Sweet 10th Anniversary – 9.10.14

In 2006, one week before I moved to NYC I came up here with a band I was managing at the time, The Gaskets. I had already signed a lease so I brought up a car load of stuff and ended up sleeping on the floor of my apartment because I was so happy to have my first New York apartment. Eight years later I am still in that apartment, but that has nothing to do with this post.

That night The Gaskets played a show at some bar that probably doesn’t exist anymore but while we were there we met comedian Zak Orth and his girlfriend (now wife) Kat. They loved the Gaskets and ended up taking us all to Ruff Club and Kat invited me to a weekly comedy show called Sweet at the Slipper Room in the LES.

I immediately became a regular and was going nearly ever week for probably a year or two. At some point the Slipper Room had some crazy renovations and it was closed for a few years. Sweet moved all over the place and ended up at Ella for a while before moving back to the Slipper Room when it opened a couple years ago. Clearly my timeline is very precise. During the move I started going to Sweet less and less often but I still try and make sure to check it out every now and then. It’s always very funny and an excellent place to take a lady.

Anyway, Sweet turned 10 this week and I caught the last of three anniversary shows last night. The show is hosted by Seth Herzog who is actually one of my oldest friends in NYC since I met him the first week I moved to NYC. I think he hated me for a while because we were both hanging out with the same girl but I’ve always loved the guy. Really proud of him and the show and how big it has become.

Last night Seth pulled out all the stops. Normally he has one co-host but this week he had four! Dion Flynn was the most active co-host, but Questlove was DJing, Jess Hudak was singing and playing piano as comedians came on and Seth’s mom, a weekly show highlight, asked comedians questions before they left the stage. She also freestyle rapped at some point.

The show opened with an extended monologue from Seth recounting the last 10 years of the show followed by a supremely weird act by the owners of the Slipper Room that involved ironing a veal cutlet that Seth then ate. If he is dead right now let it be said that he gave his life for comedy.

Up next was Ted Alexandro who I have seen do stand up a bunch of times but I never realized that he has a web series that he does with my old friend Hollis James. I found that out while googling him to make sure I got his name right and I haven’t watched it yet, but I will and clearly you guys should too. He did a bit about a pot brownie that lasted 36 hours and then performed a song for Seth and his mom to dance to. It was that kinda night.

At some point there were a series of contests to win Seth Olenick’s new book of comedy portraits Funny Business. I was pretty jealous of the winners and I gotta get a copy of the book at some point. As a big photo book collector and comedy nerd it’s a must have for my shelf.

Next up was the always hilarious Kurt Braunohler who used to host a show with Kristen Schaal called Hot Tub that was always fantastic. I’ve known Kurt for years too as he was a judge on the first LVHRD events I ever went to. My buddy Drop The Lime was another judge that night. And Doug from LVHRD was at Sweet last night. LVHRD doesn’t exist anymore but it’s worth a Google… Oh, by the way it was probably the best Kurt set I have seen and I have seen a lot of his sets.

After Seth’s mom freestyled with Shockwave and Victor Varnado my dude Hannibal Burress killed it as always. I haven’t seen him since he did a joke where he told me to fuck myself in the middle of his last Comedy Central special so it was good to see him and find out that he didn’t actually want to murder me. He’s one of the funniest humans on earth so normally a show would go down hill from there but this was no ordinary comedy show!

Next up was the legendary Jeff Ross. Now that Joan Rivers is dead he’s just gotta outlive Don Rickles to become the greatest living insult comic. He did a set making fun of Joan Rivers which was probably the most touching roast I’ve ever seen the guy give and then went into other dead celebrity jokes including Robin Williams. If pretty much any other comedian did that they would be booed off the stage, but you know Joan and Robin would have been more upset if he didn’t do stand up on their graves.

Artie Lange was essentially the closer and did a set that went from hilarious to offensive to depressing and back again. This is a guy who nearly stabbed himself to death while losing his mind on heroin just a couple years ago. He’s dangerously overweight and constantly joked about his own death.  His jokes stepped over the line into just blatantly racist a number of times. Yet for all that he still managed to kill at points in his set. He said “you have to live a little bit for comedy” and he’s a guy who has lived 10 lives for comedy. It was brilliant and sad at the same time and his set alone was well worth the price of admission.

