I’ve been in three real bands, which is three more than I had ever been in five years ago. It’s been really educational, and a lot of fun except for the parts that were grinding awful crap on a crap cracker that was itself grindingly awful. One of the things I’ve learned is that just about anything that a person could be excited about or want to do in a band context will seem dull or stupid or a major faux pas to someone else in that band, and that there’s basically no system for predicting which is which or settling those accounts. And also that I’m often the excited one.

But photos! Band photos! There’s a healthy crop of literature on the subject of what is (or, mostly really, is not) a good idea for a band photo. And the thing is, even if you’ve seen these galleries, read these compelling arguments vis-a-vis bad photo choices, you still kind of end up wanting to go out to the old train tracks to shoot some goofy snaps of everybody doing their thing. It’s like some idiotic universal constant. You will stand in front of a brick wall, and know that you are standing in front of a brick wall and that you shouldn’t be, and you will like it.