MC Hammer at full volume
500 words #23
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| MC Hammer at full volume in Toronto, 1990 |
The managing editor at Share Newspaper kept finding different types of photo assignments for me. The reality of community newspaper work being that you were required to be a jack-of-all-trades, taking photos of many subjects in a variety of situations.
Which is how I started to take concert photos. Live concert photography has both pluses and minuses. During the era that I was working, most venues/artists gave the photographers access to the pit – the area right in front of the stage – for the first three songs of the show, with no flash photography allowed. The more popular the performer, the stricter the rules.
After the three songs, the security team would herd any media photographers away. Some venues just moved us to the backstage area, and let us pack up our camera bags and leave on our own. Many escorted us to the hallways so we would have to get past the ticket takers to regain access to the venue. The old Maple Leaf Gardens took no chances, they marched us all straight to the side entrance, out the doors to the street and then locked us out by slamming the door shut.
The lesson being, don’t put your coat or anything else down, because once you were done, you were out.
From a business point of view, the brevity of the assignment meant the photographer earned their fee in a relatively short amount of time. Also, the editor was only looking for one image to use, so you had to deliver one solid frame from two basic options: a wide shot of the whole band, or a closer shot of the lead singer.
I was contemplating these options while looking up at MC Hammer from the floor of the Skydome – now known as the Rogers Centre – trying to think photographically while enduring the loudest concert or event I had ever attended in my life.
A bit of background: my personal benchmark of loud comes from an experience I had as a film student. One of my fellow students was a licensed pilot. He wanted to make a documentary about the workings of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport and managed to get us access to the whole place, including the runways. He was doing the camera work, and I was the sound recordist and general assistant. He had us out on the runway area, underneath a 747 Jumbo jet as it revved its’ engines while taxing to the runway. He had his eye to the camera, looking towards the nose as the plane was moving overhead.
Great shot, like the opening of the first Star Wars, only done with full-size props.
However, underneath the fuselage are small, triangular stabilizers that stick down far enough to hit someone underneath in the head. It was my job to look backwards and whenever one of these stabilizers was coming, I had to gently nudge his head out of the way so he did not get hurt. We did not bring ear protection, and the noise of those huge jet engines warming up so close by is my personal benchmark of loud. Really, really loud.
The MC Hammer show was that kind of loud, like standing beside a jet engine.
The stage featured huge speakers on either side at floor level. Hammer was moving all over the stage, and at one point he ran over and jumped on the speakers on stage right. I moved to follow him and ended up in front of one of those speaker banks. The amount of air being pushed out of that speaker hit me in the chest like a canon. I literally stopped breathing and started gasping for air for a few seconds.
I quickly decided that for the good of my health I had to find a spot away from the front of those speakers, just so I could breath again. I remember being bent over at the front of the stage, feeling like I had just been punched in the chest, cognizant that even if I wasn't breathing properly, the three song limit clock was still ticking and that I had to get back to work.
After a show, many will ask me how the show was and really, I have no answer. My brain is concentrating on the assignment. There is a checklist running in my brain, did I get a great wide shot yet? Did I get a close-up? Usually that answer is no, because I never owned a great telephoto lens. Fortunately, all the paper truly needs is one single, printable image and they could always just blow the image up in darkroom and have a close-up extracted for the final print.
Breathing difficulties aside, I had to find Hammer, and get back to the assignment - before security came - and try to focus on what he doing, while concentrating on how I wanted to photograph him as the pounding of the beat went on at full volume.
Performers move and respond to the rhythm and photographers have to be in time with their subject. It’s almost like a dance. Even if I was photographing a band I was not familiar with, if I can find the beat, I can stay on top of the action. This is a trend that continued as the years and concert shoots rolled on.
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