The night ended with a cameo from regular Sweet co-host Justin Long who you couldn’t walk a block in the LES without running into him a few years ago. (He literally ran into me once actually.) He’s in LA now but was in NYC promoting a movie and got a chance to stop by Sweet. He and most of the other comedians then performed the creepiest rendition of We Are The World ever where they took turns impersonating celebrities. The perfect ending to a fantastic night of super weird underground comedy, which is exactly what Sweet has delivered every week for the last 10 years.

So congrats Seth and everyone else go look at the photos!

Click here to see all the pictures from the 10th anniversary of Sweet at The Slipper Room.

Sweet Turns 10

Seth Herzog

Jeff Ross & Artie Lange

Hannibal Burress

Kurt Braunohler

Ted Alexandro & We Are The World

Justin Long

Comments (0)

Throwback Thursday: Best Of 2009

Over the past I have no fucking clue how long I have been organizing every photo I have taken since I moved to NYC in 2006. The idea is to eventually have a big fucking folder of images with all the best stuff from the last 8 years and to have things organized so that I can pull images that I need. I also notice I have found a ton of stuff that didn’t stand out at the time, for example just today I found a photo of Adam Scott I took before I even knew who Adam Scott was.

Since I started this project I have done a great job of organizing my 35mm archives. I worked pretty much 10 hours a day on that for a couple weeks and got it done. The digital stuff is a lot harder to do because of the sheer volume of the images. On a slow month I might shoot 4000 photos but during an event like South By Southwest I might shoot twice that many in five days. Getting through stuff has been fun, but I can only do so much a day without going insane.

Just today I finished going through 2009 which is a pretty serious accomplishment because in early 2008 I had a shitty camera so could go through that stuff very quickly and by the end of 2010 I had started shooting a bit less nightlife. In 2009 however I was going out nearly every night and sometimes shooting two or three events a night. So despite having more than five years to go I think I am nearly halfway through my digital archives. The last couple years are pretty organized anyway…

So, in celebration of finishing 2009 I decided a Throwback Thursday post was in order. I have put up a pretty massive gallery (over 300 images!) from 2009 that includes a lot of my favorite shots from the year. It’s probably less than a third of the images I pulled, but it gives you a nice look at one of my best years photographically. It’s amazing to see how far I progressed. The early 2009 stuff is terrible while the late 2009 work is better than anything I am doing now. It’s inspired me to work harder when shooting nightlife and makes me miss how much fun I used to have.

In this gallery you will find mostly party photos although there is some random stuff thrown in including a few old school naked girls in bathroom photo shoots. There are a ton of photos from the party Playhouse at Cain that was a really great party both photographically and on a hot babes I made out with kinda level. Unfortunately they stopped paying me and still fucking owe me money. There are also a bunch of images in here of kinda celebrity stuff or blast from the past images that are noteworthy for whatever reason. They might not all be fantastic photographically but they are cool to look at.

I think the big winner of 2009 was Roxy Cottontail who through two parties that were some of the most fun times I had in ’09. Check out her birthday party that year and the Pepsi party with Diplo that she through that year. Both great events. Speaking of Diplo… I photographed him and Steve Aoki a weird amount of times in 2009. Ninjasonik comes up a lot too and I shot a couple of great shows by Monotonix and Spank Rock who both happened to play the best Siren Fest I ever went to. A lot of girls show up a bunch in 2009 Alex Magnetic, Jocelyn and Chloe are particularly muse-worthy. Since then Alex was my intern and Chloe is a super famous model so that all rules.

Honestly there is way too much in here to cover… tons from Webster Hall when Trash and Boys & Girls were both happening on the same night… a bunch of big events like SXSW, Sundance, AVN Awards… live bands… burlesque… zombie crawls… comedy… fashion… Driven By Boredom tattoos… the list goes on and on.

