Doc Mode Activity - The Young American Rock Band

I include a photographic record in an observational mode.  I shot this last year and I never got to do anything with this, until now. One is a collage that follows a rock band for two days. The other is a mixture of how I though my work would look like due to the illegal drug the members of this band would surprisingly use to compose music.  I was merely the cameraman who wouldn’t interrupt or mess with their reality.  I believe the place, their clothe and the things they would drink would all make a statement in a very popular tendency on a regular American band. This band dresses just like a band from the eighties-Things literally do not change.

I felt tempted to stop recording or to just not be in that place, because I felt like I was partaking of that, why?   Might be Ethic?  I don’t partake of drugs or similar stuff, why would I be interested on this.  The fact that I was recording all the time, and specially looking for some sort of thing to happen might have put me in a place in which I was there to mingle. Although I wasn’t involved or interacting with people.  I was interested in the fact that I could see a sort of change in them that I could portrait over film or pictures.

This band at the beginning has their regular breakfast, and after that during rehearsal, they used some drug that looks like a candy, swallow it really fast, and then continues composing some music. Practicing some songs for their performance at the Velour. Although, I didn’t see a big change, only found that they were a bit loopy and apparently hyper.  Later at the Velour, they are told not to drink alcohol, so their way to get away of that is mixing Coke with alcohol in a plastic bottle. 

In the concert, they connect with their audience who kind of looks like they are all part of the same group of friends. The members of the band and their friends didn’t seem threaten by the cameraman, they act according to me, very natural.

Stylistically speaking, I edited and pick the photos and place them in a sort of chronological order. Hoping this order can make and give the audience a big picture of this whole situation and story in which they get to performed in this popular place who helps local bands to show their art.  Also, the colors and the decision of doing a collage instead of placing each one of the pictures is because the details in this performance and the set make a whole difference on this band.  

Although this is not the War Room-not a lot of tension. I believe there is a sort of truth and crude reality of a world that still keeps maintaining the same traditions and component of young American bands. I couldn’t see a great difference in the effects on drugs in their musical performance, and I feel that there should be maybe a more scientific approach to this matter.  And personally, I remembered part of my childhood, and the time when I would watch documentaries of Woodstock with my dad.

https://soundcloud.com/ricardo-quintana-4/night-at-the-velour