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.

Hey you raver fucks, now is your chance to see Fucking Bullshit.  For some reason The Death Set decided to throw a punk rock vs Moombathon party tomorrow night (Thursday) at Santo’s Party House and Fucking Bullshit is opening. I know a lot of my friends don’t give a shit about punk, but they do like absurd dance music so now is your chance to get your glow sticks out and try to throw them at my face as I sing punk rock hits for you clowns.  And then you can see Cousin Culo, Phi Unit and DJ Reck do their thing. For my punk friends, don’t miss this show because we are playing with the Death Set and the K-Holes and I imagine that I will spend most of the set trying to pick fights with club kids. It should be a lot of fun. Anyway, the show starts at 8 and we play at 9. Seriously, right at 9. Don’t be late. Here is a link to the Facebook invite for more info.

Now for the content of this post I have a bunch of shots that Coach Mike took at our last show and a lovely video. It was a lot of fun and we had everyone signing a long. The lead singer of Iconicide took the mic during a Black Flag cover and sang his death metal vocals all over my punk rock vocals. Clearly I had no choice to flip him in the air using only my neck. Fortunately when his head hit a cinder block he did not die and kept on rocking out. So check out the video, the neck flip starts around 1:45 and enjoy Mike’s pictures. See you cowards tomorrow.

On Monday Roxy Cottontail had me come out to her new weekly party Mondaze at WIP.  Nicky Da B and Zebra Katz performed and Rusty Lazer, DJ Wonder and DJ Fresh Direct all DJ’d. I got a chance to play with my new camera and I even shot some video that you will probably never see. I still don’t have the hang of the new camera yet, but I got some decent shots. The party was a good time but I am going to make this write up really short because I wrote it once and my site decided it would be funny to delete it for no reason. So yeah, that happened.

Click here to see all the pictures from Mondaze at WIP.

And finally two weeks after SXSW ended I am finally getting up the last images from my ninth straight year. This gallery contains a bunch of photos from various parties I hit up during the music part of the festival.  There are a couple shots from a Wavves show and then I shot a day party that Ayad from Passion Pit put together and then rolled over to Hotel Vegan the Brooklyn Vegan party. That night I was sent to a party that had already ended so I just hung out at the bar and took a handful of photos. Thursday night I hit up the Spider House to shoot a little bit of Psych Fest the highlight being getting a waitress’ phone number and then Friday I went to see the Gories at Emo’s East but I didn’t shoot much because I didn’t have a photo pass and I wasn’t trying to fight mother fuckers to get shots of bands. And finally on Saturday night I put my camera down and just enjoyed the Off! show and then made it over to the Vice party. I was going to shoot Trash Talk but after I took three photos someone kicked my flash and the door that holds the batteries in flew into the mosh pit and was never seen again.  I had planned on going back later to search for it but then ASAP Rocky started a fight when someone threw a beer at him and chaos erupted and the cops broke up the party. I ended up that night at a house party where pretty much everyone I met that week just happened to be hanging out. I decided not to take photos but instead got a bunch of hot girls in my friend Mike’s van and we suddenly had a moving party.

Okay, this is going nowhere and I don’t have photos of half that shit so I am gonna put the keyboard down and just show you some of the damn photos.

Click here to see the photos from rest of my SXSW trip.

Ps. Shout out to Bleached and JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound the two best bands in this gallery.

So it appears that my site is working again… at least a little bit. Evidently some huge website was hot linking a bunch of zombie photos of mine and just ruining my bandwidth. I just deleted all the photos. No more zombies for you bro. Anyway, we got two more Austin galleries to go and first up is the MtvU Woodie Awards.

The Woodie Awards are some sort of awards that MTVU gives out during SXSW every year. I am sure a quick google search would explain their exact premise but I am not the sort of journalist that cares about anything. Instead I will just tell you the story of how I ended up at the Woodie Awards.

When I was in Austin I ran into a flyer for the Woodie Awards. The headlining acts were Steve Aoki, Santigold and Childish Gambino. I’ve known Aoki for ages and I have been trying to shoot Santigold for a minute since we have a bunch of mutual friends. Childish aka Donald Glover I met when the Village Voice was doing a cover story on him at last years SXSW and he and I have hung out a few times since then. So when I saw the flyer I was like, this is a thing I should be at. It just so happened I had a break in my Sailor Jerry schedule during the awards so I applied for a press pass. Unfortunately Childish Gambino broke his leg and couldn’t make it, but they had Mac Miller fill in for him.

