Big Head Todd and the Monsters
I'm a firm believer in the best camera being the one you have with you. That includes phones, and I've been both blessed (and cursed) by getting to play with too many cutting-edge phones in my professional life. For the better part of a decade if one of the major players put out some new hardware, I likely had it.
November 2018 was a weird month. I'd been working on a local mayoral campaign — my first real taste of local politics. It was a blast, and a window into part of Pensacola life that most people probably don't see. (Or care to see, for that matter.)
Election night came and went. We fell short. Two nights later I helped lead a group of kids at City Hall, fighting to have soccer fields built at Hitzman Park in Pensacola. We won that one. And a day after that it was time to celebrate with a band I'd been listening for damned near 25 years at that point.
Big Head Todd and The Monsters were playing Pensacola.
Despite being one of those bands that seems to be perpetually on tour, I'd only seen them in our neck of the woods a couple times before. First was on May 24, 1998, in Montgomery, Ala. I was all of 19 years old and drove my then-girlfriend and I in a dying 1985 BMW 325e, back in the day before we had proper GPS in cars and on our phones. Great show. Very cool venue on Alabama River. (Also ran into a hardcore Dash Rip Rock fan I knew from their forums, who was surprised at the DRR shirt I had because he'd never see it before.)
Second Big Head Todd show was in New Orleans with my now-wife, either in March 2004 or 2005. (Setlist.FM is missing both those shows, sadly.)
That brings us to the modern era, properly chronicled on Setlist.FM. We actually saw the band eating in the window at Khon's before the show — very cool — just down the street from Vinyl Music Hall. Plus it was Gallery Night, so downtown Pensacola was packed.
They opened and closed with covers, leading with a brilliant version of Black Sabbath's War Pigs — not exactly what you'd expect from a blues-based band. It certainly set the tone.
Concerts are always challenging to shoot. Loads of dynamic range, meaning bright lights falling off into nothing. Some phones handled that better than others, but I was pleasantly surprised at how the Google Pixel 3XL performed. For stills, anyway. (These are all straight out of camera as backed up in Google Photos.)
Video was another story, but I also wasn't all that close to the action and likely zoomed in more than I should have.
You do the best with what you have.
