First Light

[vin_petrol]

One of my christmas presents was a new scanner. The important feature I asked for (and got) was negative scanning capability. I have an enormous quantity of black and white negatives from the 1980s. Y'see, when I was at York University, I was the photographic editor on the campus newspaper Vision. I therefore took a metric shedload of pictures of York Uni life in that era. Most of the pictures made it to contact sheets, but only a few made it all the way to prints. Sadly, most of those went off to the printers with the galley pages and I didn't get them back. The galley pages were hand made to begin with: the text was laser printed then cut and pasted (literally: scissors and glue!). Vision bought an Apple Macintosh as my involvement with it was ending, in about 1990.

I was also a keen amateur photographer in the eighties and early nineties, and did lots of B&W photography in my spare time too.

So I have a file full of negatives, with few prints. It takes a long time to do black and white prints - you can lose days in a darkroom. I've been meaning to get a negative scanner for years, and now I have, so I can scan this body of work and see what I've got. There are some things in there I never printed out it will be interesting to see. There are a few obscure rock bands of the eighties I managed to photograph too (who can remember The Little Angels?)

But to start with, I just needed one strip of negatives with one image on I could test it with. A quick flick through found one. Cross referencing it with other pictures on the same strip of film that were printed in Vision, I can tell this picture was taken in the last week of January 1988. IIRC, I took this to be used as an image in his campaign for SU president. Our very own minusbat, with a good deal more hair:

Comments

[steer.livejournal.com]

The Little Angels?

From Leicester, sounded slightly like the cult only less good... obscure at the height of their fame in 1991?

[jozafeen.livejournal.com]

I still get requests for them at the rock night I DJ - I boggled when I found they actually have a 'best of' CD out!

[steer.livejournal.com]

*Grin* Well, I had a few friends who were fans and they did get "radio one" big briefly but I never liked them much. Can't understand them still being requested.

[vin_petrol]

I suspect you're thinking of Crazyhead.

The Little Angels were from Scarborough.

[steer.livejournal.com]

No, I was a huge fan of Crazyhead. A friend of mine went to school with one of the guys from Little Angels and my friend was from Leicester. Could be that they lived in Scarborough mind.

[minusbat.livejournal.com]

Scarbourough. You mean Scarborough. they used to hang out in The Stage Door when I wwas going over there.

[minusbat.livejournal.com]

Soirry, just saw rest of thread! has been pointed out already I see... :-)

[steer.livejournal.com]

Oh, and that's not minusbat he's not wearing clogs.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

Do you remember minusbat's (brief) barefoot, dressed in white, daisies in his hair phase? Summer '88 I think.

[toripink.livejournal.com]

haha! I think I was wearing Minnie Mouse reversable jumper and had a fringe in 1988 :) I was 9 years old

(something I have been teasing Pete about all night - ha ha ha!!!)

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

I've recently been plowing through a load of old negatives myself, from 20 to 25 years ago, and the results have been interesting. Not as entertaining as that one of yours though! Still, I got an icon out of them.

[menacing-dancer.livejournal.com]

who can remember The Little Angels?

That's a rhetorical question, right?

[vin_petrol]

That's a rhetorical question, right?

Nope! I have an assortment of dubious 80s rock bands in there. Clearly, these were bands where I could blag my way in as press without too much hassle, so they were never particularly significant. Mostly Yorkshire bands too. IIRC, there's The Little Angels, Noussomes, Chrome Molly, etc.

The more 'significant' bands I photographed were usually indie pop bands that York SU put on, so I had no interest in them at all personally. I seem to recall taking pictures of The Primitives, much to blue_condition's annoyance as he had a bit of soft spot for their lead singer...

[kneeshooter]

Did he win?

I remember The Little Angels and I was never into rock music.

[vin_petrol]

Did he win?

Sadly, no.

[echo-echo.livejournal.com]

Yup, remember the Little Angels well. Saw them supporting Bryan Adams and Extreme way back when...must have been 91 or something. Ended up going to an album signing for Jam (which I gave to Midnightmoon a few years ago as she loves them still). Remember giving them our demo tape at the time, "I'll have a listen lads, I always do". :)

Ah, the photo of minusbat. When students actually looked like students. The kind of people with ambitions of changing the world and vague ideas of actually doing it. I look at students today and my heart sinks. All trendy clothes, ambitions of middle class jobs, cars and Urban Splash apartments.

[ex-wendles389.livejournal.com]

When students actually looked like students. The kind of people with ambitions of changing the world and vague ideas of actually doing it. I look at students today and my heart sinks. All trendy clothes, ambitions of middle class jobs, cars and Urban Splash apartments.

IKWYM. The students next door to us (along with others in the street) have just returned this weekend. Although a few look studenty, in general their clothes and haircuts indeed makes my heart sink... also whilst they were all away the street was only half full of cars - given they're only 15 mins walk from both the uni and town, what do they need cars for? *boggle*

[vin_petrol]

Ended up going to an album signing for Jam

Hee hee. Somewhere I've got two signed copies of Don't Prey for Me from an album signing I went to...

When students actually looked like students. The kind of people with ambitions of changing the world and vague ideas of actually doing it.

I actually have a lot of pictures of student demos from the 80s too. One of my favourite pics is of an assortment of York Uni students lined up to greet Leon Brittan when he was visiting York. They don't look very pleased to see him, and may be shouting and making gestures in a not-alltogether-friendly fashion.

[minusbat.livejournal.com]

Wow. Do you know I never saw a poitive of that., The only copy you gave me was solarised. heh, I still look remarkably similar! Worrying eh ?

[vin_petrol]

Solarised! You're right - I had forgotten I did that to it. Ooh, ancient analogue darkroom effects :-)

[miss-dark.livejournal.com]

If you have a crowd shot of the Little Angels whe they played St Georges Hall in Bradford then you may have a very early pic of me! *hidesheadinshame* The leader singer (can't remember this name) flicked a pick in to the crowd and it hit me on the face!

I was only there because everybody else from my shared house was going and I didn't want to be left out... I never actually liked them *grin*

[vin_petrol]

Hmmm. Not sure if I was at that gig or not. It's likely I was, but I can't remember every single dubious rock gig I went to in the eighties - there were so many!

The leader singer (can't remember this name)

Toby Jepson. *Definitely* a Scarborough boy as a friend of mine went to college with him in Scarborough. As my friend used to say "I can't take The Little Angels seriously as Toby always used to bum money off me to buy tea and bacon sandwiches at college!"

[black-marx.livejournal.com]

Nevermind the hair, that is the first time I have EVER seen minusbat wearing footwear other than clogs!!!

Only Little Angels knowledge I have is that the drummer went on to play for Skunk Anansie, where he looked out-of-place.

[rich-r.livejournal.com]

Are you leaning to one side? Or is Pete leaning? OK fair enough, Central Hall may well be leaning...

[ketlogic.livejournal.com]

I went to an open day at york uni in 2001 and we had a talk in the mushroom. They said there were far more people than they were expecting and had to do two seperate talks in case we sank. Nice thing to say to prospective students and their parents.