THIS Rhett Butler Will Never Die

November 11, 2006, the Adrian Belew Power Trio performed at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz. I had been granted admission to the performance because of some awful quality photos I shot at their San Francisco show two nights before. This slideshow is a little fun I've had with some high contrast edits. They are coming back to play in San Francisco on February 23 at Slim's. The quality of photos I hope to take should knock these photos out of the water.

Well, as many music fans already know, Led Zeppelin had their 20 year reunion concert in London this week. Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, a lot of people that went to that show shot amateur video of the show and have published it to YouTube. Personally, I think this video format is effing fantastic as it makes you feel more like "you are there" in a hazy, stoned sorta way. Here are some of my favorite clips. And man o' man, if they turn this into a world tour? What a world this will be next year!!! Powered by ScribeFire .

Thursday, 12/13 was Tom's 57th birthday. I was fortunate enough to see Tom perform live last summer at Slim's. I've blogged about that night before (you can probably find the post if you search my tags). Remember? I went out and bought a guitar the very next day his musicianship inspired me so much? So here is to you Tom! I hope you had an excellent birthday and that you are feeling well and spry and plan on coming back to San Francisco again to blow our minds with your soul's intense inner musical ramblings. Tom Verlaine Tom Verlaine (born Tom Miller 1949) is a singer, songwriter and guitarist, probably best-known as a founder of Television . Verlaine is often regarded as one of the most talented performers of the early punk rock era. more... [via FoxyTunes / Tom Verlaine ] Powered by ScribeFire .

les jours shitty sucent l'Ass. que ce n'a pas étée une bonne semaine pour moi il tout a commencé par aller au chiroprakteur la semaine dernière. il a fait à ceci des ajustements de miniscule à mon épine et le crâne avec ce nouveau dispositif qu'il a d'abord I pensé lui a senti très bon - pas trop invahissant et moi ne l'avait pas vu en un certain nombre de mois ainsi était heureux de ne pas obtenir a fendu tous à l'enfer le jour suivant bien que mon dos ait blessé plus mauvais et à une chose étrange commencé pour se produire. mon humeur a décalé. le démuni i a senti n'importe quelle dépression pendant un certain nombre de mois où j'ai même étés limite maniaque mais pas de n'importe quelle manière dangereuse ou unmanagable plus la chose je mauvaise avais éprouvé a été une incapacité de dormir plus de 4 heures à un temps que le problème avait continué pendant des mois. bien, cette semaine passée l'humeur a arrangé dans des trains plus traditionnels...

Ground Control Let me start by stating that upon first listening to this album a memory was triggered. Maybe it was just the name of the song “The Alchemist” that reminded me of the song, “The Necromancer” by Van Der Graaf Generator. Other reviewers of this album have been strict about denoting the roots of Witchcraft's sound as coming from forefathers Pentagram and Black Sabbath, but I would like to suggest that there is an earlier influence evidenced in the sounds and spirit found in this music. There is a depth of history that predates the creation of the sound that Witchcraft are trying to generate—early King Crimson being a primary foundation of psychedelic metal. It is almost ironic when listening to the repetitive elementary riffs in Witchcraft’s sound to think that this is not a new band in the late 60s/early 70s trying to establish a new sound. This is a modern band trying to create a resurgence of an old sound. And they do it quite well. They just are not mature enough ye...

Nanowrimo, National Novel Writing Month, occurs during the month of November every year. I successfully completed writing a 50,000 word novel by participating in this project one year, 2004 I believe it was. Did I ever go back to edit or rewrite that piece of "work". I might have played around with it for a couple of months but basically gave up on it. The years since I ceremoniously jump on the projects bandwagon but have not completed it again. This year I felt a little more ambitious about the project, and actually, each year I cumulate an aura of energy and excitement about the work I have done on my real, ongoing novel project for my book about the story of a young girl haunted by the ghost of a literary master and use November to get more focused and centralized. November is like my "New Years" when I make resolutions to work more and harder on finishing the novel. Am I actually any closer to getting this thing finished? No, not really but in the last year the...

i've been working harder the past month than i have in a very long time. i'm not asking for credit or a payoff (liar, yes i am !) - damn! ok, so i wrote a review for a concert i went to last Tuesday night - submitted it in 2 days (not expected to be turned in for 4 days). then i go to another concert Friday night. i photograph 3 bands and write a review. turned it all in in 2 days. i have not received any acknowledgment from the magazine yet. maybe because it is the weekend. what i am suspecting is that maybe i'm blowing their minds a bit in that i am turning my work in so fast. another thing bothering/worrying me is that my partner at the zine, "M", has not returned my calls or emails since I last saw him on Tuesday night after the show that night. I was so tired that I did not offer him a drive home. i mean, i don't think he ever gets rides home but from me, and it's not like he is not used to taking the bus - it wasn't raining. so i am thinking he ...

