Saturday at Fun Fun Fun was even more packed with bands I wanted to see. I got there early so I could check out one of my favorite newer bands Bleached. I like them better every time I see them and I listen to their record all the time. Low fi female fronted rock and roll is oddly becoming one of my favorite types of music. After Bleached I got to see Brooklyn’s finest Flatbush Zombies. I once photographed them playing on a skate ramp and they always put on a hell of a show.

I took a quick break to catch some comedy. My old pal Jenny Slate told a bunch of jokes and then the JASH comedy tent turned into a hot box when the weed obsessed Doug Benson came on and proceeded to be hilarious. Either that or I had a serious contact high. Craig Robinson came out and did a pretty epic comedic musical performance with a full back up band.

After that I was walking over to the press tent for a second when I passed the Glass Candy performance. It was super weird and high energy so I stopped by for a few shots. After that it was on to check out Television. I know people love them but I just never got into them. Seeing them live didn’t really change my opinion but I only saw the first few songs before running across the festival to the Black Stage catch mother fucking Body Count!

Unfortunately when I got there Ice-T was already a song into Body Count’s brutal set. My punk band covers Cop Killer and I loved Body Count growing up so I was really bummed when they wouldn’t let me into the photo pit. I said “Fuck it” and jumped into the crowd and watched the show from the mosh pit. I got some okay shots but I missed a lot of others as I was dodging stage divers and trying not to get killed. I ended up smashing my Ray Bans in the process. Damn. It was worth it though and they were one of the highlights of the fest for me. They are coming out with a new album soon and the new shit they played sounded awesome.

After Body Count I got to knock another band off my must see bucket list. I came to this festival mostly to see two bands, Flag and Sparks. Flag’s set yesterday really lived up to the hype and I was so excited to see Sparks. They have been around since the early 70’s and have more than 20 albums and very few people know them in the US. It’s really strange because they are so brilliant. I got turned on to them about a decade ago and I consider myself a huge fan despite owning barely a quarter of their albums. Seeing them live was really awesome but they played so much stuff I didn’t know that I was a bit disappointed over all. But that’s on me. They still put on a hell of a performance to a pretty impressively large crowd.

After Sparks I walked over to M.I.A. to see the start of her set. I missed a chance to see what I believe was her first show in the US in Austin about 10 years ago and I sort of always regretted it so I wanted to at least try and take a couple photos of her. Unfortunately the photo pit was overfilled with photographers and I mostly got shots of her from the side or the back of her head. I was pretty disappointed but it was a good lesson in shooting that stage which served me well when I got to shoot Slayer there the next day. My M.I.A. photos were also lacking because I only saw about a song and a half of her set before I ran across the grounds to the Black Stage once again.

The Descendents were about to go on but I made it in time, unfortunately they still wouldn’t let me in the photo pit. I was pissed because I supposedly had a “headliner” photo pass but they still wouldn’t let me in so for the third time in two days I jumped into the mosh pit and took photos from the crowd.  I love the Descendents and I hadn’t seen them since 1998 so it was awesome to see them. I remember thinking how old they were back then and Milo was only two years older than I am now. God damn. They put on an awesome show but I didn’t take great shots. I was having way too much fun. At some point I told a guy in the crowd that if they played “Pervert” I was going to stage dive with my camera. My band covers Pervert so I know every word and two songs later they played it so I climbed on stage, tried to take a photo from stage and then jumped into the crowd, camera in hand. Unfortunately my settings got bumped when I climbed on the stage and I set it on self timer mode so my camera didn’t take a photo. I changed modes while crowd surfing and was getting ready to take some photos from the air when a guy stage dived right on top of me for some reason. I got dropped but my legs stayed in the air. Fortunately I have a life time of crowd surfing practice and I let myself fall but kept my camera up. I got trampled on the ground and fucked up my shoulder but managed to keep my camera safe. I did lose my flash diffuser but it could have been a lot worse.

I limped out of the pit to a bunch of high fives and slaps on the back. It was a lot of fun but I was done for. The fest was almost over so I slowly walked out of there with the sounds of the Decendents soothing my painful trip back to my friends couch. I was ready to call it quits but I had 1400 photos to edit and another whole day of the fest. Bring it on.

