I have talked about my friend Teddy many, many times on this website but it’s been a while so it’s time for a refresher. Teddy Blanks was the front man for The Gaskets the band I managed for 5 years. They broke up in 2008 and Teddy started making solo music. During this period he released a free EP called Complications which we will come back to in a second. Teddy started playing shows out and he scored the soundtrack for the very successful indie film Tiny Furniture (out Tuesday on Criterion DVD).

A few years ago Teddy co-founded what has become a very successful graphic design studio and put his music on the back burner a little bit but he has now shifted back into full on music making mode. Yesterday he released a bunch of new music starting with a re-release of Complications. Complications has been remixed and is fully ready for you to put into your face. The album is a concept album based on the writings of New Yorker staff writer and surgeon Atul Gawande. If you have never heard pop songs about medical oddities and songs using disease as metaphors for life this is your lucky day. The album is completely free you can listen to it below or download it here.

Teddy also has released all the music that he wrote for Tiny Furniture. Much of it didn’t make it into the movie including a Sinead O’Connor cover that they couldn’t afford the rights to. Most of the music is instrumental but there are a couple pop gems in there including When You Come Home, the song used in the trailer for the film. You can download all the Music From & Inspired by Tiny Furniture for free here.

On top of all that Teddy has released three new demos.  You can download all three demos here. Teddy is hard at work on a new album but these tracks didn’t make the cut, but they are still great songs. Somewhat Hasty is a personal favorite of mine.

Lastly, yesterday Paper Magazine debuted Teddy’s video for the opening track to Complications, Faint & Shaky. The video was directed by Ry Russo-Young who’s new film Nobody Walks was a hit at Sundance and was picked up for distribution by Magnolia Films. The video is peep show themed and Teddy does a little strip tease for your viewing pleasures. So watch this video and if you enjoy it, as I know you will, go back and check out all the other amazing links to music I just sent you!

Listen motherfuckers, I am going to keep posting photos of my band Fucking Bullshit on here because I am an egotist and you guys are just going to have to deal with it. I mean I guess you could stop coming to my website but then you might miss out on some naked tattooed girl or something and how much of a bummer would that be right? So deal with it. I will have a naked tattooed girl for you tomorrow.

Fucking Bullshit played a brand new venue in Williamsburg Brooklyn called Grand Victory. It is military themed which made for awesome shots of me screaming into the mike with war posters that say GIVE ‘EM HELL in the background.  The show itself was pretty awesome cause we opened for 70’s punk fixtures The Brats and there was  decent crowd including a legit 15 year old punk kid who actually gave a fuck about the songs we were playing. There were a couple of cute ladies that knew the lyrics too which made for a good time. Probably the worst part about the whole set was the one of my favorite photographers Tod Seelie showed up which meant I knew I was going to have to do something crazy for his camera. Last time he was at a show I cut my chest open with a broken bottle. This time I decided to go with my head with a box cutter. Next time it will be in the kitchen with a candle stick.

Anyway, the shots are awesome. You can see them all by clicking right here and as always I will post my favorite shots below this very sentence.

Last Friday Skrillex played one of what seems like a dozen shows in NYC this week at Roseland Ballroom. While I am not a huge fan of dubstep I was pretty psyched for his openers Spank Rock and A-Trak. Skrillex has gotten more press coverage than I can handle in NYC in the last week so I was content to focus on A-Trak and my homies in Spank Rock. Johnny Nelson is in Spank Rock now and he’s got my logo tattooed to his arm so they cannot be fucked. And I had the all access photo pass to shoot A-Trak so most of the shots in this gallery are of him fucking destroying one of the wildest crowds of young kids I have ever seen. It was a blast.

Click here to see all the shots from A-Trak, Skrillex and Spank Rock from the Roseland Ballroom.

Hello. If you recall. I have a band called Fucking Bullshit. We play some of the greatest punk rock covers that you could ever wrap your mind around. We change lives every single time we play. I don’t want to sound boastful but we put on the greatest show that has ever been put on by any band in any point in history ever. Each show is better than the next so there is no doubt that this absolutely FREE show tomorrow at Grand Victory in Williamsburg will be the greatest show that there has ever been.

