Anna Webber – Los Angeles Photographer

(Original Story HERE AT LA Weekly)

[Legendary rock photographer Jim Marshall passed away last week at 74.

One of our own photographers and writers, Anna Webber, wrote this personal reminiscence about Marshall and his legacy. She contacted Marshall's fellow purveyors of iconic '60s images and got their exclusive permission to reproduce here some of their shots of Marshall. This is a rare chance to see the man behind the camera captured by some of his best colleagues.]

© Robert Knight // For Anna Webber

Jim Marshall

​

The Water is Muddy, the Belly Is Lead, the Wolf is Howlin, the Heat is Canned. Jim Marshall, Rock and Roll Photography Legend, 74, Dies.

After getting the message about Jim Marshall’s passing last Wednesday, my heart went narrow. And my hand — surely leaked mojo. “Too close for comfort, baby,” I thought. “But as always, too far away.”

Jim was responsible for some of the most iconic rock n’ roll photography this world has ever seen. His work can be seen in galleries internationally, and his legend, like fellow music photographer Neal Preston explains below, “truly preceded [him] — like an R. Crumb cartoon character, drawn walking down a street with his feet and legs 10 feet in front of him.”

I met Jim while I was working for Baron Wolman, most famous for his seminal photography for Rolling Stone Magazine in the late 60s through the early 70s. At the time, Jim made it abundantly clear he wasn’t thrilled by me — a 19 year-old girl with a camera who liked to take pictures of rock stars.

(more…)

Oniracom, a Santa Barbara based new media collective/record label, has interviewed yours truly, doing a pretty good job at getting inside the head of a music industry photographer

You’ll even get to see me in action, and read about what it’s like being a “rock music photographer” today.

It wound up on their Solutions for Dreamers blog. Check it out here!

Solutions for Dreamers: INTERVIEW with Anna Webber

The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s play live at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, California

Photos By Anna Webber

Howlin Rain and the Akron / Family perform at the El Rey August 29, 2009. Photos by Anna Webber.

Devendra Banhart, the family affair
By Anna Webber

Chronicle Books, Filter magazine and Space15Twenty kicked off  a month-long gallery event Saturday with the ³Family: Photographs by Lauren Dukoff² Book signing and celebrational gathering with special guests Devendra Banhart, Matteah Baim, Ariana Delwari, Hecuba, and others.

It’s dusk in Hollywood, the devoted arrive early, the restless in line, the new-age hippie kids of Los Angeles, Topanga, and Laurel Canyon feed in and usher through the chipped brick corridors of the open air venue. They want to reminisce and imagine what it was, and existentially adhere to the dream. They are there to sit in Lauren Dukoff’s shoes, the one lucky enough of all of us to have been there at the right time, to have high-schooled with Devendra, a few years younger. It’s the Almost Famous story of a kid who got hooked in, literally, hooked in, and mentored by the new ones. Not the Rainbow children who weave baskets and sleep in vans, no longer the sort from obsolete Woodstock communes of 50 years ago. But so much the same, yet so much more innocent.

Members of the Family include Devendra, Joanna Newsom, Bat For Lashes, Vetiver, Cibelle, Hecuba and more. Lauren, with her long black pigtailed hair, rosy cheeks and dark, purple eyes, has photographed them all. She sits behind a table of books, posters, and flyers, hugging hippie boy after hippie girl, scrawling loose signatures across each of her bound books. She hugs each and every one, each dressed in their Sunday’s best, feathers and beads. To an outsider, it really was a family affair. Most looked the same, and similarly familiar. It goes to show its not just the glam-rocker batty-eyed stilleto-ed Too-Good-For-You’s here in LA. The place was packed full, and the line outside wrapped around the corner.

The sun sets and Devendra walks through the crowd to the stage, meeting there Adam Tullie, and Angeline Rivas. The set was fine, just fine, just three songs and a half. Two were full instrumentals, there were no lights, little volume. But you could hear a pin drop. Few were satiated, but after getting past the hurried set one realizes it’s not the music everyone was there for, it was the feeling. This was Lauren’s night.