Click here to see all the photos from Saturday at Fun Fun Fun Fest 8 at Auditorium Shores in Austin, TX.

Normally I don’t shoot music festivals unless I am getting paid a lot of money. I shot nothing but bands for the first 8 years of my photo career and I sort of hate doing it now. With digital camera’s and the “three songs, no flash” photo pit rules every single photographer gets nearly the same shot of every band and every band gets photographed by a million people a year. So what’s the point? On top of that shooting festivals is even worse. But yet I headed to Austin over the weekend to shoot a music festival and I will be lucky if I break even.

Fun Fun Fun Fest has year after year the best line up of bands in the country. They bring in legendary artists in hip hop, punk, metal, pop and even comedy. They tend to have very diverse bands that all work so well together that you are running back and forth because so often there are multiple bands playing at the same time that you want to see. During the fest I knocked a couple bands of my life time bucket list and got to see FOUR bands that my punk cover band Fucking Bullshit covers. It was epic.

On top of that I love Austin and will take any chance to spend time there. I got to see a bunch of friends and I even photographed four naked girls there including one I ran into in the street and a stranger I was introduced to who had never posed nude before. Did I mention breakfast burritos and BBQ? I fucking love Austin.

Anyway, I got to a late start on Friday after photographing Quinn Cornchip again, but I got to see Little Boots, Kurt Vile, Big Freedia, Lupe Fiasco, Patton Oswalt and mother fucking Flag. Black Flag is probably the most important band to me in my life. They were my introduction to punk and their early material when they were fronted by Keith Morris was fucking life changing. Keith got the band back together with four Black Flag members but can’t call the band Black Flag because guitarist Greg Ginn owns the name. Ginn started his own band called Black Flag that only has two former members (although Ron Reyes was my favorite singer) and they just released a new album which is honestly better than expected. Still, I was way more excited about Flag than I was about Black Flag and they did not disappoint. Two songs into their set I jumped out of the photo pit and into the mosh pit and it was honestly one of the best experiences I have had at a concert in years.

On top of all that I got to meet BMX legend Mat Hoffman and eat free Twinkies (they are back and way worse than I remember). It was a pretty good Friday and I was wrecked by the end of Flag’s set but I was ready to do it all the next day and Saturday was jam packed with bands. I will have those photos tomorrow but in the mean time check out the pictures from Friday!

Click here to see all the photos from Fun Fun Fun Fest Friday at Auditorium Shores in Austin, TX!

I shot two events last night and I am gonna try to get them both up tomorrow and then get the rest of the SXSW Music stuff up on Tuesday and Wednesday. Sunday is a slow traffic day so I bring you my most half assed SXSW gallery… the SXSW Interactive gallery. SXSWi has become a huge part of SXSW. When I first started going SXSWi was barely part of the festival, but now it’s probably the biggest tech conference in the US. CES is boring and stodgy compared to the huge parties and branding events at SXSWi. But the big problem with SXSWi is that it’s really photographically boring. No one wants to see nerds partying so it’s hard to make look interesting.

I hit up the SXSW Trade Show which isn’t specifically just Interactive but it seems to be very tech and web heavy even when it comes to the music side of things. Not much film stuff is represented so I am counting it as SXSWi. I also photographed a Nerdist event that my friend Seth Herzog was hosting. It was a cosplay contest which means a bunch of nerds dressed up as video game characters and stuff. It’s pretty awesome and is worth looking at if you are a) into cosplay b) into making fun of people who are into cosplay. Either way there are some awesome costumes.

And that’s that. Enjoy and I will see you guys tomorrow with some crazy non-SXSW photos!

Click here to see all my photos from the 2013 SXSW Interactive Festival.

My dude Hannibal Buress turned 30 years old yesterday and decided to throw a party at the Knitting Factory. Last time I was there was for the premiere of Hannibal’s Comedy Central  special Animal Furnace. This time there was less comedy and much more hip hop. The night started out with hip hop legend Prince Paul DJing. After that things got real weird with Hip Hop Karaoke NYC taking over. I am not a big karaoke fan but when I do it I am always tempted to do some old school hip hop classic but I have seen people fail miserably when trying to do songs they think they know every word of. Now try that while holding the lyrics in your hand instead of timed out on a screen and you are in for a disaster. It was a pretty amazing train wreck although some people certainly stood out.

