The Alan Parsons Project! (with pictures from the concert!)

[shooraijin]

Okay! Let's see who knows *this* band!

DR. EVIL. Anyways, since my "death star" laser was invented by the noted Cambridge physicist, Dr. Parsons, I thought we'd name it in his honour -- the Alan Parsons Project.

Scott SNICKERS again.

DR. EVIL. What now?

SCOTT. The Alan Parsons Project was a progressive rock band from 1982. Why don't you just name it Operation Wang Chung, (dummy)?

We went to see them at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills yesterday and it was a great show! (marred only by Parsons messing up a bit on the first verse of Eye in the Sky, but he was never noted for his singing abilities anyway). Definitely standing room only, and a lot of my photographs didn't come out well, but some of them are passable, and as you can see, we got to meet the man himself! My friend CB and I were over chatting before the concert near the swag table, and CB noticed a bearded guy (the dude is big ...) signing photos for sale and pointed him out. So we walked over, and there he was! Shook hands, expressed silly little gushes of admiration, weaseled an autograph of my Eye in the Sky CD, and dropped $25 on a T-shirt. Hey, but it's a concert! You have to expect pricey apparel.

Anyway, despite the standing room only, the rude people and one bad verse, the show was stupendous. They did the big numbers, including Sirius, Old and Wise, Can't Take It With You, Games People Play, Time, Prime Time, Lucifer, Wouldn't Wanna Be Like You, Psychobabble and a few cuts from their new album, which has David Gilmour on it, so Floyd fans in the audience will probably want to check it out. It's a little more electronic than their usual sound -- I expect this is the influence of the Crystal Method, and people are whining that there's 'Not Enough Gilmour' -- but it had a hypnotic feel and seemed to go over well.

Anyway, on with the pictures, including a dumb luck low-light shot of Alan that came out really nicely. Good stuff. This was an exercise in adverse conditions because trying to find a vantage point to shoot from, let alone set up the microtripod on, was nearly impossible. We just kept shooting and hoped some of them would come out, and fortunately a few did.

[ClosetOtaku]

Ohmigosh, a blast from the past. Yes, I remember them, vaguely. I can recall all the lyrics to "Eye in the Sky", one of those songs that received endless radio airplay. Besides that, I don't know much about the band. Thanks for the review, and those pictures are very nice (I really like the one with the yellow lighting).

[shooraijin]

Thanks! ^^ Yeah, the pictures had no right to come out at all. There were tonnes of people milling around, and I couldn't get a stable shot (and of course the band members wouldn't hold still, which just slaughtered any kind of long exposure time). Even with all the stage lights up, there was still very minimal ambient light. The red-light pictures, perplexingly, came out generally well (this one here was the best of the bunch, but there were a couple passable others).