Listen while you read:

[03:45] the prowl-dan auerbach

[06:18] Dan Auerbach live at SXSW 2009

(photos: anna webber)

Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys Live at SXSW’s Mojo Magazine Party at The Mean Eyed Cat

Danny boy Auerbach kills it again, slapping out the mean-eyed blues in the hot sun at Austin’s cherished Johnny Cash tribute bar. Hungover as we can so become after playing through a secret show till 5:00 the same morning, Auerbach still manages to thread together a thick dose of blues loud enough to stain any olfactory lobe within convincing reason. Chugging bottles of ice water, the globs of beard gum dripped quickly loose, hung, and at a moments notice landed if not on the high register, on one of us. He looses the tie fettered round his neck, and like mad, amounts to greatness. Though the delirium tremens clearly awoke the spins, he manages still to make good use of his loving arms (see below:)

It was an intimate gathering of saints, sinners, filthy blues and little or no upset. Backed by the San Antonio band Hacienda, Auerbach gave it as beautiful as always, his love for country and blues hardly unsurpassed. The girls were coming around serving ice cold Coronas, as if we looked like were lacking. They were happily accepted as we choked on our twelve bars of country twang, surely a day I had already concocted somewhere in dreams. It was the abrasions left on my psyche, applied by the unusual thing that is young Auerbach that convince me to remember it wasn’t just that.

Like a gentleman he took one of my photography postcards and stuffed it in between a few spent papers in his Moleskin. For a moment he had it rough and posed during a few photographs with the very tactile version of me, and, unsatisfied as they so become, he, along with Hacienda, had to bolt immediately for some tacos.

(Here are some photographs of the day. Click, they will become larger)

Looking forward now to Patrick Carney’s solo debut (drummer of The Black Keys duo), titled: Drummer. It  features Carney (on bass), Jon Finley from Beaten Awake (guitar/vox), Steve Clements from Houseguest (keys), Jamie Stillman from Party of Helicopters (guitar) and Greg Boyd from Ghostman and Sandman (drums). They are working on an album to be released in the fall on Carney’s label, Audio Eagle.

HECUBA

listen while you read:

[01:58] Hecuba – Tom & Jerry

Jon Beasley

(photos: anna webber)

Jon Beasley and Isabelle Albuquerque are a band – and a brand new genre.

By Anna Webber

Hecuba is pretty well clipped in with our L.A. art/pop/space/macabre scene known to lurk around in black boxes and low-beat dub lounges that chip paint off the ceilings in the backstreets of downtown. They’ve toured with Devendra Banhart and friends, and are — absolutely and unequivocally — a delightfully inspired pair. Jon Beasley and Isabelle Albuquerque kick out theatrically crafted, ambient electro-dub – weaving, chugging, spacey, licking, scratching dance … compositions.They’d much rather feather around talking about the music than give the kind of quick-lipped answer that we’re used to. When asked to classify their EP, Sir (Manimal Vinyl), they say it’s of the genre of “Aw-man-I-dunno,” and redirect you to their press site to hinge on what “they all” have to say.

“We find importance to leave it up to the listener … see it how you’d watch a film or story, interpret it that way,” says Albuquerque.

In fact, new interpretations of their music are well received by the band, who publish new mixes of their songs by other people on their site (www.hecubahecuba.com) and their MySpace (www.myspace.com/hecubahecuba). Their Butchy Fuego “Virtual 7” No. 1” Sir re-mix is available as a free download at hecubahecuba.com.

Sir creeps and croons across hypnotic, dreamlike non sequitur. It can echo you along a trance-y lull or make you feel like you’re at an underground dance party with Tom and Jerry, Yoko Ono and a twitching videogame caught on “Berzerk,” maybe “Asteroids.”

These songs were birthed out of a cartoon, and equally characteristic, they are playful, fun, on the edge of dangerous and moving. What then courses out from the cat-and-mouse pair is a flossing through rhythms and sound bites with rapid precision.

This EP is a swathing of echoes through loud speakers and ends up something that the media feels the need to be qualified, quantified, categorized, customarily. Aw man, just go listen.

“We are really into theater … [the name Hecuba] was a joke, now it’s really more serious. It’s the tragicality, the theatricality of the character Hecuba … she got into the sensibility of what we were playing,” remarks Albuquerque.

The character Hecuba went insane after seeing the grisly dead corpses of her children Polydorus and Polyxena.

“Our music was inspired by L.A. We started out in New York, working on science fiction musical projects, theatrical stuff. The music turns itself out, we let the ideas go wherever they want to go,” says Beasley.

As entertainers who have a heavy history in theater and film, the intrigue seems to lie partly in the access one gets to audience perception in order to power each individual show.

“Every place is so different. We try to make our shows uniquely specific to the place,” says Albuquerque. “Our music takes on a lot of different characters.”

In 2007 Hecuba went with Banhart on his West Coast tour. When asked what that was like, Albuquerque starts laughing, “Oh! There was this one time at the Orpheum Theatre in L.A., Devendra got all these kids up on stage, they started dancing … it was wild. The stage almost fell down, the fire marshal got called … pretty beautiful.”

Devendra has dubbed Hecuba “the best band in L.A.”

“The next record is going to be so different from the EP. We hope as many different people as possible will be interested in our music,” Beasley says. “A full-length pop record. We are making songs that are incredibly musical, actually, inspired in part by Michael Jackson. We are excited to hear it start turning itself out.”

