Beady Eye in Toronto & NYC | Personal

While Justin and I are insanely busy in the Spring, Summer and Fall (basically whenever the weather is nice) we managed to take a mini-vacation a couple weeks back to New York City – one of our favourite places to visit.  It’s important to find some time to do the things you love, no matter how busy you get.  Concerts are something Justin and I have always enjoyed together since we got together 5 years ago, and nothing has changed

Many of you know that we are big music fans.  Our favourite band was always Oasis, who have now split up.  However, the guys from Oasis, fronted by Liam Gallagher, have formed another amazing band called Beady Eye.  If you liked Oasis, check out Beady Eye – they are awesome.

Anyway, I had the immense honour of shooting their June 20th, 2011 show at Toronto’s Sound Academy for the music website http://www.live4ever.uk.com/ Here are my favourite images from the first 3 songs in the photo pit.  For those photographers out there, this was shot with my Nikon D3s and a 35 1.4 and 85 1.4.  These prime lenses are gold!  For those interested, I have uploaded the whole set to Flickr…please click here to check out all my shots from this show.

After 3 incredible songs in the photo pit I returned to my seat to enjoy the show with our group (there’s a photo of our group below…we had a large union jack flag flying over the balcony).

After the show, we got a hold of a setlist thanks to a good friend, and headed upstairs to the Beady Eye after party.  We had the good fortune to meet Gem Archer and Andy Bell – two of the most talented guys in music these days.  Both these gentlemen were in Oasis and always put on an incredible live show.

The very next morning we were on our way to New York City!  No thanks to Delta (who delayed out flight several times…grrr) we finally made it to our hotel by about 11 pm the next evening.

Turned out that Beady Eye were playing the David Letterman show and my friend Jenny had an extra ticket for me!  I was so excited as this was an exclusive set of songs to be broadcast online as a webcast, but unfortunately it took place the same time as the Eddie Vedder concert Justin and I were also in town to see.  Justin is fantastic and totally understood that I just couldn’t miss the Letterman set.  So, Justin went to Eddie Vedder and I went to Beady Eye on Letterman.

Jenny and I lined up for a couple hours, and once we were inside the Ed Sullivan Theatre, we found two seats about 10 rows from the stage.  We thought, great!  Not bad at all.  Then, not 30 seconds later a lady came up to me and asked if we would like better seats.  I said ‘sure!’ of course, and she led us down to the second row!  Apparently she saw my ‘Oasis’ bag that I was carrying and could tell we were big fans.

About 10 minutes before the show started, Liam’s wife and son came and sat in the front row!  They actually sat the whole time so we essentially had front row seats.  My 13 year old self was dying of excitement.  Liam Gallagher is married to Nicole Appleton, who you may know from her band the All Saints.  She’s actually from Mississauga, so I told her I’m from Milton, and we had a chat about the GTA.  She’ll be hosting a CBC show this summer called ‘Cover Me Canada’, so watch out for that.  For the record, she is an absolutely lovely person.

Beady Eye’s set was incredible!  I didn’t take too many photos as I really wanted to enjoy the show.  Please note the rest of the images are all snapshots from my point and shoot camera, which is why they don’t quite match the quality of my professional Beady Eye photographs from Toronto.

After the show (they played about 9 songs), Jenny & I headed around the back and caught Liam as he was greeting fans.  We got a few photos of the ruckus and I got a photo with Liam!  Please excuse the flat hair – a humid day in NYC will do that

The next day we saw Beady Eye’s show at Webster Hall and had a wonderful time.  Liam came out afterwards and I got his autograph on my poster too!  For the record, he is incredibly sweet to his fans, so please don’t believe the negative hype about the Gallagher brothers.  They are always very kind to me.

Thanks for reading about our exciting trip!  As I said, no matter how busy you are, always take time for yourself and your significant other to do something you love.  It’ll keep you and your relationship fresh & happy.

Cheers,
Lisa