The Ten Year Challenge
I lost a roll of film. It came back years later.
I snapped this photo on June 18, 2011, backstage at Neumo’s in Seattle, exactly ten years ago. The Blue Scholars “Cinemetropolis” album release concert happened there that night. This photo of a chōchin hanging from the ceiling was the first shot of a fresh roll, a test shot to ensure the film roll was wound properly. It ended up being the only photo out of thirty-six to follow basic photo aesthetic rules: subject in focus, framed along gridlines, properly exposed.
The rest of the photos, not so much.
I lost this roll of film that night and thought I’d never see these photos. I’ve lost rolls before and since, but this is the only roll that has ever come back to me. All respect due to the homie DJ Sosa who found the roll that night, but not knowing it’s owner and how to find them, kept it in his possession until when the universe decided to intervene again.
Some time later, he developed the roll along with some of his own. Maybe he saw the photo (pictured above) of himself, triggering a memory of me taking a photo of him that night. It’s also possible that consuming the contents of the bottle in the photo dampened his recollection of events.
We tried to schedule a time to link up and make the exchange but things happened, time flew. C and I had were in the thick of Hood Famous Bakeshop’s early days; Sosa and his partner relocated to Los Angeles and have been growing their même kidswear business. Years passed, the photos forgotten about.
In 2019, Sosa was back in town around the time Hood Famous Cafe + Bar opened. He slid thru, we caught up, he mentioned that he still had the film roll and would send it back through a homie. Finally, eight years after I lost the roll, it was back in my possession.
The rest of the photos from this roll capture scenes of the final moments backstage before our set. Familiar faces, friends. Most I haven’t seen since the pre-pandemic Before Times. I was thrilled to have documented this occasion, to see these faces, but I was disappointed with the shot quality. The subjects were mostly out-of-focus, the lighting was terrible, the action felt mute. Is this really how chill it was? I remember it being much more vibrant. Lots more smoke and drank. The quietness of these photos betray how loud it was that night.
On top of that, the film developer likely had no idea that these photos taken on ISO 400 film were actually shot underexposed (at ISO 800) with the intention of being pushed one stop. So most of the photos are underexposed. Not ideal when most of the human subjects are POC.
I was intially underwhelmed. Eight years later, and not a single “dope” photo. At least not one that stood out like “I gotta put this in the book.” But as I tried editing this set, the less disappointed I became at my work as a photographer that evening and the more appreciative I became of the truth in these photos—a truth no one knows more than me.
All that blur, nothing in focus. That’s really how it all feels now. Actual memories of that evening feel exactly like the photos. Vaguely familiar, but not detailed. Smiles in shadows. I remember taking sips of Jameson throughout the night. Not enough to fuck me up onstage but enough to make trying to finesse 1/15 shutter speed shots in basement lighting an impossible task. Things were moving around me quicker than I could capture it. Both my intoxication and pre-performance nervous energy are embedded in the (lack of) quality of these shots. It couldn’t have been otherwise.
The Neumo’s green room is many levels above most mid-size music venues. It’s spacious: there’s a “headliner” room with a mutliple couch setup, three auxiliary rooms, showers, arcade games. Vandalism is welcomed—tags of past performers line the wall. Some have managed large murals (how?). There is a TV with a built-in VHS player, a handful of VHS tapes, an Eraserhead poster on the wall. It’s not an indie venue if someone there doesn’t love David Lynch.
There are smells that many green rooms have: spilled stale beer, the mustiness of a couch that touches over 250 asses a year, Swisher guts, hint of Lysol. I’ve come to love and hate all iterations of that smell, but the one I like most is Neumo’s. It has a funk but it’s not funky, there’s a must but it isn’t musty. I’m sure the high ceilings help out with air flow but it’s also the fact that the staff keeps the spot clean, no small task. Musicians don’t clean up messes.
I wonder what the green room, after a year of no messy musicians, smells like now. Long live Neumo’s.
The final photo of the roll, pictured above, is the exact moment that Macklemore was on the mic hyping up the crowd to welcome us onstage while Saba checked his phone one last time. I vaguely remember attempting to load another roll of HP5+ into my Nikon FE shortly after taking this photo, realizing it was the last shot, and that we’d have to hit the stage in 15 seconds. I probably left the roll somewhere just off stage because I don’t like having shit bulging in my pockets when I’m rapping in front of a crowd.
The photo is cut off abruptly at the right edge, which obscures the stairs in the frame leading up to the stage. It would be the last time Saba and I walked up those stairs together.