i don't even know how to start to venture into contemplating these questions right now without admitting to you that i am sitting here crying while listening to music. what is that all about? why do i cry? because love has hurt me. it is pain that is released when i hear beautiful music, not joy. or is it joy? a bittersweet joy? i have so much love inside of me yet i get to share it with no one. i get to dote on no one. i get to kiss no one. i get to hug no one, well, or so few... i want to hold someone, i want to ravish someone, i want someone to look forward to seeing me... actually, these are not all truths. not right now. there is someone new in my life that hugs me. i haven't kissed her though. and she does look forward to seeing me. the thing though is that she cannot take me fully into her life right now. so again, i feel denied the fulfillment of these experiences. it hurts though being here in my room, my bed, still alone. is it the wanting that makes not having hurt? ...

It feels as if my life is just beginning to hit it's stride. Remember I talked about cycles of 7 years being significant restorative periods of time? And that this year I am living my 7th 7 (turned 49 years old in September)? Tomorrow night I have the biggest photo gig of my life so far. I have photo/press passes to cover the Coheed and Cambria concert at The Warfield in San Francisco. I have earned the privilege of receiving regular photo and writing assignments for the online music zine, groundcountrolmag . After the first concert review I wrote for them last month they asked me to send them a "wish list" of shows that I would like to cover. I will be at a minimum, the writer for upcoming shows by The Cult, The Waterboys, and Queens of the Stone Age. How this worked out for me to be the writer and photographer for C&C happened (I think) because I only requested the show last week and they didn't have a photographer available for the show! Am I jazzed? Yeah, yo...

Long time readers know that I've had this obsession/fascination with the idea of obtaining a handful of grave dirt from Eugene O'Neill's gravesite for a very long time now (over 2 years). Not having a jet-setting income and being able to get myself to Boston to do this myself I sought a web buddy that lived in the area to do the deed for me. Two years of searching forums, posting to craigslist-boston, begging area photographers that had an inkling for the bizarre... this last option proved the most promising as this past summer there was a young woman in northern Massachusetts that was doing self portraits in cemeteries and she became intrigued by the idea of doing this for me. Alas, I know not why she failed the task other than she got busy with school and other elements of life. Then, about two weeks ago I created a new group in Flickr called "Cemetery People". A place to contribute photos of people inside cemeteries. I spent a weekend combing Flickr looking fo...

Happy Halloween! Originally uploaded by daryldarko Shot this Saturday afternoon at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland after I finished my photoshoot with Lucie . I will make another blog entry shortly with some amazing news!

These are photos I took at the house that Eugene O'Neill lived in here in Danville, California. I visited the site the day after his birthday this year. He would have been 119 years old if he were still alive. Click the image to see the full set of photographs. (Soon, I will have some very exciting information to share with you!)

there will be things that you just can't get someone to help you with. case in point: my efforts over the past year to find someone that lives in the Boston area to visit Eugene O'Neill's gravesite in Jamaica Hills, and obtain a handfull of dirt for me. so today i found inspiration to improvise. i called the National Park Service on Monday to make a reservation for a tour of Eugene O'Neill's house, here in Danville. i wanted to go yesterday because it was his birthday yesterday, but they only give tours Wednesday through Sunday. today had to suffice. yesterday would have been a great day to go too because it rained yesterday. the forecast for today was sunny skies. oddly, it actually rained this morning and there were cloudy skies. i got a call at 10am from the park service confirming a spot in the 12:30 tour for me. i scrambled together my camera gear because i wanted to get lots of photos. i'm working on those now as we speak and they will be up on my flickr a...

I am much more familiar with the life and works of Eugene O'Neill. For one thing, he lived not more than 6 miles from where I live in Danville, California . He spent his last productive years here when he wrote his greatest works. Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was a Nobel-prize winning American playwright. More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced American drama to the dramatic realism pioneered by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg, and was the first to use true American vernacular in his speeches. His plays involve characters who inhabit the fringes of society, engaging in depraved behavior, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote only one comedy (Ah, Wilderness!): all his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism. http://nobelprize.org/nobe...