But lastly I will mention there are a lot of pictures of my good friend Ease DaMan who sadly died recently. I met him in 2009 and took so many photos of the guy that year. He was so fun and so photogenic, rarely had his shirt on and once I showed up to a  party and the cops had shut it down because a fight broke out and Ease fucking bit someone. We all miss you tons Ease. Rest in peace.

I have no idea how I am going to come up with selects since I love so many of these photos, so I am just gonna put some random shit below here. Just make sure you look at the full gallery… and yeah, these photos are significantly NSFW.

Click here to see a bunch of photo highlights from 2009!

Playhouse

Macaulay Culkin

Amanda Lepore & Caswell

The First Ever DBB Tattoo

Theophilus London

Jersey Shore

Star City & Johnny Nelson

Alex Magnetic

Prince Terrence & Maluca

Chloe

Ease DaMan

Comments (0)

The Last Invite Them Up

It’s not Flashback Friday or Throwback Thursday or whatever bullshit alliteration thing that exists on the internets. I am however going to take you guys back in time to February 2008 with some very cool, but very terrible photos from the last two shows of the underground comedy show Invite Them Up. I had an awful early digital camera at the time, but I think these are worth looking at anyway.

I had been living in NYC for about a year and a half and I was shooting party photos every day and all that shit, but I also was going to underground comedy shows a couple nights a week. For some reason I rarely took photos at these events but there are a couple of exceptions.

In late February the legendary Invite Them Upended. Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale had been hosting it for five years and for the last year I was a constant regular. The show was at the Rififi nightclub (the original home of the party Trash) and Rififi was going to be closing and Invite Them Up decided to get ahead of that and end early. (Brett Gelman and Jon Daly took over Wednesday nights until they escaped to LA.)

To end the run Invite Them Up held three farewell shows so they could invite all their favorite comics to play. And the line up was impressive at the time, but even more so looking back on it. It’s amazing how many people have gone on to huge things. John Oliver, Dimitri Martin, Jon Benjamin, Pete Holmes, Brett Gelman and Seth Herzog all have had their own TV shows since then. Mike Birbiglia turned his hit one man show into a fantastic movie. Zach Galifinakis was a big name at the time but I don’t think anyone would have predicted his post Hangover fame. Todd Barry played all three and did one of best comedy sets I have ever seen just making fun of Rififi off the top of his head. He also played drums with Yo La Tengo. Chelsea Peretti and Kristen Schaal are two of the funniest women on TV and Leo Alan and Jon Glaser seem to be on everything that exists on Comedy Central. Oh yeah and Jim Gaffigan and Michael Showalter performed too… you may have heard of them. Seriously when I found the flyers to these shows in a box recently I couldn’t believe how good the line up was.

Also, just in the crowd shots after the show there are pictures of Reggie Watts, Kumail Nanjiani (probably a year before I actually met him), Jon Daly, Larry Murphy and a bunch of other hilarious humans. And I only photographed two of the days!

At the end of the third show, Eugene and Bobby brought up a time capsule that everyone could put stuff in to be opened five years later in 2013. I wonder if they ever opened it because I am pretty sure that Jon Benjamin put a vile of his urine in it. I don’t even remember what I put in it. Whatever the case I think these photos serve as a pretty good time capsule of the last nights of a legendary comedy show that will never happen again.

Now click here to see photos from the last two Invite Them Up comedy shows in February 2008!

Eugene Mirman & Bobby Tisdale's Invite Them Up

Mike Birbiglia

Zach Galifinakis

Kristen Schaal

Bobby Tisdale & Pete Holmes

Jim Gaffigan

Brett Gelman & John Daly

Jon Benjamin

Todd Barry & Yo La Tengo

 

Comments (2)

Antiques Roadshow – 8.9.14

This is going to be a pretty great update. I mean assuming you love Antiques Roadshow as much is I do which is probably unlikely unless you are a 65 year old woman from middle America. I am pretty much obsessed with Antiques Roadshow in a completely non ironic way. It’s sort of the perfect TV show combining great stories, educational information and a wide variety of subjects all with an emotional payoff at the end of each segment when they find out what their items are worth. As someone full of cynicism and hate I love watching people incredibly passionate and in love with stuff I never even considered interesting before. It’s led me to find beauty in things like stone pottery and Federalist furniture. I have watched probably hundreds of episodes.