When I got to the awards I went to look for the press area but all there was was a riser that was about 100 yards away from the stage so that we could shoot the bands. I tried to go back stage with my press pass to no avail. I ran into the Wire Image guy trying to get back there too so I grabbed a press guy and talked him into letting us backstage to get some shots. They weren’t doing an official red carpet but they had a mini one set up for MTV to film on. They told the Wire guy and I that we could shoot on it. Since there were only two still photographers I asked them if instead I could pull them off the carpet so they let me do some quick portraits of people like Skrillex, Dillion Francis, Zedd and A-Trak.

I had seen Aoki backstage before I talked my way in but he was no where to be found. The Wire guy asked one of the PR people if he could get shots of Steve and she walked him over to the trailer. I went with them and the Wire guy got all in my face about it so when he came out of Steve’s trailer I got the PR person’s attention and introduced myself. Turns out we have had many exchanges over email and she let me in. I said hey to Steve and took a few shots of him and Lil Jon and the other DJ’s in there with him and then I mentioned to Lil Jon that I had photographed him at the Gathering of the Juggalos. As soon as I said that everyone in the room just looked at us like “Why the fuck were you at the Gathering of the Juggalos?”  So in what was pretty much the highlight of my SXSW trip I got to talk to Lil Jon about juggalos for like 20 minutes. Lil Jon also was hilarious congratulating Skrillex on his Grammy Awards “Welcome to the club. I only got one of ’em.”

At some point I tried to shoot Santigold but we were so far away from the stage I didn’t see the point so I just took about 10 photos and then headed back stage. I got a few more red carpet type shots of Machine Gun Kelly and Mac Miller with their awards and then I peaced the fuck out. The whole thing was a pretty fun diversion from all the branding work I did all week… now if only I could find out what the hell a Woodie Awards is…

Click here to see all my photos from backstage at the 2012 MTV Woodie Awards.

Mess With Texas is a three day event that happens during South By Southwest. I was there the whole time and it was the bulk of the stuff I shot during South By Southwest. Normally if I had so many pictures from one event I would break it down into several posts but I am on the road and I don’t have time for such things so this is going to be one MASSIVE gallery.

The event was sponsored by Sailor Jerry so they brought in one of the best old school tattoo artists in the world, Oliver Peck, to do Sailor Jerry tattoos on people. He tattooed a bunch of musicians during the three days including Theophilus London, Stalley, members of White Mystery, Fidlar, The Crocodiles, Dum Dum Girls, Skindred, Passion Pit and a bunch more that I am sure I would have remembered if I had slept more than 4 hours any day in the last two weeks.  Oliver even tattooed a little bunny on me.

I don’t have time to get into the whole fest, but you can see the line up and I will hip you to my favorite acts.  I had seen Fidlar before but they were awesome again. This other punk band Ceremony was fucking awesome as well. I thought Saturday’s headliner A$AP Rocky lived up to the hype and Dinosaur Feathers are a New York band I am looking to see again when I get back home.

Anyway, I gotta figure out where I am gonna sleep today so I will leave you with this MASSIVE gallery MWTX.

Click here to see all 500+ pictures from Mess With Texas.

I just wanted to get a few photos from South By Southwest up really quickly. This week has been so insane and is going to keep getting more insane. On Tuesday night, the night before SXSW Music kicked off Panache threw a party at the Scoot Inn. I was only there for a few hours and I don’t have time for a long update but I really was digging on this band Natural Child even though I only took a couple of shots of them and Thee Oh Sees were awesome as always. I gotta go take more photos of bands and rum branding.

Click here to see all the pictures from the Panache SXSW Pre Party at the Scoot Inn in Austin, TX.

As I write this I am currently on a flight from LA to NYC on my way home from shooting the Musink tattoo convention and music festival in Orange County, CA. I was out there working for Sailor Jerry and having some fun along the way.  Sailor Jerry once again set up a trailer to tattoo bands, promote the brand and host some serious games of corn hole. Dan Smith was doing the tattoos all weekend and tattooed bands like New Found Glory, Bayside, Paramore, Against Me and a bunch of others.