Halfway through the hilarious hip hop karaoke Hot 97’s Cipha Sounds showed up. He was DJing after the karaoke but he rolled in with Action Bronson and Questlove. Quest very begrudgingly did a song at Hannibal’s insistance and he kept slowing down the track. “This is why I am a drummer. I stopped trying to rap 20 years ago.” It was pretty epic. Action Bronson enjoyed himself a bit more and did two songs including A Tribe Called Quest’s Scenario with Cipha, Hannibal and Hannibal’s insane cousin Percy. As you can see if you click that link it was epic.

After that Cipha Sounds DJ’d and although he properly killed it the crowd began to thin out as you might expect at 1am on a Monday night but the jobless people who stuck it out were in for a rare treat. Hannibal really upped the weirdness game of his 30th birthday and did a 15 minute version of his 70 second “Gibberish Rap” and invited Mario, Alvin of the Chipmonks fame and Spongebob Squarepants to join him. It was in the top 10 most surreal moments of my life. Oh, did I mention the ballet dancers? Yeah, that too. It was a supremely weird and awesome way to end the night.

Click here to see the bizarre photos from comedian and gibberish rapper Hannibal Buress’ 30th birthday party at the Knitting Factory.

Ps. I gave Hannibal a $5 Arch Card for his birthday. Never say I am not a good friend.

ThingX.tv is a new website, presented by Adult Swim and from the former staff of the Onion. When the Onion moved to Chicago the Peabody Award winning New York staff stayed in NYC and started Thing X. My brother used to work for the Onion so I know a bunch of the new Thing X staff and I was asked to come out and take photos.

It was a pretty amazing event. There was so much hilarious branding everywhere, even in the bathrooms. I took a bunch of photos of the weird stuff they had everywhere so check that out. The performances at the show were pretty great with Cerebral Ballzy and El-P headlining. It was pretty weird seeing them play to a small crowd of TV executives and comedy writers. I think that made it even better of a show. With a giant X mascot named Thingy roaming around the whole thing was really surreal. One of my favorite comics Eugene Mirman performed as did Michael Che. They were both very funny which is important in a room full of comedians. Tim Harrington from Les Savy Fav DJd in between sets and The Jonny Lam Band opened the evening. Oh and Joe Garden hosted and did not get naked as was promised.

Click here to check out all the photo from the Thing X Launch Party at Le Poisson Rouge and for gods sakes check out ThingX.com!

Last night I decided to head down to the brand new Slipper Room to watch my man Barry Obama put a licking on Mitt Romney while comedians entertained me for just five dollars that all went to hurricane relief. This is America at it’s finest. The entire six years I have lived in NYC I have been going to my friend Seth Herzog’s weekly comedy show Sweet. As it happens on Tuesday Seth has done a lot of political themed nights like Super Tuesday Sweet and election watching Sweets. Always a good time because nothing is better than watching comedians make fun of our insane political process.

Last night Seth had his mom, who I love dearly, co-host. She was actually one of the funnier co-hosts he’s had and as always it got really awkward. Seth brought out Jordan Carlos doing a great Barack Obama impression. Rob Cantrell was up next and told a story about how he saw Run DMC, Whodini, Grandmaster Flash and the Fat Boys in 1986. It was hilarious and all but I was mostly just thinking about how jealous I was. Holy shit that would have been an epic show. Finally Driven By Boredom regular Hannibal Buress showed up and killed it as always.

After the jokes, shit got serious as we watched election results. Thanks to my near obsession with Nate Silver I knew Obama had it sealed up as soon as they called Wisconsin so I headed home early and by the time I got to my apartment CNN had called the election for Barack. I spent the rest of the night making fun of republicans on Twitter and then got an email about how my flight to Miami tomorrow got upgraded to first class. It was a fucking perfect day. God bless America.

Click here to see all the photos from the Sweet Election Party Special at The Slipper Room.

