Leor Galil

Single Mothers' tour camera

Buying band merchandise has become such an integral part of the live-music experience that these days musicians have to apologize if they don't have any records, apparel, posters, and whatever other things one could possibly sell. It's pretty common to go to a concert and pass by a merch stand clogged with an overabundance of paraphernalia, and if you attend shows with any regularity all the T-shirts and CD jewel cases kind of blur together. When musicians can offer all kinds of absurd and lavish packages to get eager fans to shell out for a Kickstarter project it's easy to pass by merch booths unimpressed.

It's also easy for a band to catch peoples' eyes with a unique piece of merchandise, which is just what Canadian hardcore act and recent Hot Charity signees Single Mothers did Saturday night. I caught the group when they opened for beloved melodic-hardcore band Quicksand at the Metro on Saturday, and they were selling one particular item that piqued my interest: a used Kodak disposable point-and-shoot camera. Single Mothers' tour manager Dylan Smith told me the guys decided to buy a bunch of these cameras and take them on their tour with Quicksand, using each one to document a 24-hour period of the trek and then sell it to whomever was interested. I quickly threw down five dollars for the camera, which captured their experiences in Detroit and Chicago, and got Smith's e-mail address to pass along the photos once I got them processed—he told me he had no idea what would come of any of the cameras, and I was more than happy to share the pictures and get the anecdotes behind all of them.

Getting one-time-use cameras developed isn't as easy as it used to be—I dropped by four different Walgreens before finding one that could process the camera in-house—and the resulting photos aren't the best quality, but the peek at the band's experience on the road and Smith's insightful anecdotes are worth the hassle. Take a look at the highlights from the photo collection and Smith's comments in the slideshow below:





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