I personally had a lot more fun than I expected. I am not a huge pop punk fan and was not exactly excited to see bands like Yellowcard bastardize the punk rock I hold so dear to my heart, but across the board the bands were a lot better live than I expected. Even Yellowcard put on a pretty damn good show. New Found Glory and Alkaline Trio really proved why they were the headliners of the two days of the festival I attended putting on some pretty fantastic shows. I don’t think I am gonna go home and buy their records but I was glad I got to see them do their thing.

I didn’t spend a lot of time inside the tattoo convention part of the festival as I had to stick around the Sailor Jerry airstream for the most part, but I did get to make a few rounds and saw some amazing work done.  My favorite had to be a Steve Jobs leg tattoo that I think won one of the tattoo contests. There were also an unreasonable amount of hot girls at the tattoo convention so that was a reason to venture inside to the air conditioned part of Musink.

One last thing I should mention about this festival is that Hayley Williams and Taylor York from Paramore showed up to watch Hayley’s boyfriend from New Found Glory play. I shot a couple of pictures of them and then Taylor came back and got a Sailor Jerry tattoo from Dan on Sunday.  I posted a few of those pictures on my Tumblr and it was as if the internet exploded. Evidently there are like 2000 Twitter accounts dedicated to Paramore. It is sort of insane.  So if you came here from one of these Paramore Tumblrs (Hayley herself posted one of my pics on her Tumblr) looking for more pictures you are in luck. There are a couple more pics of Hayley and a bunch more of Taylor getting tattooed.

Anyway, I am gonna get back to flying in this airplane now. I will see you guys on the ground.

Click here to see the HUGE gallery from the 5th annual Musink tattoo and music festival in Orange County, CA.

As you may recall I spent an insane amount of my life over the last year and a half curating, fundraising and putting together by force a tribute album to my friend Ross Harman who died in September of 2010. I got about 15 band to record tracks covering Ross’ music, organized a big fundraiser, raised another $4,000 via Kickstarter and put out not just a double LP tribute albums but also Ross’ two previously digitally released solo albums on vinyl as well. It has been completely exhausting but it was honestly the only way I knew how to mourn one of my closest friends.

This whole thing came to ahead last weekend when I threw a record release party in Richmond, VA for the record.  I met Ross when we were both attending Virginia Commonwealth University and I saw his band The Gaskets play a dive bar on campus. I started managing them and booking them all over the place but most often at a club called the Nanci Raygun at 929 W. Grace St.  I threw the last party ever there which the Gaskets headlined in 2006. Since then the Raygun became a bagel place and then two years ago it reopened as a venue once again… this time as Strange Matter. I knew this was the only place to do the show.

The show at Strange Matter was completely free and featured five musical acts (and Shannon Cleary DJing between sets) starting with the Miles O’Brien Band who are made up of a bunch of Ross’ friends from the Richmond, VA music scene. They played a couple of Gaskets tunes and a couple of other songs that Ross loved. After that our friend Gary Atkinson performed a few songs in between sets. We met Gary at an open mic night the Gaskets used to test out new songs at and Ross loved Gary’s music. After that the real show began with Jim O’Brien and his band Schnitzel doing a full set of Gaskets covers. It was amazing to see how many people still knew all the Gaskets songs including a lot of old ones I hadn’t heard performed in many, many years. It was an amazing set.  After that Ross’ Gaskets partner Teddy Blanks performed his solo material for the first time in Richmond. It went over amazingly and was great to see Teddy up on the 292 W. Grace stage again. Finally the Voltron like supergroup featuring members of Novios, Rabbits and VCR headlined. Between those three bands they accounted for 5 songs on the tribute album and they played those and a ton more songs that Ross wrote. It was an amazing set and they closed the night perfectly.

We sold a bunch of records but more importantly everyone had a great time. It meant so much to talk to Ross’ friends who were so touched by this project. I worked my ass off on this thing for the last year and a half and in a way I am pretty glad it’s over. I think I can finally move on with my life now and I am so glad I will have something to remember my friend forever. RIP Ross. We fucking love you.

Click here to see all the pictures from the Love Me When I’m Gone: A Tribute To Ross Harman record release party at Strange Matter in Richmond.

Ps. One of these days I will set up an online store where you can buy these records and if you ordered one through Kickstarter already I will be sending them out at the end of March when I get back to NYC. If you can’t wait you can always listen to Ross’ music for free at RossHarman.com. Also if you are in Richmond or NYC I can let you know how to get a copy of the record if you email me.