Imagine telling your kids about how you went to see the relaunching of the Glamdammit party at Grand Victory and how you saw the greatest performance in music history. It’s a moment that will go down in rock and roll lore and you were there. Wow. I almost envy you because I will never be able to see myself perform. I sometimes cry myself to sleep at night thinking about how great I am as a punk rock front band and no matter what I do I can never fully experience myself from the point of view of an audience member. I die inside knowing I am going to miss the very performance that you can see for FREE THIS SATURDAY AT 10PM at Grand Victory.

So yeah, you need to come tomorrow. We go on at 10pm. The doors open at 9:30 and you want to be on time because you do not want to miss this fucking brilliance. We open for the Brats who were late 70’s NYC punk legends influencing bands like the Ramones and such.  Plus the theme of the party is Jetboy Jetgirl which is a fucking amazing song about consensual gay pedophilia from the point of view of the child done best by the Damned. Good times.

Okay here are the details:

Fucking Bullshit
10PM
Grand Victory
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
245 Grand St at Roebling
Free!!

Ps. Here are some pictures from our last show at Don Pedros. I climbed a Skeeball machine. It’s what I do.

If you recall from two posts ago I was in Aspen for the Winter X Games last weekend working for Sailor Jerry. The main promotion that Sailor Jerry did at the X Games was to set up “Hold Fast” a pop up tattoo shop at the Sky Hotel.  They had tattoo artists Terry Brown from New Orleans and Preston Chambers from Denver working all day for four days giving out free Sailor Jerry tattoos.

The man behind the name Sailor Jerry was Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins who revolutionized tattooing and designed thousands of what are now classic tattoo designs. Anyone who wanted one of them could come by the shop and set up an appointment and get tattooed by one of these amazing tattoo artists.

Aside from a ton of bar tenders, hotel staff and X Games fans Hold Fast hosted a few notable people who got some SJ ink. A hilarious BMX biker named Mike “Hucker” Clark came by with BMX legend Tim “Fuzzy” Hall and got his first ever tattoo. He had such a good time that he was constantly in the shop hanging out with us. The next day he signed a huge sponsorship deal with Red Bull and seemed to be having the best weekend of his life. I reached out to folks on Twitter and found out that former The Pack member Stunnaman was in town with Trouble Andrew performing a few hotels away. Stunnaman came by and got this sick pharaoh tattoo and then came back a day later with Trevor from Trouble Andrew who got inked as well. I was actually on my way back when they came by again but I got shots of Stunnaman first tattoo. We also had two members of AWOLNATION come by. They were playing a show at the base of the mountain and got matching ship tattoos to commemorate both their travels and their hit song Sail.

The most legendary icon to get tattooed was of course the hero of men that is Igor from Driven By Boredom AKA me. I got my third Sailor Jerry tattoo when I convinced Preston to tattoo a rooster chasing a pig to my leg.  In nautical lore pigs and chickens are the only animals to survive a ship wreck so sailors would tattoo the animals to their feet for good luck. I got mine on my leg instead because drowning at sea is not really one of my top fears at the moment….

Anyway, it was a great time staying in an amazing hotel in Aspen and hanging out with rad people all day. I didn’t get to see any actual X Games but it was fucking cold outside… and besides ESPN was on in the hotel room. I can’t wait till the next Sailor Jerry pop up tattoo shop event I get to shoot in March at SXSW!

Click here to see all the pictures from Hold Fast the Sailor Jerry pop up tattoo shop in Aspen for the Winter X Games.

When my punk cover band Fucking Bullshit performed our last show we decided to do a Christmas tune. We covered Fuck Christmas by Fear and I disrobed before the song and performed it wearing nothing but a Christmas thong and a Santa hat. I asked my friend Sasha to film it since she is a filmmaker and photographer but evidently she was drunker than I thought and she managed to miss Fuck Christmas completely. I was planning on releasing the Fuck Christmas footage on my website on Christmas day. Alas it was not meant to be.