Sir is currently available. Hecuba will perform Oct. 31 at the Hammer Museum and Nov. 11 at the Smell. For more information, visit hecubahecuba.com.

Lee “Scratch” Perry
@ the El Rey
September 3
72 year-old Lee “Scratch” Perry wasn’t scratching anything down at the El Rey last Wednesday, but he did tickle the hell out of the crowd’s olfactory nerve from up on-stage. It’s kind of like Lee Scratch-and-sniff after he lights up his half dozen or so incense sticks during the first song, which he proceeds to secure to the top of his baseball cap that had been festooned to the T with trinkets, medals, pins—and not without—the jimmy-rigged metal incense holder. But, as it goes, the hat appropriately matched the rings on every finger, his adorned mic set, emblazoned with the same sort of arrangement as the hat fabulously held. His over-stuffed, over-spacious Lucky Charms bomber jacket, and the bulky leather boots tatted with patches and paint, etc., quite enhanced the legendary old dude.

But he’s not just any old dude.
He’s one of them granddad rarities attributed to reggae at its rising, having helped form it tough at its roots.
Being one whose musical talents have assisted quite notably in the generation of reggae and dub sounds, Perry has also produced albums for Bob Marley & the Wailers, The Heptones, and other reggae spear headers.
The band Perry’s got behind him now is comprised of youthful, twenty, maybe thirty-somethings, none at all as dark as he, displaying outright that soul doesn’t come in colors. They jibed it, absolutely.  Lee Scratch has still got it.
-Anna Webber

listen: jessie baylin – sweet for this one

jessie baylin plays at the hotel cafe 2006 (photos: anna webber)

jessie baylin plays live at the roxy 2008 (photo: anna webber)

Local artist feature: Reviewing Songstress Jessie Baylin

Singer and poet, Jessie Baylin’s style is organic and pure, uncontaminated by industry regime, mainstream artists, vocal lessons or theory. Her singing transcends all words and categories. Her luck is uncanny.
Baylin, 21, has been performing and recording less than a year, already signed a publishing contract with Sony, befriended big talent in the industry and enamored thousands of listeners across the world. Many of these aficionados have formed, by themselves, a street team to spread her music.
“She’s an unsigned artist, only been playing for the last year or so, but has managed to capture the elusive ‘industry buzz’,” said singer/songwriter Zack Hexum.
Her music is timeless, leaving a glimmer of hope in the fate of jazz, soul, blues and rock n’roll.
“It’s like Joni Mitchell meets Billie Holiday meets Stevie Nicks,” Baylin said. “It brings people together, bridges generation gaps.”
Baylin is a deep breath of fresh air from the trifling mainstream pop singers. She offers insight into her beautifully constructed reality, one of pleasure spiked with pain.
“I had a rough summer, but if I could have done it over again, I would have spent the whole year black and blue,” she said at a recent Hotel Café performance in Hollywood on January 16. Her friend John Mayer was there in support. “John said that this year, my music was the soundtrack to his life, it painted the year. Regardless of who it is, it’s a gift to hear that,” Baylin said.
Her powerful spirit rings true through her songs, naturally deterring her extraordinary looks with her soft, yet hypnotizing, voice.
“I write my songs so deep in me. It’s almost like I’m completely disconnected…the song just flows through me,” she said.
Her performances are a warm blend of rootsy sass, aching uncertainty with an after-hours jazz club atmosphere. She has a captivating lyrical bite, evoking heartfelt melodies, and sings of enduring values.
Her unique approach is like none other. It offers a rare intensity, emotionally connecting her audience to her soul.
“If you know how to feel, you can enjoy this. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what music you like, if you can feel,” Baylin said. “Many artists let their ego drive their music. I don’t want people listening to that.”
Though heavily influenced by the classic women of American roots music like Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone, Jessie has a very fresh sound and is totally one-of-a-kind.
Live performances are rarely the same set. She is backed by a trio of seasoned musicians: upright bassist Paul Eckman, electric guitarist Pete Snell, and the brilliant female percussionist, Debra Dobkin.
“I can trust these people. I can stand up there, just me and my voice, and feel safe,” Baylin said.
Born and raised in New Jersey, coming to California was a move of independence and finding, or creating, herself.
“I came out to California with my parents in a U-haul when I was 18. They brought me here, set me up, and let me go,” Baylin said. “It was the best soul searching experience in my life.”
Initially a poet, Baylin always had something to say, but no idea how to say it. “I had to express myself. I was waiting for something to smack be between the eyes,” she said. “I love poetry, but it wasn’t enough. I needed people to hear my voice coming through on it, with my expression attached to it.”
Her eyes tell the whole story. One look, one song, one smile, and it’s love.

anna webber