Going back to her roots: Dee-Dee Bridgewater at the Barbican

If you’re familiar with my blogging, you may have read somewhere along the line about the joys of being bald. Baldness is a good thing: fact!

Now many women can pull off the bald look.   Either you have the shape, or you don’t.  And because you have the shape, doesn’t mean you have the figure or the colour palette to look that good.  So, step forward, Ms. Dee-Dee Bridgewater , who performed at  the Barbican last Friday.  If anyone could make being a woman bald and sexy, it was her. For a full review of the gig, check here. However, here’s a shot from the night:

You Beauty! (& Mayra Andrade at the Barbican)

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” – Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (née Hamilton)

“If you really want to know what a beautiful person looks like,  wake up next to said person first thing the following morning”- My Mum.

Working within the visual industry, I get to see various sights from all over. With this in mind, you can’t deny that God has made everyone physically unique in one way or other. Granted, some people do abuse their bodies in one form or the other and they have no one to blame but themselves, and you have those who are born with ailments or sometime in their lives have a serious accident or crises. You also have those who take care of their bodies because, as someone once eloquently stated, “My body is a temple, that’s why I leave my boots outside!” I strongly believe that physical beauty is a gift. Like any other talent or asset that we have been blessed with, we either use it humbly, effectively and most importantly, maintain it. Either that or lose it. Do you remember back in school there was always that one person who was so fine and his/hubris was such that, later on in life, you come across that person again and age has not been kind to the person? The worst irony being that the one person who used be picked on at school for just being so ugly that they MUST have hit snapped every branch when falling from the ugly tree has now become a sight to behold in beauty. Sure, having a healthy body is a blessing, however beauty that is beholding to the eye is something else that just needs to be applauded.

Then there is the beauty that is Mayra Andrade. Oh, my sweet Lord! I reckon it’s been a while that I’ve been so gob-smacked by beauty that I’ve been distracted in doing my job. And so I find myself doing yesterday during her performance at the Barbican yesterday. Not only is she a beaut, she is a great singer, too:

What’s with the jogging?

First off, to all ye loyal readers of my ‘Aworan-isms & Aki’sms, I apologise for the lull.  E ma binu.  You all know what I mean..

If you live in the UK, you know that the weather kind of sucks at the moment. It could be better, then again it could also be worst. With the unreliability of the weather, you’re in the office contemplating how you’re going to go out and get some hot food for lunch. It’s 1pm, you get your massive umbrella and wrap up warm for Central London cold. And then you see a sight that never ceases to amaze you: people jogging. Jogging, kei? During working hours?? In this weather??? I can never fathom that. I mean, nuff respect for wanting to be healthy, but during working hours?!?!  Are  you going to Beijing to represent, or wetin??  “Oh, I do it to blow off steam!” That’s all well and good, but what if you go back into work and you have more problems? Wouldn’t it make more sense to jog after work? Man, the Europeans and Yanks in London love their jogging, o!

I was in the Hyde Park area yesterday for an assignment. On my way down, I lost count the number of joggers working up a sweat in the cold, all in the pursuit to stay healthy/blow of steam. You’d hear a ‘whoosh’ and see pairs of long, short, skinny, stubby, hairy, shaveless (You name it!) legs streak past you. I think I counted about 7-10 joggers within 5 minutes, all around 7pm. What I found more interesting was that all these excercisers were jogging at their own pace and not the sound of a single police siren!
I began to wonder whether you could pull this jogging malarky off in my neighbourhood. You don’t jog; you run, and in most cases, it’s because the police is after you, or a group or hooligans want to stab you, while the police are chasing them. Madness, I tells ya!! If anything, the only valid time, as a black person, you can run without the hassle is during the London Marathon. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “ki lo’n lemi?? (”What’s chasing me?”) Unless there’s an apocalyptic event that needs me running for dear life or there’s a bull on the rampage and charging towards me, or, God forbid, someone going ‘postal’, I-AM-Not-Running! I’ve done enough running in Niaja during student/political riots.