October 16 I am very embarrassed to admit that I am not entirely familiar with the works or life of this brilliant Irish writer. Maybe I'll actually take time today to read some of his works, buck up a bit, eh? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_wilde http://www.cmgww.com/historic/wilde/ http://www.todayinliterature.com/biography/oscar.wilde.asp

it's ok. i'll just enjoy this fantasy... *sigh*

Here is my blog posting from 11 months ago, when this whole concert photography thing got started... Exactly 11 months to the day later I had my Spin Magazine gig. Thank you Robin Slick! If it were not for the friendship that I developed with Robin after she made this initial comment my career as a concert photographer would never have begun. ____________________________ November 9, 2006 last night fortune smiled upon me again and i won tickets to a show at Slim's in San Francisco. it was a show i would have been happy to purchase a ticket to attend, but finances and the fact that i should have been in class last night urged my better sense to not indulge. thank you fates for changing the course of my life, yet again. seeing Adrian perform last night was a phenomenal experience. there was one person between me and him i was that close to the stage. oh, and i am done using my phone cam to document concerts that i attend when i could very well have been using my "real camera...

Last week a very good friend of mine, Muhammad Asranur, a local concert photographer of increasing reknown, asked me if I would like to shoot a concert for Spin Magazine. I knew that he had done this gig for them before and asked why. He said that he was covering the concert for another magazine and that he couldn't submit the same photographs to both. So the door opened for me. I wrote to Spin a couple of months ago asking if I could shoot for them. At that time I didn't realize that they only gave assignments to one photographer in each of the cities that they do their "It Happened Last Night" feature for, and I never heard back from them. That wasn't until last Thursday when I got the following email: So, this is a perfect example of how "who you know" really works in the world. I met Muhammad at a concert at Slim's last November. We had both won "trivia contest" tickets to see a performer that neither of us were really interested in see...

here is the blessing that Clive wrote upon my working manuscript. i meditate on these thoughts every time i sit down to work on my novel. i told him that i would not come to see him at an event again until i had a copy of my novel to give him as a gift. alas, he will be signing his newest book in L.A. in two months and i so badly want to see him. i am not sure what i will do.

Next to Susan Henderson and Robin Slick, Clive Barker is the most important writer in the world to me. I first discovered his literature when I read EVERVILLE; THE SECOND BOOK OF THE ART in 1997 while I was a student at UCSC. A year later I met him in person in Berkeley. He is the only author that I have ever met or felt like meeting. Aside from Susan and Robin, he is probably the only author that I will go out of my way to meet again. I met him again in 2004 in San Francisco and went to extreme efforts to be the last person in line to speak with him. I needed to tell him the story of the discovery of the idea of, and the writing of my novel. I had brought my transcript (notes and research) with me and asked him to give me his blessing. He wrote an inscription on the inside cover of my notebook and posed for photos with me. Clive has also written and directed films, some of which are extremely scary ( Hellraiser , Lord Of Illusions , and Nightbreed ) and one of which is one of my all ...

the telling of this story is for a young friend of mine. rather than cram it into her Facebook wall, i thought it might be better to offer it up here where there is a little more room for expansion and who knows, others might find it of interest. i was a strange person in high school. i had two personas; star athlete and campus jesus freak. i also did not do well in my studies, never had a girl friend, and laid the foundations for being the loner that i am today. when i say "campus jesus freak" i mean that if you were to ask anyone that went to my high school during the years that i was there, i would be the person that people would remember the most as being a freak about jesus. i started a movement there within a month of becoming a student at Monte Vista High School in Danville, California. today i have regrets about how the fervor i experienced and spread infected the thinking and behavior of those i then tried to lead to believe what i believed. how many lost souls there...

a few days ago one of my parakeets (Draven) started to show signs of ill health and i became worried that she would quickly fall over dead, just like Merricat did several months ago. i was upset by the idea of her suffering and followed an instinct that i developed awhile ago. i've thought many times of opening the window of their room and just letting them fly away. when i used to let the birds fly freely in their room they were so happy. but the mess got unmanageable and now we have a second cat in the house - a creature i don't really like, or trust. so after watching Draven's condition worsen over about 3 days i took action. i caught her and opened the bathroom window and let her fly off. it was around 5pm and the sky was a lovely color and the air was warm. with the thick foliage outside though, i almost immediately lost sight of her. i went outside to see if i could see where she had gone. not that i had changed my mind and was going to catch her and bring her back in...

hahaha, that title may make you want to read more...!! ok, i read a book many, many years ago. it was written in the 70's (so i probably read it in the 80's). it was about experiments that psychics in Russia performed. the experiement that stuck in my mind was how, using their mental powers and registering a belief that "all things have happened before", or that future events are already established and that we are just living out our existences in a sort of déjà vu mode. like we are "remembering the future". so what they did was to go into quasi-meditative states of mind and found out what the next days winning lotto numbers were going to be. and it worked! they were repeatedly able to determine what the winning numbers were going to be. since it was a scientific, government funded study they stopped the experiment shortly after it succeeded. this has stuck in my mind all these years though. i've had plenty of other philosophies in my head about "w...

