The Horrors @ Croc’ The Rock Festival, Étagnières, 27.10.2018
The band agreed to pose for a quick picture before going on the basketball field- I mean on stage. The Horrors are one of my favorite bands and it made me so happy to be able to take pictures of them with my Olympus Trip ! Their show was also special- it was a mix of old and new songs, including Sea Within A Sea, which they played in its entirety !
Bad Nerves @ Croc' The Rock festival, Étagnières, 27.10.2023
What a joy to reunite with one of my favorite bands Bad Nerves, this time in my country for the legendary Croc' The Rock fest! When I arrived at the festival, the band was playing football with the kids from the village! I shot this photo after the match. They had to stop because it started pouring rain!
Later on, their show was incredible. Moshpit was immediate and the fans were singing along (including me.) Thank you so much Bad Nerves for trusting me again!
LIFE @ Croc' The Rock Festival, Étagnières, 28.10.2023
Here are photos shot with my Nikon of the amazing LIFE from Hull closing Croc' The Rock festival with rage and love. Such an incredible show. We also did a quick interview before the show, coming soon!
Egyptian Blue @ Croc’ The Rock, Etagnières, 30.10.2021
Egyptian Blue were closing Croc’ The Rock fest, and they killed it! Their gig was like an explosion, just incredible! They went hard, and we loved every second of it! Thank you Egyptian Blue!!
Bee Bee Sea @ Croc’ The Rock, Etagnières, 30.10.2021
Bee Bee Sea came all the way from Italy to melt our faces off, and their concert was so much fun! Their new album Day Ripper sounds incredible live, and it was difficult to stay still while taking pictures! Grazie Mille Bee Bee Sea!
Leopardo @ Croc’ The Rock Festival, Etagnières, 30.10.2021
Opening for Saturday at Croc’ The Rock was Leopardo! The band smashed it, it was great to see them live again! They played songs from their new album, Malcantone, check it out!
The Mystery Lights in Étagnières before the show at Croc’ The Rock, through my Olympus Trip 35.
Two years ago, I interviewed The Mystery Lights at Le Romandie. I was blown away by their kindness and the concert that followed afterwards. During the years that followed, I kept going to their epic shows whenever they played Switzerland, and there were many occasions (they spend the majority of their time touring around the world). Since Too Much Tension! came out, I was on the lookout for a possible date to interview the band again. I was happy to discover that the great Croc’ The Rock festival booked them not far from my hometown.
So two years after our first encounter, I sat down with the band again to talk about their new album Too Much Tension!. They tell me about the recording of the album - they had been playing some of the songs live for a while before entering the studio - , Lily permanently joining the band and finally feeling like the lineup is complete, living in New York and preparing for the rockpocalypse.
Many thanks to the Croc’ The Rock crew and the Mystery Lights for their kindness!
What is your life like in New York at the moment?
L.A.: We all live within ten minutes of each other.
Mike: New York is expensive, that’s why you split rent with seven people! (laughs)
Alex: Or you get rent stabilization, or rent control, which means your rent doesn’t ever go up. Which is hard to get, but it’s possible.
Mike: New York is crazy! It never shuts down.
Alex: 24-hour-nonsense.
Mike: if you want a beer and a deli sandwich at 5am you can get it. There’s always a party somewhere.
Alex: We have these corner stores called bodegas pretty much on every street corner. It’s quite enabling.
Mike: It’s really fun, but it’s overwhelming too. It’s a fast-paced city.
Speaking of New York, I wanted to talk about the music video for Too Much Tension.
L.A.: Our friend Laura Lynn came to hang out and shoot the video. We’re pretty much just walking around in New York.
Mike: There was nothing to it really. Usually L.A. takes care of all the videos. For this one, we wanted to put it in the hands of somebody else and just let them run with their own idea.
I also wanted to talk about your new keyboardist, Lily!
Mike: I was putting a backing band together for the King Khan and BBQ show. I needed someone good on keys. Lily played in another band called Worthless, and she’s really good at the keys so I asked her if she wanted to join in. It was fun playing the songs, and we just asked her “hey, do you want to join and come to Australia with us?”
Lily: It was in two weeks! (laughs)
Mike: And after Australia she just kept coming along!
Great! I’ve read in other interviews that Lily is now a permanent member of the band. Is it difficult to juggle between your two bands?
Lily: With the other band, we’re not really recording or playing shows anymore, and I played keys in a couple other bands in New York. If I’m in New York I can play with other people, but for the most part I’m basically focused on the Mystery Lights.
That’s awesome! I know that the band changed keyboardists a lot, so it’s nice to have finally found someone who can-
Alex: Play. For a while it was drummers too. Before we found Zach, we had like, 6 drummers in one year or something. (laughs)
Mike: It’s real! Now things are becoming more permanent, and it feels good for the first time ever, finally! The band is where it should be, where it should have been a long time ago. It took a little while to get there.
I wanted to talk about my favorite song as well, Watching the News Gives Me the Blues. I think it sounds like a 60s classic song, it’s amazing! I guess I know what the song is about (laughs), but I still would like to know how it came to life.
Mike: There was an instrumental that L.A. had written and recorded on a Taskam tape machine in New York. I just kept listening to it and helped with the structure the verse and the chorus, and found a melody that works. Then L.A. said that we should call it “Watching the News Gives Me the Blues” based on everything that was happening in the US specifically at that time, so I wrote the lyrics around that title. It’s pretty self-explanatory.
I don’t remember you guys playing this particular song live – at least during the concerts I’ve been to in Switzerland – but I recognized other songs on the album from hearing them live. I was wondering, after playing them so many times around the world, how did it feel to finally record them? Was it like a routine, or were you already fed up with playing these songs again and again?
L.A.: We were fed up with some of them! But we always do that. I don’t know why we do that, we play a song for way too long before it’s out. But when we went to the studio to record the album, the songs changed a lot. The versions we were playing live didn’t go on the record exactly as they were.
Mike: The thing is, we wanted to introduce new songs because we were touring and playing the old songs so much. We wanted something fresh. The way to do it next time is to take those songs, record them, put a new record out and then go tour them. I don’t think playing new stuff ahead of the record is a good idea because you do tire of it pretty fast. But recording the songs brought a new life to them, so it became exciting again.
Yeah, I think it gives them a new flavor. Compared to the live shows, you can hear all the little details.
Mike: Wayne Gordon did a really good job at mixing it. He is our producer and he mixed the record as well. He used a lot of stereo methods that were – I think – genius. When he sent us the final mixes, I was blown away. The way he put specific sounds in each ear was genius. So yeah, the songs do have a whole new life on the record, as opposed to live. But you’ll hear it tonight, I mean you haven’t seen us for a long time. With Lily and the sound player it’s a lot different. It sounds more like what you hear on the record.
Let’s imagine there’s a zombie apocalypse in New York, and the zombies are at your door. You have to leave, and you can take only one item out of these three with you: first-aid kit, canned food or a gun. Which one do you choose?
Lily: First aid.
Mike: A gun! It’s fun to have it on anyway.
Alex: We’ve been watching Peaky Blinders. Maybe a gun, yeah.
L.A.: I was definitely going to say canned food! (laughs)
Mike: But you won’t need anything else if you have a gun. It’s kill or be killed!
L.A.: Wait, it’s a zombie apocalypse right? I changed my mind, I take the gun. And maybe sneak a little bit of the canned food before you leave… (laughs).
What can we expect from the Mystery Lights in the future?
