long time roared out of the PA system! WOW. She had no stage presence, but she could sing! She came back to town toward the end of the year and was even better. Still didn’t move much on stage, but she was working on it.

By the following year she was a superstar, selling out the large outdoor venue in the suburbs for two nights. By that time, the restrictions were already in place (First three songs only) but I thought it would be worth it. I went both nights, got some pretty good pictures, and saw a much better performer.

That would be the last time I photographed her, as the restrictions got worse each year and it just wasn’t worth it any more.

But man, she could sing!!

Watching it reminded me of a story. It was November of 2003, and I went to the House of Blues to photograph a guy named Gavin DeGraw. I set up some lights near a bar to wait for Gavin to finish his sound check. There were five scroungy looking guys sitting around. I asked them if they were a band playing that day. They replied that they were a California band called Maroon 5. Since I was sitting around doing nothing, I asked them if they wanted to do a photo shoot.

Of course they said yes. This was 2003 and bands had not yet been taught to fear photographers. I don’t know what happened to Gavin DeGraw (I think he is still hanging around making music), but Maroon 5 got VERY famous. Seeing Adam Levine on The Voice reminded me that sometime the nice guys win!!

Among the superstars on stage that day, including Chuck, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Linda Ronstadt and many more, she stood out as a singular talent!

She got her start as the lead singer of the Peaches, who were discovered and nurtured by Johnny Otis and went out on many tours that he packaged and promoted.

Ironically, Johnny Otis passed away three days before Etta. He was a Los Angeles talent scout, producer and musician, who nurtured acts such as Jackie Wilson and Etta. He introduced Lieber and Stoller to Big Mama Thornton. They went home that night and wrote “Hound Dog” which Johnny Otis produced and played drums on. Although he was white, he traveled through the South and stayed in segregated hotels with his black tour mates as a show of solidarity.

Finally, on January 31^st, Don Cornelius took his own life in Los Angeles. He was 75 years old, and contributed to the acceptance of black musicians by the white listening audience by producing “Soul Train”, the longest running syndicated show in television history. Last September 5^th, the City of Chicago produced a concert celebrating the 40^th Anniversary of Soul Train. I spent much of the day with Don, who couldn’t have been more charming. The music was fantastic, the audience blown away by the talent on stage. Don seemed very touched when he was told on stage that a street was being named after him, and was presented with a street sign from that street. It is sad that his life spiraled out of control in five months that he took his own life. He will be missed. As he used to say:

LOVE, PEACE, AND SOUL. Good night.

1.The best show on television right now, in regards to storytelling, acting and best of all production values, is Justified, on FX. Based on a character invented by Elmore Leonard, the best mystery writer I have ever read, it follow the exploits of a US Marshall in Harlan County, KY. Raylan Givins, played by Timothy Oliphant travels through the show each week, shooting bad guys and seducing, and getting seduced, by beautiful women. The bad guys are amazing, especially Margo Martindale, who won an Emmy last year, and the incomparable Walton Goggins (Shane from the Shield), playing an old high school buddy of Raylan, who is alternately good and evil (sometimes in the same scene). The show is so beautifully filmed and lit that I find myself taking notes about lighting techniques, sometime stopping the DVR and rewinding to make drawings of where the light is coming from and trying to figure out how they do it.

2. Boss, which just completed it’s season, stars the amazing Kelsey Grammer as a corrupt mayor of Chicago, who is also dying of an incurable ailment. The camera work is exceptional- almost every scene is shot from an unusual angle with more extreme close-ups than any other show on television. The tension that is built from a full frame half of a face is fabulous. The occasional gratuitous female nudity is kind of fun also!

3. Prime Suspect, on NBC, is so good that, of course it has already been cancelled! Maria Bello and Aiden Quinn star in this great NYC police drama. The lighting and photography are amazing, matching lighting to the vibe of the scene (harsh lighting for interrogation chambers, soft lighting for high end murder scenes) It is mostly shot in muted earth tones, and New York at night takes on an otherworldly look. The acting is great, with just the right amount of humor to break up the sadness. Maybe a cable network will pick it up and save it.

Day one: Hanging with the Shure guys (that’s who I am working for out here). Appearances by Ken Caillat (engineer of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” and his daughter Colbie. Line around the booth to get her autograph after she was done performing. Paparazzi everywhere (This is Southern California, after all). Kept on flashing flashes in her face, taking the same picture over and over. Day ended with The Makepeace Brothers, young Americana band that sounded great. I Think that they might make something of themselves! As I was leaving, I ran into my old friend C.J. Vangston, who is famous for many things, one of which is for being the keyboard player for the mighty Spinal Tap!!
Day two: The day started out with an autograph signing with Meshuggah, a Swedish hard rock band made up of four guys that look to be in their forties or fifties. Nice guys. I wonder if any of them are Jewish. Meshuggah in Hebrew stands for crazy! Next up was Lincoln Brewster, California Chrisian guitar player and singer. Couldn’t have been nicer. Equally so were his fans, who mingled with the fans of the next two acts- Korn and Alice Cooper! Then the craziness started. First Alice Cooper, then 3 guys from Korn! Their fans were very peaceful, unlike the slimeball photographers, who continually shot off flash after flash in their faces while calling to the artists, asking them to look up and ignore their fans so that they could get another twenty identical pictures! WTF, the guy is sitting on a couch on a stage, every picture looks the same. It was obvious that they were trying to crop out everything but Alice’s head, so they could get a mediocre headshot (or 20) for their agency. It is always hard to understand why they put up with this, but I guess it is part of the job now.

