Tag Archives: Chris Cote

Giant Kings at SMAC – Video #1

As promised in an earlier post, I have a video from the Giant Kings show at the Stone Mountain Arts Center.  This is Wilson Pickett’s classic song “I Found A Love”.  The band invited the center’s owner, Carol Noonan, up to the stage to join in the fun.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/4600260[/vimeo]

The Giant Kings are Duke Levine, Chris Cote, Paul Ahlstrand, Mark Earley, Kevin Barry, Marty Ballou, and Andy Plaisted.

The best way to find when the Giant Kings will be playing next: visit Duke Levine’s MySpace page.

Technical drivel:

Recorded using a Canon 5D Mark II with a 70-200mm f/2.8 IS L lens.  The camera was on a monopod. Exposure compensation -2/3 stop.  Audio was from the camera (next time I promise to plug in a real microphone — although that has its own problems).  Filmed with automatic white balance and corrected in Final Cut Pro  (I have a preferred color balance setting in Lightroom for SMAC stage photographs and need to try dialing that into the camera to see if it will work right out of the camera.)

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The Giant Kings at SMAC

The Giant Kings, the brainchild of Duke Levine and Chris Cote, and a regularly seen band around Boston (Lizard Lounge, Precinct) rocked the Stone Mountain Arts Center on Saturday night applying their prodigious talents to classic R&B, soul, and roots rock music.

Duke was kind enough to give me permission to photograph the evening and a gallery of photos from the show can be found at smac.dmg-photography.com.

I shot some video with the 5D Mark 2 and I will post that in a upcoming article.

Here are the Giant Kings, L-R: Mark Earley (baritone sax); Paul Ahlstrand (tenor sax); Kevin Barry (lap steel and guitar); Duke Levine (guitar); Chris Cote (vocals); Andy Plaisted (drums); Marty Ballou (bass):


Chris is a remarkable vocal talent (and, like all good frontmen, a bit of a ham).  Here he’s doing an amazingly good job of handling the trombone solo for the song (there’s a bit of rough video for that coming as well).


Technical drivel:

Photos were taken using a Canon 1D Mark II at ISO 1600 and a Canon 5D Mark II at ISO 3200 (most of the time).  The 5D served double duty and shot video a good chunk of the time.  Lenses: 70-200 f/2.8L IS and the 24-70 f/2.8L  (and definitely not stabilized).  Most shots are handheld, but some were taken with the monopod.  (Video from the monopod is marginal, without it it is downright useless if you don’t have a stabilized lens.  Heaven knows I’ve tried.)

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