Anyway, as mentioned, went to cover an acoustic set of Ocean Colour Scene at the Hardrock Cafe. I’m not putting any of the shots up because, well, they suck.  So, as alternative I’m putting a shot I took about 4 years ago at Waterloo during the Summer heatwave.  The guy in the shot was so chilled basking in the sun, I could do with some of that right now!

Please, o! You no go vex…

Morning, all.

May I just say very quickly that I apologise for not being in blogville for a while.  I’ve just been busy, to the point that I’ve not checked other blogs or even written mine up. But all in due time. Until the, stay blessed and keep smiling…

How to get an Alicia Keys Photo-pass….

About 4 years ago, Alicia Keys had a concert in London. It was around the same time I started out in Live Music Pictures. My missus was getting tickets for herself and my brother for the gig and asked whether I’d like one. Of course, being cocky like an Oak tree in the face of an industrialised chain saw ready to be halved, I declined the offer, truly believing in my self worth that I’d be able to blag a Photography Pass for the show. Suffice to say that that didn’t work out. I reckon I had to eat a couple of Humble Pies before I began to understand how the industry works, get work published and hustle in making contacts for passes.

Anyway, fast forward to last month and I find out that Ms. Keys would be performing at the O2 Arena. By now I contacted the Record label’s press office in London for some help. May I just say for the record (no pun intended) that the guys at that press office have got to be ‘the most friendly, caring, and understanding bunch around’. (Hah!! I laugh at my eternal optimism!) Managing to get the name of the contact dealing for photo-passes from that press office is like trying to wring water out of stone, and that is no exaggeration. Cut a long story short, I sent about 3 emails out to the contact dealing with the PR for the gig, but with no response at all. Now these days, I’ve come to the realisation that there is only so much you can do at times with certain things, and leave the rest to God. When it comes to ‘Celebrity gigs’, don’t bother having a hernia if you don’t get a pass. So imagine my suprise on the night of the concert, I get a call from a contact asking if I can cover the show on his behalf. Hah! what do you know?

Anyway, may I just say that Alicia Keys gig is outstanding live. Her stage manager, a lovely Yank, briefed the photographers as to what the set up was going to be like, how long we had and how the lighting was going to work. Do you know how long ago it’s been that we’ve been given the heads up as to how a performer is going to be on stage? Beyonce, take note! I’m not much of an Alicia Keys fan, but just for that humble attitude yesterday, she’s alright by me.

Now the show would have been just perfect yesterday, except my nemesis, the over-excited, under-staffed yet moronic security staff just wanted to cause problems. We’d been warned earlier not to touch the stage, to which we agreed to. Now, you have to to understand that we are about 2 feet away from the platform and working under cramped conditions, so you’re bound to have your foot move in about 2 inches into the ‘No -Go’ Zone. This burly skinhead security had already had it in for me and just wanted confrontation. He starts off with shouting “What do you F&*$@ do think you’re doing?!?!?” I looked back him and responded back in kind, “What the hell do you think you’re doing??” See, I don’t tolerate bullying of any kind, and the buffoon was trying to psyche me out and I just looked back at him. After you’ve looked down the barrel of a gun or threatened with a knife, having just muscles doesn’t have that scare-factor on me, and that’s no brag. I strongly believe in the saying, ‘He who angers you controls you‘, and I have to admit that this punk really put me off taking pictures yesterday night. The worst this dude could have done is try and chuck me out and try to hit me, and I need a new camera, anyway. Then it dawned on me: this over-shaped neanderthal is always going to feel that he’s ‘Da Man’, so I might as well let him swim or even drown in his own self-importance. Even after the gig, the other photographers were surprised that ‘Security Baboon’ was picking on me, considering that they were getting closer to the stage than I was. So, if any of the powers that be that deal with security at the 02 arena happen to read this, you might want to invest in etiquette classes for your over-muscled goons.

Right: rant over. Here are a couple of shots from the night: