Last night finally had a chance to go check out Jimy Graham playing live. (My profile of him is in the current issue of BC Magazine.) I’m very happy to tell you that this guy’s the real deal. I could only stay for the first set but it was a master class in blues and rock guitar, a professional guitar slinger at work, the kind of thing that you don’t get a chance to see or hear live in Hong Kong very often these days.

It’s a shame that there was no real advance promotion on this – I only found out about it the day before and Rock School put a sign in front of the bar the day of the gig. No cover charge and they had people on the street handing out coupons for free drinks, resulting in the most people I’ve seen in the bar since it opened. I suppose people came for the free drink but I think more than a few decided to stay after that because this was clearly a cut above the usual music choices you get in Wanchai.

I was kind of beat after a busy day so I only stayed for the first set – wish I had the energy to stay all night but my energy level’s still not completely back after being ill earlier this year.

Reminder that tonight’s the first heat in the Hong Kong edition of Global Battle of the Bands and I’m one of the judges. It kicks off at 8 at Cavern Club in Lan Kwai Fong and there are five bands competing tonight. Hope you can make it!















Tech-y note on the photos. Jimy said it was okay to use flash, and the shots above are all ones taken with flash. But I hate using a flash in these situations – aside from the fact that it’s terribly intrusive, I hate missing shots while waiting for the flash to recharge.

I shot a lot more photos without the flash at ISO 1600 – didn’t want to push higher than that although the relatively low noise on those shots tells me perhaps I should try next time. I went to shutter priority mode and had to go with 1/20th of a second to get anything – and clearly 1/20th still led to plenty of blurry shots. There’s some good ones in that batch but it will require a lot more time spent in Lightroom to make them presentable.

My lens is the Nikon 18-200mm which has a maximum aperture variable f/3.5-5.6 and with the varying focal lengths, most of my shots were in the f/4.5-f/5 range.

So now I’m thinking that Nikon’s got a 35mm (50mm equivalent) f/1.8 prime lens that’s selling locally for $1880 or less and that might be good for situations like this. Not that I should be spending money right now, but lenses can be as addictive as tattoos (maybe even more so).

Hongkie Town
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