I have been a fan of comedian/musician Dave Hill for a long time. When I first moved to NYC I was very involved in the comedy scene because some of my first friends in New York were comedians and girls who liked banging comedians.  Stand up comedy is pretty boring to photograph so I would usually just go to the shows and then go shoot parties after. I never really did much comedy photography although I always talked about it.

Over the last few months I have been wanting to do more editorial work but I don’t really have a portfolio for it so I hit up a bunch of comedian friends of mine to try to do some photo shoots. None of them happened because both comedians and I travel constantly so it was hard to find a good time. I kept trying and finally Dave and I had a chance to meet up.

I went over to his place in the West Village the other day and we just hit the streets to find something to shoot. We didn’t really have any ideas until I remembered their was a pet store near his house. He suggested we walk a bit further and see if a place called Citipups would let us take photos of Dave with their puppies. Citipups were awesome and they let Dave and I play with an adorable Westie puppy and the most awkward looking dog I have ever seen, a cross eyed Boston Terrier.

We shot a bunch of photos of the dogs in this awful mixed light that they had in the store and then we went out and hit the street for some just standard portraits.  We eventually ended up at Teen Vogue’s Fashion Night Out event which is even funnier if you knew Dave’s history when it comes to reporting on fashion week.

After you check out all the photos you need to check out Dave’s website because it is fucking hilarious.  But before you do that click here to see all my photos of comedian Dave Hill.

There was only one thing that really disappointed me at the Gathering of the Juggalos and that was Legends of Wrestling night. It seemed like a great idea and as a kid I grew up watching WWF so I figured I would have fun shooting these old dudes going at it again.  Unfortunately the thing started like two hours late and then moved so fucking slowly. I didn’t have a great shot of the ring this year and I really wanted to see Brian Posehn do stand up which I ended up missing all but 5 minutes of. I didn’t even stick it out to see the D-Generation X vs NWO match or the Rowdy Roddy Pipper Vs Terry Funk matches I actually cared about.  What I did see was a bunch of old dudes who had no business wrestling get in the ring and push each other around.  The only highlight of the night was the ECW reunion match where the guys actually wrestled each other.  There was a tense moment when Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka came out because I thought he might die at any second. Fortunately he survived and I eventually gave up.

My photos are pretty boring unless you love wrestling, but you can watch this trailer for the event to psych you up for the pictures.  The whole thing sounds pretty exciting until you actually have to watch Bob Backlund and Ken Patera hug each other for 20 min.

Anyway, just click here if you wanna see all my photos from Legends of Wrestling night at The Gathering of the Juggalos.

For more Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

At times in this post the word “celebrity” may be used a little loosely, but please know that in my mind Jimmy Walker is pretty much as big as they come.

From reading about the Insane Clown Posse and actually talking to them during the Gathering it has become pretty clear to me that one of the reasons ICP throws this huge party every year is so they can see some of their favorite artists and meet some of their childhood heroes. The Gathering of the Juggalos doesn’t make a lot of money for them, if anything at all… they do it so their fans can have a crazy time at least once a year.  But at the same time ICP invites artists that they love even if their fans don’t give a shit.

When Camile Dodero asked ICP who they were excited about they gushed about Paris, a 90’s gansta rapper than 95% of juggalos had never heard of until he did a track with Anybody Killa. You got the feeling ICP just wanted to share the stage with him and maybe show juggalos what Paris was all about.

Anyway, the point is the Gathering is always crawling with weird celebrities you probably forgot existed. Last year it was Gallagher and Todd Bridges.  This year it was Jimmy Walker and Dustin Diamond. Ron Jeremy has been a constant presence both years, bringing willing juggalos back to his trailer. Famous wrestlers from long ago hobble the campgrounds like wounded veterans. X Pac and Razor Ramon spent their days riding in golf carts posing for pictures. Plust the comedy night brought out the hilarious Harland Williams and Brian Posehn.

And then of course their are the musicians.  George Clinton and Ice Cube are as big as they come.  Xzibit was there as a rapper but people I talked to couldn’t name a song by him but knew him from Pimp My Ride. Flavor Flav hosted Sunday night and hyped the crowd like he has been doing for decades. On top of that Psychopathic Records stable of artists featured home grown celebrities like Twiztid, ABK, Boondox and Blaze and of course the newest edition to the Psychopathic family… Vanilla Ice.

But the big story at this years Gathering was of course Charlie Sheen.  Without a doubt the biggest celebrity to ever show his face in Cave In Rock, IL Sheen was the topic of plenty of media both before and after the event. Despite what I have read online about juggalos pelting him with garbage, Sheen was universally loved by juggalos. They throw shit at everyone and unless they are throwing glass, urine or human feces you are doing okay.  Charlie Sheen caught one can of Faygo out of the air to huge applause and another glow stick on his way off stage. It could not have been perfect.  In our interviews with ICP and Twiztid both groups had nothing but good things to say about Sheen and how he went out of his way to talk to them and was cool to everyone back stage.  He even posed for a picture for me when I yelled at him from off stage. He bent down and posed for longer than he should have while I dealt with my malfunctioning Faygo soaked camera. I have always been a Charlie Sheen fan, and recently he obtained hero status and nothing he did at the Gathering changed my mind.

