HELLA... 6 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK

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The band that has had the single most creative affect on me in the last ten years is HELLA— probably easy for anyone to figure out considering I post more about them than any other band. The first time I heard them was at a small show they played in Grass Valley, CA in early 2002 during their two-piece era of Spencer Seim on guitar and Zach Hill on drums. I attended that show out of pure chance, and before Hella took the stage I was apathetically kickin' in the rear of the venue, but as soon as they started playing I was immediately drawn to the very edge of the stage.
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By stroke of fate, I became good friends with them and in April of 2003 flew up to Seattle to jump in their van to document on super-8mm their gig performances from there to Olympia, Portland, and San Francisco which was the final stretch of a couple month long tour of The States.
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I ran across this video of their performance of "City Folk, Sitting, Sitting" from the Olympia, WA show at Java Lounge, shot by someone in the audience. It's a fairly long song that has always been played with a slightly improvisational mid-section. The audio/video quality of this clip is crap, but it has raw beauty, and just as no surf flick can truly match the actual experience of surfing, no video of Hella, admittedly my documentaries of them (Concentration Face & Portals) included, can ever match the feeling of them live. It's also worth mentioning how much Zach gets out of a single pedalled kick drum— though hard to hear in the low quality audio of the Olympia clip below...
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HELLA, 6 years ago this week:
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And figured I'd add some of the stills I shot, with my trusty Nikonos II, revolving around that Olympia show:
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Flyer, by local kid, on Olympia street corner during pre-show walk around town. Zach, below, backstage shortly after their performance.
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Below, Spencer, Zach and friends hangin' out after the show in the front coffee bar area of the Java Lounge.
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The merch-table, run this night by Dan Elkan, who would go on to play rhythm guitar, vocals, and samples in 2005's 4-piece version of Hella, and currently in the band, THEM HILLS.
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Every touring band deserves to get a cut, but Dan will never understand what drives Spencer to buy some of the things he does with that money... back on the road the next day sharing cramped van space with thrift shop acquirement.
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Joe Meade, stoked designated van driver and merch-table mad man for most of the tour. And the doodling Zach was doing in the passenger seat when the above photo was taken.
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