I’m getting kind of bored with taking photos at the Casbah. I love it as a music venue – it hosts a lot of great indie bands, the staff are awesome, and I’m usually assured to run into someone I know while there. But the lighting never changes – it’s always dim and centered on people’s torsos, giving them an unflattering orange-ish cast, and the black back wall ensures that anyone with dark hair blends right into the wall.

That, combined with the fact that I had just taken photos of the Vultures at the Che Cafe the night before, left me sort of uninspired to take photos Saturday night. It was a fun night out, if only to support CatDirt and the Vultures.

Having never heard of either of the two opening bands, I wasn’t sure what to expect. It turned out that Endless Bummer was sort of a pre-twee band, with one member playing a keyboard balanced on his lap and the other three people contributing various simple percussion instruments (and not always with the most accurate rhythm). It wasn’t really my thing – a little too subdued on a night when I could have used something more upbeat.

Fortunately, Wild Weekend and the Vultures stepped in to pick up the energy slack. Wild Weekend is an all-girls Zeros tribute band. Usually I don’t really “do” tribute bands, but given my unfamiliarity with the original band, I was okay with it. Now I just need to dig up the original stuff.

The Vultures killed, as usual. Chuck’s vocals sounded a lot better/more intelligible at the Casbah than they did the night before at the Che Cafe. I didn’t attempt to take any photos of them because, as I mentioned, it was really dark in the Casbah and I had taken photos of them the night before in a venue more suited for it. But also, I didn’t feel like competing with two other photographers who were letting their flashes go off like strobe lights for most of the set. Seriously. Ugh. And to the one guy who was taking photos with flash and a point-and-shoot camera – please respect other photographers around you. Your wild arm waving after taking a shot (are you trying get slow-sync flash effects with a point-and-shoot camera?) resulted in me having to crop you out of many of my shots of the earlier bands. I’m know I’m pretty subtle, what with my usual policy of not using flash, but I’m still trying to do a job just like you. Please try to respect that.

Here are some older shots of the Vultures from a Casbah show: