Cutting Teeth

By Ryan Harrington

It's 2:30 pm Saturday afternoon. I awaken to the sound of jackhammers powering away at concrete somewhere, possibly on the street below. I'm pretty sure it's the street, but I could be wrong. Maybe they're dismantling the walls of the building next door. It doesn't really matter. It's loud and my head hurts. It's probably been going on since 8am like it has every other day this week, but I don't recall hearing any noise when I went to bed at 7:30am. Then again, I was pretty wasted and I wasn't paying much attention to anything other than finding my bed and passing out.

The splitting headache that has commandeered the space within my skull is pulsating to the beat of the jackhammer, migrating in waves from my forehead down to a nice little space it's found halfway down my spine. I try to sleep, but I can't. The jackhammer/headache tandem has pretty much ruled out any chance of that happening. I guess I'm functioning on 5 hours sleep today.

The headache could have possibly been caused by any one of a number of independent factors. Realistically however, it's the result of a cumulative effort between the Jackhammer, lack of sleep, shitty Taiwan Beer, and the fumes inhaled while hot boxing the bathroom of a Ho-Hsin bus coming home.

Being in a rock band is tough.

For those who know me, you know that I have about as much musical talent as a deaf chimpanzee with no arms. My dreams of busting out a guitar solo in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans were crushed long ago at the age of 6, when my mother told me I should never sing out loud if I wanted to have any friends. Air guitar and singing in the shower are about as far as my musical career will ever go.

Despite the fact that my larynx produces monotone sounds, my ears are incapable of detecting differences in tone and pitch, and my extremities have no rhythm whatsoever, my right eye is fine. So when Bradley Tindall, lead singer and front man of The Rising Hedons, offered me the opportunity to join the band as the official photographer, I saw it as my chance to come as close as I'll ever come to being in a band.

I also saw this as an opportunity and a purpose to write, which, for the most part I've been unmotivated to do recently due to a lack of inspiration. With the band's new tour of Taiwan underway, I've found both the inspiration to write, and something to focus my photography on. It also happens to be a really good opportunity to drink a lot of beer and hot box miniature bathrooms while traveling down the highway at 5am.

That's what rock bands do.

Friday's show at Bliss in Taipei was the band's first live show in over four months. Busting out a number of great new tunes in addition to many old classics, the Hedons rocked out to a small crowd and fine-tuned their sound in preparation for next week's highly anticipated gig at Blues Bash. With their teeth all cut and great new tunes to blast out to the masses, this will be a show you don't want to miss!

Next show:
Blues Bash - November 15th, at the Dream Community in Xizhi.

Check the web site http://www.bsot-bluesbash.info/ for detailed instructions on how to get there and also for additional performer announcements as they come in.

Rock on!

For more information about Ryan Harrington Photography, please visit his site.

WWW.RYANHARRINGTONPHOTOGRAPHY.COM
Official photographer of the Rising Hedons