Anyway, I have about 50 shots I dubbed “celebrity” shots and while most of them are just of Charlie Sheen yelling “Whoop whoop winning!” on stage the gallery is still worth checking out.

Click here to see all the photos of celebrities at the 2011 Gathering of the Juggalos.

For more Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

One thing that may have slipped past you when you were mocking my decision to travel to the Gathering of the Juggalos was that the bill of non clown related acts was absolutely incredible. I hit Lollapalooza the weekend before the Gathering and there were maybe three bands I was mildly exited to see. At the Gathering there were one or two bands every night I was fucking psyched about.

No matter what your beef is with the Insane Clowns you cannot fuck with a bill that includes Ice Cube, Bobby Brown and George Clinton.  Oh, did I mention Lil Jon, Xzibit, Mystikal, Busta Rhymes, Juvenile and Tech N9ne? Wanna go old school? How about MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, E-40, DJ Quik and Paris.  For the rockers you got bands like CKY, Saliva, Kittie and Hed Pe.  Plus about 100 other bands that I have no fucking clue are but I am sure are at the very least entertaining to watch. People kept telling me about a band made up of Kung Fu Vampires. You probably should not fuck with that.

A few notes about the bands before I give you guys the pictures:

• MC Hammer fucking killed it. Seriously. That guy is probably better now than he ever was and went over so surprisingly well. He had the juggalos eating out of his hand by the second song and he spent most of his set in the crowd with them.
• Paul Wall never showed and may or may not get murdered via hatchet in the next few weeks. Juvenile walked off the stage after two water bottles came near him. It was really embarrassing. And Busta Rhymes went on two hours late, perhaps due to pineapples, but then redeemed himself by rocking the crowd and seemed genuinely moved by the love the juggalos showed him.
• The moment I realized I am turning juggalo was when I heard Mystikal walk off stage and tell his boys “That was so fucking fun.” The juggalos threw so much shit at him and I was afraid he was going to pull a Juvenile and walk off but after 6 years in prison I am sure the Gathering was a peice of cake. The dude killed it and walked off part of the “Family” and I felt a lot of pride cause I guess I am part of that family too.
• Ice Cube opened with two N.W.A. songs and I almost lost it. I could barely take photos while I was screaming the words. It was amazing and that dude is so pro juggalo and said he would keep coming back as long as they would have him.  If it keeps him from doing a sequel to “Are We There Yet” I support it.
• Wolfpac was the only band I photographed from start to finish. They were on a side stage and had strippers with them. I’ll post those pictures in their own post in a few days.
• And George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic? Holy shit. Fucking amazing.

Okay, that’s all I got. It’s time to look at fucking pictures.

Click here to see all my pictures of the non Psychopathic Records musical acts that performed at the 2011 Gathering of the Juggalos.

For more Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

I am nearly recovered from Lollapalooza and I figured it is time to get some photos up. Lollapalooza was a total shit show and after the first day I didn’t see how I could possibly make it through the weekend. Fortunately day one was the worst of it and unfortunately I didn’t get a lot of shots on days two and three.

After shooting a few bands and hundreds of crowd shots on day one I returned to Lollapalooza a bit late on day two after sleeping through my alarm. When I got down there I photographed Death From Above 197s and then tried to go to one of the VIP lounges. My pass wasn’t working and I spent nearly two hours getting a replacement. By that time it was nearly 6pm and I made it just in time to shoot Ween and then head over to shoot The Pretty Reckless which I heard was a wild show. After that I ran into the Sailor Jerry team and they got me into the artist area and I hung out there for a while before I called it a day. On day three I had a bunch of bands I wanted to shoot but the earliest band, Cage The Elephant, did’t start till 5:15 so I didn’t get down there until about 5pm. After their set I ran over to another stage to shoot Best Coast. During their first song the sky exploded and I got soaked. I wasn’t really prepared for the rain and I didn’t want my shit to get ruined so I got the fuck out of there and that was the end of my Lollapalooza trip.

In total I shot only 7 bands (plus Girl Talk) and none of the big headliners because they had bullshit photo waivers that I refused to sign. Those bands were The Kills, Crystal Castles, Death From Above 1979, Ween, The Pretty Reckless, Cage The Elephant, Best Coast and Girl Talk.

Not going to get into write ups on all the bands but I should mention a few things. First of all, Cage The Elephant were amazing. Their front man was running all over the stage and in the crowd and they really, really impressed me. They just gained themselves a new fan. I was also very impressed by The Pretty Reckless. They are fronted by Gossip Girl’s Taylor Momsen which at first would lead me to believe that they would be awful, but she put on a hell of a show and I was very surprised at how good of a front woman she was. The next day I saw her do an acoustic set at the Express Rocks Suite and her voice was pretty incredible. And lastly I figured I should mention the Crystal Castles set. I was told that we couldn’t photograph from the photo pit because a photographer sued Crystal Castles for breaking his camera once. I took this as a challenge and managed to used 15 years of mosh pit experience to push my way to the front. Right as I got there the girl from the band jumped into the crowd right next to me and I got some amazing shots without breaking my camera. The rest of the photographers were shooting from a hill with long telephoto lenses. I win.

