Members Terry Allan Hall Posted June 25, 2005 Members Posted June 25, 2005 How To Take A Good Band Photo The Face: Must look surly. Scowl, frown, turn the corners of your mouth down, stick out your bottom lip as far as it will go without turning your face inside out. Scrunge up! Muss the hair - put some gel or dirt in it to make it spike up here and there. If you’re a male, have a bit of a five o’clock shadow or a scraggly goatee, or better yet one of those tiny tufts right under the bottom lip that makes it look like you just ate a basting brush. If you’re female, gobs of smudged mascara has worked down through the ages to present the proper girl-rebel hot-mama sex-crazed look. And, of course, here’s the number one most-required costume piece - hardware! Only one piercing gets you an immediate “sissy!” label. The more the better, though the usual indicator is that the more metal the band, the more piercings, while bands that lean more to the grunge/punk side can do with fewer without penalty but must have more tattoos. Metal bands: bald is badass. Grunge/Punk: Messy short hair screams “angst!” The Proper Uniform: T-shirts with arms ripped off to show the requisite tattoo-covered shoulders. Clothing must be frayed, ragged, and dirty - at the very least, rumpled. Gang names on the T’s are fine, as are unintelligible names, DJ this-or-that, and any foul language you can get by with, or pictures of the middle-finger salute and various copulatory poses involving skeletons or animals. Pants must be eighteen sizes too big, the crotch must hang to the knees at the very least, and lots of baggy pockets and buckles are cool. Shoes: The pants must collect and bag over them. It helps your internal attitude if you have the correct footwear - brand new, huge, logo-ed to the hilt athletic shoes with the puffy tongue hanging way out, and for the rappers the laces must be flapping loose. That’s supposed to be cool. For the punk/grunge set, Caucasian sneakers if they’re a bit grimy, or Beatle-boots. Correct footwear helps with the correct walk. (More on that in another paragraph) Girls, footwear is confined to either spike-heels or platform sandals that make you at least eight inches taller than your bandmates (ten inches if they’ve managed the proper slouch.) Headgear: Always wear baseball caps backwards. Hip-hoppers wear them sideways or else wear the black knee-high nylon pulled over the hair down to the eyebrows. Do-rags are a bit passe unless some adventurous DJ Snotty Scrotum or an NFL Neanderthal says it’s ok. Main Rule of Hat: Don’t ever embarrass your band by being seen with a ballcap worn the right way. Pose: Slouch. You must slouch. Make James Dean proud of you. Sneer and pout. Smiling is an automatic OUT and an indicator of insincerity. Cultivate contempt! Part of the band must tilt the face up but look down with the eyes. The other half of the band, look down with the face, look up with the eyes. Do a Clint Eastwood. Eyelids must be half-mast, as in “sleepy”, unless you have chosen the frown look. Then the eyelids are taken care of by the scowling eyebrows. Now comes an altogether too-often-overlooked part - the hands. In your stage act, you stamp around in big, clomping steps, maintaining the sneer, hurling your lyrics with sullen rage, and what are you doing with your hands? Right! The gang signs! As you do onstage, so should you do in your band photo! Twist up those hands into the MS-victim position. Jab them at the photographer like you do to your audience! Wrists bent, fingers stiff and curled like a spastic’s, arms stabbing and waving like a spider on speed, show the world in you promo photograph just how cool you are! Try to ignore the photographer’s stifled laughter. Ladies, a huge rack is really all you need for both the stage and your band photo. You need not even be able to sing, just bounce a lot and move your lips. If you don’t have enormous tits, well, just try and look slutty. Invest in a good push-up bra. All the image rules that apply to the guys also apply to you, unless you’re in a hip-hop band, where the costume is baggy sweatpants made only of nylon and having many zippers. Camouflage rules! If your band is Punk/Grunge, the only real change ladies need to make is to show off that huge rack, wear only halter-tops that show the belly and requisite belly-button ring and the tattoo peeking up out the top of your hip-hugger shorts or skin-tight pants. Short-short dresses are okay as long as you have enough tattoos. Hip-hop bands must have one member grabbing their crotch. Attitude is everything. Being able to paste a good brooding scowl on your mug at a moment’s notice is worth more than getting the chords right on your songs. A juicy glare, a morose sneer, an angry pout is an essential part of any modern band. If you can achieve the proper aura of hatefulness, no one will care that you can’t play anything resembling music. The proper walk can add a lot. Again, good posture is not cool; good posture is for sissies. Bend that spine, as if you have an unfortunate case of scoliosis. Slouch, round the shoulders. Hands may be in the pockets if you can reach them or, for you hip-hoppers, assume the paralyzed/quadriplegic pose with the arms and hands, bend the fingers down to touch the inside of your wrist while pointing the thumb out. This usually works with minimal cramping. Scuff the feet. Even if you’re a white boy, you can learn the Ghetto Bob. Get one of your homie dogs to work with you on this, for it is essential to getting a good band photo. Swagger up to a wall, or wherever the photographer wants to pose you. The correct approach will ensure that the body language is properly sullen, menacing and badass. Whining works for all genres here. In fact, hip-hop is just pouting to a repetitious drum track. The photographer may tell you to be still, but until he’s ready to actually trip the shutter, you can bob and weave and throw signs and slouch and re-slouch, much like models do as they writhe in the sand in their bikinis, camera clicking away! Go for the communication! Show the world what great musicians you are! Stick that bottom lip out - be proud, yo! Don’t be a sissy! Remember Tupac! Look at all the band photos you’ve been seeing in the local entertainment papers. Look at all those band’s promo shots. They all have the correct, uniform look for their genre. Not a sissy among ‘em. If you can get yourself a good band photo that portrays yo’ sulky self, that proves you can play good music and will please your fans to the point of ecstasy, and you will soon be rich and famous. Then and only then can you relax your scowl, comb your hair, take a shower, straighten your back, take the diamond booger-catcher out of your nostril, the tongue hardware out of your tongue so you can eat without straining your food, and put on some shoes that don’t weigh six pounds each - but only in private! But remember - don’t go out of the penthouse, lest the paparazzi catch you with your scowl down and your pants up! From the book "How Yo Kin Be’s A Succesful Musican in Todays Hily Competive Atmosfear" by Screendoor Doggy Hi-C (With a foreward by Busty Jinx)
Members fleahead Posted July 11, 2005 Members Posted July 11, 2005 Don't forget how important it is to hang out with and be just like thousands of other "non-comforming rebels"!
Moderators daddymack Posted July 11, 2005 Moderators Posted July 11, 2005 TAH, what about the all important 'background...remember brick walls with graffitti?
Members vanlatte Posted July 12, 2005 Members Posted July 12, 2005 Excellent! A picture is worth 1000 words...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.