The Antiques Roadshow finally came to NYC last Saturday for the first time in many years. I tried to win their free ticket lottery but had no luck. I tried to buy a ticket online but they were over $100. I decided to reach out to a friend I met at jury duty who works PBS and amazingly he got me a pair of tickets. My friend Pinky Guest is pretty obsessed with thrift stores and flea markets so I decided to bring her along. I was pumped.

What I failed to mention is that at the same time I was frantically trying to find a ticket I was also pitching the story to my editor at the Village Voice. He liked the idea but was out of town and didn’t try to request a press pass until two days before the show. I already had tickets at that point and I had given up hope of covering it as a journalist, but on Friday afternoon the confirmation came through and I was approved!

I didn’t know what to do about Pinky though, I felt bad just abandoning her there so I had an idea. She writes copy for advertising and has worked professionally as a blogger in the past and she also runs Ebay Shop Of Horrors so I pitched both her and my editor on the idea of her writing a story to go with my pictures. They were both on board and we set out on the greatest three hour adventure of our lives!

When we got to the Roadshow we were introduced to our media escort who would take us around the event since there are a lot of rules in place to protect the privacy of people who have won big money items on the show. For example we could only publish first names of the attendees we interviewed. Our escort also let us cut the line to have our items appraised!

We each were able to bring two items to be appraised by a Roadshow expert. Pinky brought two pieces of her mom’s old jewelry and I brought a terrifying unicorn taxidermy (that Pinky found while searching for Ebay Shop Of Horrors items) and a belt buckle that I bought at a flea market for $5.

Our first stop was to the jewelry appraisers who told Pinky that her first item was worth a couple hundred dollars but could be worth more if she could find a photo of her mom wearing it at Studio 54, a frequent haunt of her mothers back in the day. Pinky was a bit disappointed with that but was excited to learn that the biggest stone in her second item, a bracelet, was a yellow sapphire and not citrine as she believed. It ended up being worth as much as $2000!

I took both my items to a bestashed gentleman at the “Collectables” table. He seemed very excited about both my items and told me that my unicorn was probably made as a souvenir in the 60s in China and might actually be made of dog hair! He told me it was worth $250 which annoyed the hell out of Pinky since she told me about it and I won the ebay auction for $35. “How could your unicorn be worth more than my necklace!?” My belt buckle seemed to be the real prize though and my appraiser seemed to be in love with it. It’s a folk art buckle with an Easy Rider style chopper on the front with an engraving from a father to his son on the back. I found out it was actually made of silver and he showed it to another appraiser before telling me it was worth $75. I was sort of surprised at how low the appraisal was given his level of excitement but considering I paid $5 for it I still left a big winner.

After our appraisals we wondered around the convention center talking to people about their items. Pinky interviewed about 25 people while I took pictures. We met a guy who paid $50 for a rifle stock that he found out was worth $10,000 and a couple who live in artist Red Grooms’ former loft and their collection of his art was worth $15,000. We also got to interview the dreamy Roadshow host Mark L. Walberg and talk to one of my favorite appraisers about antique fire arms! It was pretty fantastic. After that Pinky and I watched the 100 Foot Journey proving that we are little old ladies trapped in 30 year old hipster bodies.

Pinky wrote a fantastic article about our trip for the Village Voice that I am pretty proud of… you should click here to read it right now.

After you look at that, take a look at a rough draft of Driven By Boredom’s new photo gallery system. There is a new Driven By Boredom update coming sooner or later but we had to rush things a bit because I broke my old galleries accidentally. They will still exist as they are now, but moving forward we are going to be using WordPress’ internal gallery system. There will be a new design to it, but for now it’s a little clunky. It’s better than the old galleries, but it will get a lot better soonish.

Now click here to see all my photos from the Antiques Roadshow at the Jacob Javits Center in NYC!