One of my favorite part of the Gathering of the Juggalos is the comedy tent. They actually get some really amazing (and sometimes awful) comedians and you get to see some great stand up sets and you get to see them react to the juggalos which is pretty funny in itself. The weirdest night of my life involved Tom Green & Gallagher at the Gathering and I met my homie Hannibal Burres there before his set. This year there were four comedians scheduled to play the Gathering. I skipped Ralphie May and Jamie Kennedy showed up three hours late so they told him to go home.

I did get a chance to see two, pretty awesome acts. The first was Cheech & Chong which seemed to be one of the most anticipated things at any Gathering I have ever been to. There were hundreds of people waiting in the comedy tent hours before they were supposed to go on. They went on late and people didn’t even care. They were just psyched to see Cheech and Chong.  Tommy came out first and they made him take hits from the biggest bong and biggest joint I have ever seen. After that Cheech came up as some hillbilly character and they switched on and off doing different characters while juggalos screamed things at them. It was a little dated but honestly hilarious and I wish I could have seen the whole set but I was off to something else.

On Saturday night I got a chance to see Bobcat Goldthwait which I was really excited about. I am a pretty big fan of both him as a comedian and him as a director. I met him on a press junket for his film World’s Greatest Dad and he seemed like a great dude and it was amazing to hear his signature voice when talking about serious things like scriptwriting. I was expecting him to be good, but not as good as he was. He delivered the best set I have seen in three years at the Gathering and everyone in the press area stayed for his whole set and the guy mixing the sound was laughing so hard he was crying. He was well researched and did a lot of great juggalo material, picked on some people in the audience and no one said shit or threw anything. At the end he put on an Insane Clown Posse shirt that Upchuck the Clown gave him. It was sort of perfect.

Check out all the pictures from comedy at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos featuring Bobcat Goldthwait and Cheech & Chong.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

Sunday night Comedy Central premiered Hannibal Buress’ first hour long stand up special “Hannibal Buress Animal Furnace”. Hannibal decided to throw a party at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn to celebrate the special.

The sold out party opened up with Hannibal hosting an amazing stand up show. Amy Schumer opened up and although I had never seen her before she absolutely killed it. My boy Donald Glover went on after her and did what he said was his first stand up set in like nine months. He was brilliant as always and talked a little about his role on season two of Girls.  I mention this only so I can plug my cameo on Girls next episode. I play “Mustache Guy”. Get excited. After Donald Morgan Murphy came up and I have had a fake crush on her for like the last 7 years. I saw her about a month before I moved to NYC and I’ve run into her a half dozen times since and she is always fucking hilarious. Aziz Ansari headlined the comedy show and proved why he is one of the biggest comedians to come out of the NYC downtown comedy scene. Years ago, before Aziz was on TV or hanging with Kanye I think a lot of people knew he was going to make it. He would kill it every time he hit the stage and I think he’s only gotten better and better. I was close to crying during his set.

After the comedy show Hannibal showed a documentary he made leading up the taping of his special. I was running around a little bit while they showed it but the parts I saw were funny and at times touching. The documentary is a special feature of the Animal Furnace DVD and is going to be available online.  After the documentary screened Hannibal finally played his Comedy Central special. Hannibal is one of the funniest comics in New York and Animal Furnace was fantastic. People had been standing up for hours before the special even started and everyone was glued to the screen watching and laughing their asses off.

Sunday just happened to be the premier of The Eric Andrew Show on Adult Swim as well and Hannibal is the co-host so at 12:30am he played that live. Adult Swim is known for their insane programing but the Eric Andrew show is one of the weirdest things I have ever seen. It reminds me of the Tom Green Show before Tom Green was om MTV. It is filmed like a cable access show and is bizarrely funny.

Lastly the homies Ninjasonik closed out the night with a live performance. Most people there came to see comedy and had been standing up for nearly five hours and bounced before the Ninjas went on but there was still a good group of friends and fans left and they put on a great show with guest  spots from Johnny Nelson and Starcity.

