Monday, March 03, 2008

The Big Picture

There's a lot to say for staying in one's comfort zone. Our comfort zone is on stage. And after the last year or so, I'd like to think we've gotten pretty secure in the studio too. But tell us to come to a band photo shoot and watch the sweat start to form on all four of our fore-heads.

Most of LBP's pics have up until now been taken by friends and loved ones. Tyson decided that this time, we needed to act like grown ups and hire a pro.

The Pro (Dan) met us at the Meridian at 9:30 am on Saturday (which seemed pretty early to me). We had been given the run of the place for the day because Tyson rocks and is able to get people to agree to things even if they have no idea why.

The Pro had already set up a couple of ideas that he'd had and wanted to know what "concepts" we would like to go with. We told him that it was up to him. We would soon regret saying that.

It didn't start too bad and the first shoot was really fun. We wore suits and were put side by side under light bulbs that made us all look like we'd each just had a Wile E Coyote, super genius type idea. But here's the problem. Picture this: The four of us, side by side (from left to right - Marc, Phyve, Morris and then me). Um........heard any good short jokes lately? Marc was kind enough to take some of the spotlight off of me though by wearing a suit that was just small enough to look like he was going to audition for the Kinks or the Killers. Thanks Marc :)

The next set was what the Pro called "the Sears family portraits". I'm sure you can picture what that means. The funny part was as we sat there looking like mannequins hocking dockers, the road crew for that night's heavy metal headliners "All That Remains" starting loading in gear for later. They had a good laugh at our expense. But little did they know, the good stuff was yet to come.

The Third and Final Set Up:
The Pro had up to this point seemed like a pleasant, kind, all American, nice guy type. All of the sudden, his eyes turned black, horns grew from his fore-head and his breath smelled a little bit like brimstone. He and his evil henchmen (one of which was Tyson), asked the four of us to stand in a very tightly packed group and hold our instruments as they wrapped us in plastic. When I say tightly packed, I mean....... I now have first hand knowledge of Phyve, Marc and Morris that will haunt me forever. Gone are the days of innocence. Now, remember the best part..... a pretty good size group of tattooed, shaven headed rock dudes, standing 10 feet away, gawking in amazement of just how F'ing lucky they were to witness such stupidity. (I wonder if they have a blog).

All BS aside though, the pics look great and honestly, we had a good time.

We'll put some of these pics up on the sites as soon as we get some copies.

We have a couple of shows coming up:
March 22 - Revolution Cafe in Bryn
March 23 - Space Place in Houston

Thanks for the support,
Thanks Dan (the brimstone breath wasn't that bad)
Tyson, revenge is a dish best served cold,
Coy - LBP Bass