Leslie Keno

Antiques Roadshow

Red Groom's Taxi

Antiques Roadshow

Leslie Keno

Antiques Roadshow

Antiques Roadshow

antiques-roadshow-5

Antiques Roadshow

Comments (2)

Nighttime Madness

In my efforts to finish getting up all my photos from the Gathering of the Juggalos I just through a bunch of stuff into a gallery called “Nighttime Madness”. This gallery includes a bunch of stuff including shots of the late night after parties, comedy showcases, wrestling, and much more. Let’s see if I can walk you through it…

Every night at the Gathering there is an after party. In the past they have been some of the Gathering’s best events. This year they did them on the main stage and something about that got away from the intimacy of a small tent in the middle of the woods. A couple years ago I sat on the stage and watched Pharcyde and Warren G did a tribute to Nate Dogg. This year not so much.

The comedy highlights were Gilbert Gottfried who I see all the time in the Lower East Side just walking around and former wrestler Mick Foley. Gottfried did a set of really old jokes which was honestly amazing to see. These are jokes you have heard your entire life done by the guy who wrote them. Watching him get a kick out of the juggalos was the best part though. He just kept getting them to chant insane things like “Fuck Jack Parr!” and then would laugh to himself. It was great. He also did a particularly offensive telling of The Aristocrats which you should clearly watch. Mick Foley really impressed as well. I always enjoyed him as a wrestler, and the guy has written a bunch of best selling books, but he is a fantastic raconteur and told stories that even people who aren’t wresting fans would enjoy. Not that it would matter since pretty much all juggalos are also wrestling fans.

Also included in this gallery are some shots of the girls of the infamous “Passed Out Juggalos“. They find sleeping jugglaos at the Gathering and put their butts on their heads. I realized those pronouns might be confusing and the concept seem mildly awful, but in reality it’s a good time for all and kinda hilarious at 5am.

We also have a few shots of lady wrasslin’, the legendary and mysterious burrito men, and a camp set up by fire juggling steam punk maniacs RIFT (Rhythmic Illusions Fire Tribe). Oh there is also a terrifying wheel and some fire works. Whoop whoop.

Click here to see all the nighttime madness from the Gathering of the Juggalos. NSFW as you would expect.

Gilbert Gottfried GOTJ

Fireworks GOTJ

Burrito Man

RIFT Fire Tribe

Mick Foley GOTJ

JCW Wrestling

Passed Out Juggalos

Comments (0)

Four Years Ago Today…

As I work through organizing my massive photo library I keep stumbling on gems from the past. Building a portfolio website has become a massive undertaking but it’s going to be fantastic to eventually have my work organized. During the process I keep finding amazing events and crazy moments in my life that are worth resharing. Some of my Throwback Thursday posts on Instagram have done very well and since I am shooting less and less nightlife I feel like it’s worth taking a look back at some of the better nightlife moments from the past. So this might become a new feature of the site… perhaps even on Thursdays…

Today it’s Monday and if the internet can come up with dumb things like Throwback Thursday and Flashback Friday I don’t see why I can’t call today Moveback Monday. I realize that’s insanely stupid but I am highly caffeinated and found some amazing photos from exactly four years ago. Well, okay, the images aren’t actually that amazing from a photography standpoint but it was a pretty incredible event and one that can never happen again.

Four years ago I shot a benefit for the Anthology Film Archives celebrating their 40th anniversary. The Virgins opened for Sonic Youth and Lou Reed an Hiro Ballroom. The Virgins and Sonic Youth have split up and of course Lou Reed has died. Philip Seymour Hoffman introduced Lou Reed and he has sadly passed as well. Amazingly the 91 year old avant garde film legend Jonas Mekas is still alive. Badass filmmaker and writer Keneth Anger also is still living and played the theremin to end the evening. Moby DJ’d and Julian Schnabel spoke as well. Ben Foster hosted the evening and I got to take a photo of Nan Goldin which V Magazine ran. All and all it was a pretty epic night.

So take a look back at this amazing night four years ago. Click here to see all the photos from the Anthology Film Archives benefit from May 19th, 2010.

