I was suppose to shoot the Dropkick Murphys last August in Scranton, PA but there was a problem with the list. Which was pretty much the case this time around again. But thankfully things got worked out in time for me to shoot the Bosstones and Dropkicks. The Dropkick Murphys have gotten super popular since the last time I shot their set. Their music has appeared in the movie The Departed and pretty much everyone knows who they are now. I remember seeing DKM back when there was 4 members in the band. Now the group has 7 or 8 members. It’s interesting to see how a band evolves over the years. But the band certainly draws in an audience and they still have a great live show to boot!

The band opened with “For Boston” and “Boys on the Docks,” their usual songs that they open with. Their newer material got heavily played this time around. Some of the songs that I could remember being played were “(F)lannigan’s Ball” “Tomorrow’s Industry,” and “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye.” I wanted to hear mostly older songs but I knew that wasn’t going to be the case. They have a new album out, of course they are going to play those songs more. I loved hearing “State of Massachusetts” because I like the banjo motif in that song. After I was done shooting photos of the band, I watched from the far back. It was wide opened and you didn’t have to deal with annoying people. I stayed for about 50 minutes so I could beat the crowd getting on those retarded school buses to get back to the parking lot. I don’t recommend going to an outside concert at Starland Ballroom. Talk about a clusterfuck.

On the photography side of things, I think I got some cool photos of the band. The stage lighting was finally kicking in for some songs, so the members were nicely light along with the natural light. It was still light out when the band played, even though the sun already had set. Although, I remember for the last song I shot that there was absolutely no lighting. It was pretty hard to shoot then, and I wasn’t going to use my flash like the other photographers were doing. I learned to not use flash and wasn’t going to go back unless I really had to do. Since the stage was pretty high, I used the 70-200mm f2.8 lens for the most part, but I started off with the 18-70mm f3.5 lens. I liked the results I got with the wide angle kit lens for both bands. The high stage made the angles more dramatic. Anyway, here’s the best shots from the Dropkick Murphys set:

To see all the photos, click here.

Tags: al barr, celtic, celtic punk, dkm, dropkick murphys, dropkicks, ken casey, mighty mighty bosstones, new jersey, punk rock, sayreville new jersey, starland ballroom, starland summer campout, summer

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 8:57 am and is filed under Concert Photography, Photography . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.