Don't know where to start or how to present these things in the best understandable fashion so forgive the messiness. Most recent amazing thing was Wednesday in San Francisco. I went into the city at around 4pm and finally got to visit the Columbarium when it was open. See all the amazing photos I shot by clicking on this image: After doing a quick run through there I drove back downtown to meet one of my best old friends, Jeff. See, we had plans to go see an excellent concert at Slim's this night. I picked Jeff up on Market Street after he got off work and then we went for a drive to the ocean. You can see some of the photos we took there by clicking on this image: After lounging there for an hour we went back into town. We drove through Golden Gate Park and saw the herds of buffalo that live there. Sadly, this made me think of eating buffalo stew at Tommy's Joynt . When we got there we could not find a place to park. Jeff didn't show it but he was very saddened by ...

As usual, I'm a bit of a late bloomer and didn't start to listen closely to John Coltrane until about 15 years ago. His mystical music takes me places that I used to only get through chanting. If you are unfamiliar with him, check out some of the videos posted on my blog. If you are familiar with him, listen to him today and offer thanks for the vision he shared with us. John William Coltrane ( September 23 , 1926 – July 17 , 1967 ), nicknamed Trane , was an American jazz saxophonist and composer . Although recordings of his work from as early as 1946 exist, Coltrane's recording career did not begin in earnest until 1955. From 1957 onward he recorded and produced dozens of albums, many of them not released until years after his death. He achieved extraordinary popularity, while also responding to a religious awakening that has made him spiritually inspiring to others. Coltrane has been credited with reshaping modern jazz and being the predominant influence on success...

The spell I seemed to be under while on vacation seems to be shifting it's effect on me. I again am no longer carrying my camera with me whenever I leave the house. I am not considering asking strangers to pose for photographs. My inkling of a belief that I could tap into a source of magical wishfulness to assist in bringing about miracle-like changes is reverting to old thinking. I don't feel depressed; not the kind of syrupy, sad depression I used to indulge in. Yes, something in that mental arena has seemed to really shifted and I can't help but think it has to do with stopping the meds. Like, being on antidepressents actually made me agree on some level that I WAS depressed. And now that I state that I don't need/want those meds I've overruled the inner computer so that program no longer functions. I've been so tired the last few days. Taking naps two or three times a day. I think this will pass though. Except that my back has really been bothering me. I...

I had one of the most incredible dreams I've ever had this morning. It was with Bob Dylan and the young person that led me to understand his genius. The dream took place in a small town where Dylan was going to perform. He sent me a text message on my cell phone and told me to bring my friend, that he wanted to meet us and that he had something to give us. I found my friend and she was so excited. "What could he possibly have to give to us, he has given us so much already?", she said over and over. We met him in an empty parking lot in the dark of street lights. Now this is almost hilarious but he smiled so big and said "I've wanted to meet you so badly!" and was actually giggling! Then he handed us a golden ticket (I thought it was a credit card) and he said "Use this. It will take you anywhere. Just remember though that I will always be there with you. All you need to do is remember my songs." God. Now I'm crying. Life without Dylan. How have...

trying out animoto.com's free video feature. let me know what you think?

Got home from my travels in the midwest yesterday. In the few hours since I've been here I've been feeling a temptation to slip into a depression but I am determined to fight that off. I have things to do. Ok, before I get more into this blog entry I need to recount a dream I had this morning. I had a lot of dreams this morning, probably triggered by being back inside my own bed. The significant dream though was of seeing Monica, the girl that I had started to become involved with back in the earlier part of this year (remember her? from my photography class and the deathly depression i fell into after she rejected me?). Well in this dream she had decided to welcome me back into her life. I had seen her at a concert (Judy Collins). She knew I was there but she wouldn't look me in the eye. It was a very early morning dream so I can't remembe many details now except that after the concert she was willing to be in my presence and wanted to talk to me. I started several tim...

I've been a busy little Cemetery Man while on tour here in the midwest. Click this image to see some of the cemeteries I've visited. Be sure to come back in another week or so as I will have probably twice as many more Chicago area cemeteries for you to look at.

giving up on my old ways... they don't work anymore. i want to be somebody. i want to do things. the things that i want to do. i'm not going to be controlled by the old rules anymore. been having a feeling lately, a notion. that the weather is going to change. this is actually a true story. before we left California for this trip to Ohio Gigi kept fearing that we were going to die in the heat back here. there had been a severe heatwave occurring here in the midwest for weeks and weeks, with no let up in sight. i said to her, "We will be fine. By the time we get there the heat wave will have burned itself out. Just you wait and see." well guess what happened... the heat wave burned itself out and we have been enjoying lovely days back here. sadly, the rainstorms also "dried up"... we were hoping for a little excitement from thunderstorms, something we never get to experience in California. there is still time though; 10 more days before we come home. so what ...