The one song Sasha did film was our encoure, Depression by Black Flag. We were not planning on playing it and hadn’t practiced it in weeks but someone tucked a dollar bill into my g-string during the last song so I told the crowd if they paid me $10 I would perform another song. They threw enough money at me so we carried on. Unfortunately I was completely wasted at this point and didn’t remember how it started and we just sort of butchered the song. I wouldn’t even bother posting it except the ending is really amazing and this small Asian man comes up to me and asks to take a photo of me. There is also a lot of footage of me pretty much naked and playing with my genitals on stage. I am sure you will enjoy it a lot but make sure if nothing else you watch everything from the 1:45 mark on…

Merry Fucking Christmas.

I am going to my parents house in DC for five or six days and I almost never take photos when I am there so I have a  feeling I am not gonna update much while I am gone. I do have a tiny update planned for Christmas and some nudes to go up early next week.  I will be updating my Tumblr and Twitter of course so follow those things. I also have an iPhone and an Instagram now. I don’t know how to link to that but my name on there is “drivenbyboredom” obviously.

In the Christmas spirit I will leave you with some holiday cheer featuring my favorite X-mas songs. I hope you enjoy them and I will see you guys in a few days.

My old pals Sailor Jerry decided to throw a party at The Gramercy Theater and they had The Dirtbombs and White Mystery play. The Dirtbombs are a pretty legendary band so I expected them to be awesome but White Mystery were a pleasant surprise. I had never heard of them but it turns out we have a bunch of mutual friends and they pretty much kick ass. The party was such a good time that I stayed an hour later than I was supposed to and Santa Clause showed up and got drunk on Sailor Jerry. You cannot fuck with that. I gotta go shoot some pics for XXL Magazine in a bit so I gotta make this quick.

Click here to see all the shots from the Sailor Jerry Presents: Dirtbombs/White Mystery party at Gramercy Theater.

Last year at Art Basel my friends at The Overthrow threw one of the best parties of Miami Art Week, this year was no exception. My boys in Ninjsonik were playing so of course this party was #1 on my list of things I wanted to do. Luckily for me my favorite client Sailor Jerry was one of the sponsors so not only did I get to hang out at the insane party but I actually got paid to be there. This is how you win at Art Basel.

The line up of the party was absolutely sick. Aside from the Ninjas Basel Castle featured Yelawolf as a headliner, a Rapture DJ set, Penguin Prison, Bad Rabbits, Chris Cab, Tamara Sky and a bunch more. They had live painting from Ron English, Greg Mike, Shark Toof, Sam Flores and more. There was a photo booth run by my party photo brother from another mother Rony Alwin and a lot of Sailor Jerry and PBR to fuel the 11 hour party. Also the whole thing was thrown by Hyundai who keeps throwing really good Re:Mix Lab parties and even though they aren’t paying me I need to give a shout out to them for mixing art and music really well and paying for rad people to do rad things.

Sailor Jerry had their Airstream on site and as the line wrapped around the block we would pull people in for some Sailor Jerry and a place to chill while they waited to get in. There were 8,000 RSVPs to the party and trying getting in after 8pm was pretty much impossible. Luckily the Sailor Jerry trailer was there to keep people entertained. It was also a spot for artists and rad people to get away from the madness of the party for a minute and have a drink. It was a very cool spot to have access to during the party.

Yelawolf killed it, Ninjasonik were amazing as always and meeting Ron English was a pretty awesome experience but the highlight of my night had to be when amazing street artist Shark Toof had one too many Sailor Jerry and decided it would be a good idea to spray paint my vest. I had just had lunch with him earlier in the day and I was kinda joking about the idea but around midnight it seemed like a really good idea. He had just painted this insane shark and then he turned his cans on me. What I thought was going to be like a two minute thing turned into nearly an hour of him spraying my vest until it was a true work of art. Tons of people gathered to watch the whole thing and I handed my friend Rodger my camera to get a few shots. It was pretty great.

Anyway, this is the last gallery of party pictures I have from Art Basel but I also shot six or seven rolls of film so I will have one all 35mm gallery from Basel that should be pretty cool.  But in the mean time…

Click here to see all the shots from Overthrow’s 2011 Basel Castle party at The Overthrow Castle!

Ps. Just wanted to say sorry to Buff Monster and his girlfriend for getting them stuck outside of the party for twenty minutes when the cops shut down the gate. I hope that huge bottle of Sailor Jerry made up for it…