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Jonas Mekas

Lou Reed

Comments (0)

Coco’s Vanity Vixens – 5.12.14

Last night I got to shoot Coco’s burlesque show “Coco’s Vanity Vixens” at Highline Ballroom for the Village Voice. I even shot the red carpet which I rarely do because photos of celebrities in front of advertisements that 15 other photographers have is not exactly exciting, but you gotta do the work sometimes…  The show itself was a well conceived burlesque performance featuring some decent dancers that didn’t get very naked. Maybe I am spoiled by crazy NYC burlesque where people get fully naked and pull egg rolls out of their vaginas but the show was pretty tame. Coco herself killed it and she did end up topless at the end which truthfully I was not expecting. She is pretty amazing to watch out there, especially set against a bunch of skinny girls. I have no idea how her butt exists but it is awesome.

I had fun at the show and my only real complaint was that it was horribly lit and made for awful photos. I mean it looked pretty good live but when you light people and the stage with the same color red it’s pretty impossible to photograph which is really all I care about. If I can’t take a photo of it, it might as well not exist.

Anyway, I have a ton of shit to do today and you guys have mediocre photos of mine to look at so let’s get it on!

Click here to see all my photos from Coco’s Vanity Vixens at the Highline Ballroom!

Coco's Vanity Vixens

Coco & Ice T

Coco's Vanity Vixens

Coco's Vanity Vixens

Coco's Vanity Vixens

Comments (0)

More Black & White Portraits

A couple years ago I put up a bunch of my 35mm black and white portraits and today I am updating that gallery with a bunch of new pictures. I don’t shoot it very often, maybe 10 rolls a year, but from time to time I shoot some b&w film to keep me in touch with my roots or something. I learned to shoot on b&w film and spent countless hours of my life in the darkroom developing it. I have no interest ever stepping back in a darkroom but shooting in b&w makes you think about light a little differently and it’s a refreshing look compared to black and white digital which in my opinion looks fucking terrible.

Since my last update I haven’t shot that much film. I shot a few rolls on my Route 66 trip and I shot a couple rolls of Charlotte Stokely during our Joshua Tree adventure and there were a few other rolls in my archives. Recently though my friend Mike gave me a few rolls so I was inspired to shoot a bunch of film at SXSW. I mostly shot portraits of actors at the festival when doing my film portrait gallery for Voice Media but I also shot a roll and a half during the music week.

I think there are a few nice shots in here and I figured I would give you guys a chance to look at something other than digital photos parties and naked babes. (I also posted a nude b&w portrait update a couple years ago btw.) I also wanted to give you guys something before I left town for a white.

Headed to LA tomorrow on what was supposed to be a vacation but after destroying my computer and having to pay my taxes I am pretty fucking broke and will probably be working a bunch while I am out there (If anyone needs a photog for a Coachella party this weekend get at me!). I got a couple Hustler gigs lined up and might even shoot a party or two. Not sure how much I will have time to update while I am out there but I have a pretty nice girl gallery ready to go so you will at least get that soon.

Anyway, I got a bunch of work to do before I leave town so I am gonna shut the fuck up and let you look at pictures.

Click here to see some new (and old) black and white 35mm portraits!

Charlotte Stokely

Snoop Dogg

Sidney Scarlet

Danny Trejo

Alia Shawkat

Caroline Gottlieb

Kumail Nanjiani

Krysta Kaos

Nate "Igor" Smith

 

Comments (0)

Miley Cyrus – 4.5.14

I photographed Miley Cyrus’ concert at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Saturday and fortunately I edited all the images right after the concert because late that night I managed to spill a pint glass of water onto my computer. The worst part is that I didn’t realize what had happened until I picked up my computer and water came pouring out of it. I took my computer to Apple and they can fix it for about $1300 but they won’t restore the data so I went over to Tekserve and they will hopefully get my data back for a relatively reasonable $300. The problem is that it’s going to take a week and by the time I can give the computer back to Apple I will be leaving for LA for 10 days so basically I am not going to have a functional computer until the 26th of this month. Fortunately my old MacBook sort of functions and I can use it to update my website and answer emails… I just can’t do much else.