Overall I cannot tell you how psyched I was that Hannibal thought of me to shoot his party. He even tipped me (he was possibly drunk) but I would have shot this show for free. Despite it being a really long night it was one of the better events I have been to this year. So go buy Hannibal’s awkwardly named special or just watch it however one might go about doing such a thing. I assure you it is funny.

Now click here to see all the pictures from Hannibal Buress’ Animal Furnace premiere party at the Knitting Factory.

Five years ago my SB-800 flash came in the mail. I had an old manual flash and my camera came with a flash but without the high tech lasers that shoot out of flashes these days it’s really hard to use auto focus in the dark. When I got the flash my photographs got a lot better and when I relaunched Driven By Boredom as the version of the site it is today I only uploaded the galleries that I photographed post SB-800.

A few months ago when Tyga was blowing up the charts with his Top 40 hit Rack City I went back to my archives to pull a photo of him that I knew I had from 2007.  When I opened that folder on my 2007 hard drive I realized that not only was it the first night that I got the flash but it was also just a really great night.  I realized that the 5th anniversary of the night was coming up and I planned to reedit the pictures and repost them today.  So let’s get into it.

Back in the day pretty much every Wednesday I would go to two events, Invite Them Up at Rififi and High Voltage at Sutra. Invite Them Up was a legendary night in downtown “alternative comedy” hosted by Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale. On April 25th, 2007 they were hosting a comedy auction to raise money for the show because Rififi was falling apart and they needed new lights and things. Looking back on that night it was a pretty amazing crowd with a lot of comics that were big at the time and a lot of comics who have blown up since. I remembered getting in a bidding war with now reasonably famous Nick Kroll over a theme song written by Stella member and director David Wain. I ended up losing, but I did win Jon Benjamin’s fake mustache who now has his on TV show. Jenny Slate was looking adorable that night and she went on to make a name for herself as a Saturday Night Live cast member who accidentally said fuck on the air in her very first episode. Kristen Schaal was there and I had a crush on her at the time and she went on to steal the show regularly during the two seasons of Flight of the Concords and pretty much everything else she’s been in. I had no idea who Hannibal Buress was back then and now he’s one of the funniest comics in NYC. And I still haven’t mentioned Michael Showalter, Todd Barry, Morgan Murphy, Brett Gelman, Kurt Braunohler, Leo Allen, Jon Glaser, Seth Herzog, Joe Mande, etc, etc… It was a pretty amazing party.

After that I headed to High Voltage at Sutra which was one of my favorite parties in NYC ever. I met so many friends at that party and made out with so many girls and got so many people naked in bathrooms there. It was awesome. The party then moved to 200 Orchard where it got a little bit worse and then to Annex where it got a lot worse Dimitry finally pulled the plug on it after a few months there. I showed Dimitry these pictures recently and he told me that he had to sneak Tyga in because he was underage and he rolled to the party with Travis McCoy who was at the time in the Gym Class Heroes. I remember Travie being there but I didn’t know who he was at the time so I didn’t take his photo because he had a camera with him and I pretty much never take photos of photographers unless I know them. Looking back at these pictures there are a ton of people in there now that I didn’t know at the time but I later became good friends with (and perhaps saw naked) later.

After High Voltage I headed over to Manor for the short lived Misshapes spin off Bleach. The party got shut down because they constantly let in underage kids and I was really psyched it got shut down because the week after this they told me they would kick me out if I took any photos because the Misshapes are super serious people. Whatever, the party was a lot of fun and there are so many pictures of people here I didn’t know at all at the time and am friends with. I had just met Sophia Lamar and Raquel Reed and the band VIP was hosting and there is a pretty funny shot of Johnny Makeup wearing a Mouseketeers and holding my business card in his mouth. There are some Ruff Kids and Misshapes in this gallery and a bunch of cute girls who I may or may not have made out with at some point in the next two years. I think I might have gone home with a girl I met that night. Those were the days…

Anyway that was five years ago when I loved doing this shit and I did it for free while I was working as a bus boy at a hotel in midtown. I am old and jaded now and won’t leave my house unless you are paying me five times what I would have been psyched to make back then. But this is life: you get old, you stop enjoying partying with college kids downtown and then you die. See you all in Hell.

Click here to see the photos I took five years ago today on a really fun Wednesday night.