Anyway, that is it for today. I hopefully will be able to get the crowd shots up tomorrow before I leave town for the madness that is the Gathering of the Juggalos.

Click here to see all my band photos from the 2011 Lollapalooza in Chicago, IL.

A quick update today while I organize the rest of my Lollapalooza shots and try to enjoy Chicago now that I don’t have to work all day.  These are the shots from the second night of the Filter Magazine Lollapalooza after party.  If you didn’t see the shots from the first night they are here.

The location – Hard Rock Hotel, the free booze – Sailor Jerry Rum – and the Celebrity DJ – Elijah Wood, remained the same but there were some changes in the mix as well.  Kid Color DJd and Phantogram played early in the night, but the night was headlined by Foster The People who completely packed the place.  They also brought Lindsay Lohan with them who clearly didn’t want her photo taken so I didn’t take it. That being said you can see her in the back ground of one shot… see if you can find it!

Anyway, the night was a lot of fun and you should have been there. Click here to see all the shots from the Saturday night Filter After Party at the Hard Rock Hotel.

I gotta go get my ass down to Lollapalooza right now but I wanted to quickly get the photos from last night to you. I hit up the Filter Magazine after party at the Hard Rock Hotel in Chicago.  Of all people Elijah Wood was DJing. He is so tiny and DJ’s with an iPod but also he seemed very nice and took photos with a bunch of people and that sort of thing. Plus he was in Green Street Hooligans so I am on the record as pro Elija Wood. Chris Holmes also DJ’d who I have seen do his thing in LA. He does the Night Swim party at the Roosevelt which is probably my favorite party in LA. Two bands played, Maps & Atlases and Cults. They were both way better than average and pretty interesting if not exactly my cup of tea. On top of that there was free Sailor Jerry rum which is awesome because while I rarely drink, I do have a pretty sweet Sailor Jerry tattoo.

So yeah, good DJs, good bands, free booze… I will be back tonight…

Click here to see all the pictures from the Filter Magazine Lollapalooza After Party at the Hard Rock Hotel.

The best thing that came out of my experience at the Britney Spears Femme Fatale tour was that I now can properly spell Nicki Minaj’s name.  While tweeting about the concert I spelled her name in three different tweets in three different ways. Luckily now I am a Nicki Minaj spelling expert.

Honestly the main reason I wanted to go all the way to Long Island to the Nassau Coliseum was so that I could shoot Nicki Minaj. I think she is pretty fucking bad ass and I figured she would be interesting to shoot. Also, unlike for the Britney Spears photos, I didn’t have to sign some crazy contract giving up my copyright to any of the photos. I did however have to stand just as far back and we only got three songs to shoot which was made insanely difficult by both little girls in pink wigs standing on their chairs in front of me and the asshole sound guy who flipped out if I blocked his view of the stage for even a second as I got a shot.

Whatever, these photos are cropped and mediocre, but she is fucking adorable and the show was awesome. Plus Kanye West showed up and did Monster with her which would have been more awesome if they let me shoot it, but of course they pulled us out of there a song before Yeezy did his thing.

Click here to see all the Nicki Minaj photos I got from the Femme Fatale Tour at Nasau Coliseum.

So I shot the Britney Spears Femme Fatale tour for the Village Voice. It’s not often that I blog about Britney Spears and I didn’t ever think I would go to a Britney Spears concert in my life but when I got asked to do it clearly I couldn’t say no. I always regretted my chance to shoot photos in a NASCAR pit and I feel like Britney Spears is as close as you can get to a NASCAR pit without risking getting hit with a flaming race car tie.

Anyway, I was told I had to sign some insane contract that gives away all my rights to the photos and that I could only have usage of them for 3o days.  Well copyright law says that no work can be copyrighted until it exists, so signing a form before I took the photos is completely invalid. And besides I didn’t even sign my name. Whatever the case you should probably enjoy these photos now because there is a pretty good chance I will get a cease and desist order from Britney’s people at some point.

To add to my annoyance of the whole ordeal after driving for 90 minutes to get to the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island I found out that I had to stand nearly 50 yards away from the stage and in between the photographers and the acts there were about 500 fans waving their cell phones in the air to record the show. We were given tickets so that I could watch the show between the acts and the view from my seats was 100 times better than the photo pit but they wouldn’t let me have my camera on me during the show.

Oh, but for the record the show was pretty awesome and I probably would have had more fun than I should have had I not been so pissed about the photo situation. I also ran into two of friends there. Oh, and did I mention that Nicki Minaj opened for her? Those pics will be up tomorrow… She fucking killed it.

So these photos were taken during four songs in the middle of her set, shot from 50 yards away with a 200mm lens and then severely cropped for your enjoyment…

Click here to see all the pictures of Britney Spears Femme Fatale tour at the Nassau Coliseum.