Day three: Hanging out with the GOD OF METAL. Rob Halford of Judas Priest arrived to sign autographs and receive a chrome microphone from Shure. For an hour and a half, he signed for anyone that walked up, and was, as I told him after the event, a total mensch! He told me that he was looking into doing a search to find out if he is part Jewish (he has a Rabbi working on it.) Following him was Dawes, a new rock band who played some great stuff and signed for an hour also. The day was filled with many celebrities coming to hang out, including Kerry King from Slayer, comparing head tattoos with Rob.

All in all a cool three days, but I am heading home to peace and quiet

See http://www.kramerarchives.com/ for some great stuff!

So, after a few takes of the song, something needed to be adjusted and everyone took a break. Robert started playing a simple melody on his steel guitar. Buddy, sitting next to him, without looking over, started playing along. The rest of the band, two of whom were not even in the same room, joined in. No words were exchanged, nobody looked at anyone else, and ten minutes of amazing music emerged through the speakers, while all the onlookers in the studio just stared at them with amazement. I turned my eyes to the board, and Eddie was mixing the song as it emerged. At one point, with no visible communication, the song came to a conclusion, and spontaneous applause erupted in the control room. Robert looked at Buddy and smiled, and Buddy said “Let’s get back to work.”

In my almost 40 years in the music business, I can count on one hand those kind of moments that make all the crap in the business just fall away, and the true reason for being in the business becomes apparent. MUSIC!

I regularly get two kinds of calls about this kind of situation:

1. Publications and record companies that want to use one of my photographs as “artist reference.” Regardless of whether they want to paint something loosely based on one of my photographs, or want to copy the photograph exactly as a drawing, they have to pay me an artist reference fee. I almost always agree to this, for a small few, as it usually doesn’t conflict with my ability to license the photo.

2. A visual artist will contact me and ask my permission to paint a painting based on one of my photographs. I always allow them, as they can slightly alter my work and call it a derivative work. So why not let them use it? It is kind of flattering.

My biggest question concerning this issue: The photograph on the cover is a rather simple tight photograph. Why didn’t the producer find a guy who looked like Miles, photograph him and a horn on a black background and digitize that? Could have saved himself a lot of money!!!

1^st up: The Ramones

2^nd up: Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie

To wrap it up: Tom Tom Club, with Jerry Harrison, basically the Talking Heads without David Byrne.

I asked for a photo pass, and was told I could shoot the first three songs of each set. Oh well, better than nothing, I thought. Then they called me back and asked me if I could get something from the tour into Playboy, my biggest client at the time. No problem. The Ramones were cool, Debbie was better. After the three songs, I sat on the side by the backstage door to watch the rest of her set. As the set end, the stage got pretty dark, she grabbed her shirt and took it off, stood in the middle of the stage for about 10 seconds, and the stage went dark. WOW- perfect Playboy shot- too bad I couldn’t shoot it!

Depressed, I walked backstage and ran into Debbie. She said “I did that for you- did you get it?” I explained why I didn’t, and she shook her head, exclaiming “That’s pretty stupid’, and walked away. She came back five minutes later and said, “What are you doing tomorrow? Want to come to Milwaukee?”

So the next morning I called the publicist and asked for 5 minutes with each band after sound check in Milwaukee. Done, and I packed to head up to cheese country, 90 miles away. After sound check, I did three photo shoots in about 10 minutes, and Debbie told me to be ready at the end of their set later that night. I was!!

So, now we turn to November 1982, and she was playing the big hockey arena in town. I called her publicist to request a photo pass, and was told that Pat does not allow photographers at her shows any more. In those days, I very rarely took no for an answer, so I went to the show anyway, and snuck my equipment in. I found a pretty good spot and shot the whole show. The next day I sent photos to all the major rock magazines, and made a killing off of them, as there were no good photos around.

I have always thought that that was the start of the “no photos” era of the business. I tried to fight it for a while- I knew a lot of the security guys at the local venues, and they always let me sneak in, but I soon realized that the photos weren’t as good, it was too much of a hassle, and if they didn’t want me there, I would just as soon stay home. Oh well, the beginning of the end.

Yesterday (Saturday) I watched an ESPN Special on Tebow, documenting the time between the end of his college career (Heisman trophy and 2 national championships at Florida) and the moment he was drafted in the first round by the Denver Broncos. During the entire period documented, the show kept on cutting to so-called experts explaining why Tebow would not make it as a quarterback in the NFL, and would most likely be drafted in the 3^rd or 4^th round of the draft. In between these glowing testimonials, the show followed him dedicating himself to making himself an NFL quarterback, including one amazing scene of him pushing a full size SUV down a country road and getting it up to 10 miles on hour!

So this year, Tebow was made the starting quarterback, out of desperation, and has led the Broncos to seven wins in the last eight games, and has brought them to first place in their division. Today (12/18) he goes head to head with the best quarterback playing in the NFL right now (Tom Brady and the New England Patriots). We shall see who prevails.

I would love to see someone go back and ask all the “experts” what they think now. It always galls me when I go to see a band, they give it their all, and I read the next day in the paper about how bad the band was! I always want to call the critic and ask to hear his recordings, or ask when he is next playing live!