The past day or two have been hell for The Price Of Silver. Somehow somebody managed to get something into Google, it's random, doesn't happen all the time, but when it does I can't access the blog set-up page so I'm a bit behind here. In the meantime my buddy Jon Sinish understands all this tech geek stuff while not really being one himself...LOL, and he got me back up and running. A BIG thanks to Mr. Sinish (sound of aplause).
When I posted the photo I really couldn't remember where I was when I made the shot. After a day or more of staring at I've concluded it's most likely K-Mart, maybe Target, but the title really best describes how my brain has been feeling. I'm lost without my blog! This caused me to spend too much time on the Rangefinder Forum, esentially writing a blog post. Skip the first couple of photography tech babble if you like but there is an interesting story in there about my hippy days, the local rock and roll scene, and the recent death of Jamene Miller at 55, a fantastic singer that I first met and photographed when she was 15 and singing with a group named Fantasy. But hell, read the whole thing:
Memories! That's why now I say shoot everything, save everything, even the everyday and mundane, you never know what you might want a picture of and wish you'd shot it and/or kept it. Remember Thee Image, a rock venue in Sunny Isles made out of an old bowling alley, west side of Collins Ave. at about 170th Street? Late 1960's. A lot of MAJOR groups played there and a local group, Fantasy, got their start there, got a recording contract with Liberty/United Artists, had one big hit Stoned Cowboy.There was a big obituary in yesterday's Miami Herald for a girl who got her start as their singer, went on to sing with War and Jerry Garcia (Grateful Dead) and others, by the name of Jamene Miller, dead at 55 a few days ago. Last time I ran into her must have been thirty years ago at least.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/obit...ry/731996.html The Herald doesn't keep these links active forever but it should work for a week or two.My point is, I still have all those negatives I shot back then when Fantasy was still a bunch of high school kids of 15 and 16. I shot them live at various places like Thee Image, outdoor concerts at Greynolds Park, probably a rock fest or two. I did two record covers as well as studio shots for press releases. I just ran across an 8x10 glossy press handout, but that was shot during one of the intervals when she was with another group. Jamene isn't in the shot. It's also one of the few studio shots I did of the group.I hate to sound like a vulture but I'm going to dig out those negatives & contacts, maybe print up a few, because no doubt there's going to be a market for them, at least for awhile. Plenty of kids used to take their Pentax and Nikon SLR's to those concerts, the Miami Herald no doubt shot a few pictures, but odds are my pictures are some of the very few surviving ones. At least the very few that anybody can locate after all these years.Yup, Sunny Isles Beach was more than just pickled tomatoes and hot pastrami on rye. It was also creativity, Rock 'n Roll, fun times, good ganga, and some of the first acid to make it to South Florida. Back then nobody said "You're still shooting FILM?", not even "You're still shooting BLACK & WHITE?" Nobody said "You're still shooting rangefinder cameras? Get with the SLR revolution!" Hell, I still shoot with some of the same stuff I used for shooting Fantasy. Someplace around here is the Fantasy album cover that I shot with that 400mm.To repeat, SHOOT EVERYTHING, SAVE EVERYTHING. I don't have any pictures, inside or out, of Pumpernick's, Wolfie's, or The Rascal House. Too everday, too mundane. Pickled tomatoes are just a memory.Thanks to Google a number of people have stumbled onto my blog, my photos and writings about that long gone local music scene. I've gotten together with a few of them for lunch or whatnot. Those cute teenage girls mostly now look exactly like the grandmothers that they've become.
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http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6...2070%20e.0.jpg (No, it's not Jamene)
I need to go pull those old negatives of Jamene. There might just be a revival in the market for photos of her. And I need to make a couple of Bob Dylan prints for a MAJOR Dylan fan.
I'd also like to thank a couple of folks who left comments on some of the blog posts. Yes, I approved them so they are there for all to read. Go to "Girls In Red Dresses" and find out about driving a cab in North Atlanta and what all the cabbies say about girls wearing red shoes! (Jeepers! My daughter Elena lives in Atlanta! I sure hope that she's not tooling around in cabs wearing red shoes!)
Labels: Bob Dylan, cab, Jamene Miller, Rangefinder Forum, red shoes