So before I get to these Miley Cyrus photos I wanted to mention that I put a 20% off sale on everything in my Etsy store. Tons of signed Polaroids and even a few copies of my Route 66 book! I also put up one of my favorite photos of Charlotte Stokely for significantly less than I would normally sell it. All proceeds will obviously go directly to paying to get my computer working again or to pay for my funeral after I die of internet withdrawal. You can also sign up for my app if you want to help out in a small way that also let’s you see extra boobs and stuff. Okay, enough fundraising, let’s get on to some weird photos of pop stars.

The Village Voice asked me to shoot Miley Cyrus for them because I think they think it’s hilarious to have me shoot shit like this. In six years of working for them they have given me maybe 5 total assignments (the rest I assign myself) and those have included shooting One Direction and Britney Spears. They just like fucking with me. They think it’s funny to send a borderline pornographer to shoot a teen pop star, but fortunately I was in good company because I ran into fellow creepy photographers Kirill Was Here, Nick Gazin and saw Terry Richardson inside. Part of the gig was to shoot fans outside and shooting over sexed children did make me extremely uncomfortable but what are you gonna do?

The show started with openers Icona Pop who do that song I Love It which is about crashing a car into a bridge and not caring because you are a 90’s chick or something. I remember seeing a 7 year old girl in a bodega singing that song loudly while her mom was buying cigarettes and thinking how fucked the next generation is going to be. I spent most of Icona Pop’s set thinking about how this is probably how my grand parents felt about Elvis and about how fucking old I am.

Sky Ferreira went on next and I have enjoyed her set both times I have seen her and it was nice to have someone somewhat reserved in between Icona Pop and Miley Cyrus. (I mean that’s reserved in comparison… this is the woman who made this video.) Unfortunately she stayed at the very back of the stage in the dark corners for most of her set so I couldn’t get very many good photos from where they stuck the photographers. I’ve photographed her before in the small room of Public Assembly so I think I got my shots. Pretty cool to see her play in front of a billion teen girls after seeing her there.

So now that I have gone out of my way to seem old and somehow bothered by the sexualization of teen girls (despite my career being based on naked women) I want to mention that I am a Miley Cyrus fan. I mean not of her music because before yesterday I had only heard that Wrecking Ball song, but as a human. This is a girl who spent her entire childhood as a Disney Channel start and decided she needed to get the fuck away from that stuff and become her own woman. She’s clearly a talented singer and has spent the last couple years pissing people off by over sexualizing herself and being a “bad” role model for young women. Personally, I think that female pop music needs bad ass women who carry on the tradition of the Go Gos and Joan Jett and Madonna letting girls know that they are in control of their sexuality and shouldn’t be slut shamed by a male dominated music industry that has been singing about sex and marginalizing women for years.

Okay, I feel like I haven’t had enough coffee to clearly express myself right now and I have used the word sexual way too many times in this article. My point is that I don’t hate Miley Cyrus and I do think there is something artistically valid what she is doing in regards to subverting her Hannah Montana image.

Whatever the case her show was fucking awesome. I only was able to photograph the first three songs and then they kicked all the photographers out but I would have stayed and watched the whole thing if they let me. She is a fantastic front woman and put on a fucking super weird show that comments on sex, race, pop culture and her own celebrity in the first 10 minutes and features her sliding down her on tongue, dancing with furries, slapping a large black woman’s ass and essentially masturbating on top of a low rider. Also, the music is not bad.

In conclusion, I am pro Miley Cyrus, pro Sky Ferreira and I feel like Icona Pop might be the worst thing to happen to humanity since crack cocaine. These photos were shot from pretty far away but I think there are some nice shots anyway, especially of Miley Cyrus. I just wish I got a chance to see her whole set and take photos of her without a ton of people holding up cell phones in between me in the stage.

Click here to see all the photos from the Bangerz tour at the Barclays Center featuring Miley Cyrus, Sky Ferreira and Icona Pop.

Miley Cyrus @ Barclays Center

Miley Cyrus Fans

Icona Pop

Icona Pop

Leave Miley Alone!

Sky Ferreira

Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus @ Barclays Center

Miley Cyrus Fans

Comments (0)

« Previous PageNext Page »