Welcome back to The Gathering of the Juggalos! Remember my trip last year? I certainly will never forget it. I posted 21 galleries, did two million page views in a week and was the only photographer to shoot Tila Tequila getting attacked by insane clowns.  It was an exhausting trip that ended up being one of the biggest moments of my career. Of course I had to return for the 12th annual GOTJ and I once again rode shotgun with my juggalo anthropologist companion Village Voice writer Camille Dodero. She wrote this article which changed our lives a little bit and we had to go back to where it all began.

This year I tried to shoot less and take it a bit easier. We got a hotel and I only shot about 3000 photos which I edited down into just over 1000 photos and a scant 9 updates.  So let’s start at the beginning with the end. The last performance of the Gathering was an epic Insane Clown Posse set that ended with what they call the “Faygo Armageddon”.  During ICP’s entire set they pour the off brand soda Faygo on the crowd much to the delight of everyone in the crowd and to the dismay of photographers and bouncers alike. At the end of their set they have hundreds of two liters of Faygo left and they bring out all their friends back stage to shake the Faygo up pour that shit on everything.  Camile and I got to participate and it was easily one of the most fun things I have ever done.  I launched several dozen Faygo bottles into the crowd and got soaked to the bone in diet soda (evidently the sugar in non diet Faygo eats through the stage set). All of the artists on Psychopathic Records were out there with us in full face paint making the whole event one of the most surreal things I have taken part in.

I decided to make my first GOTJ 2011 update a collection of all the shots I took of bands that are on Psychopathic Records.  I figured it would make for a good introduction and let you know what the juggalos are listening to other than ICP. In this gallery you will find shots of ICP and Twiztid as well as the super group they form together, Dark Lotus.  Also we have shots from Anybody Killa (ABK) and Blaze Ya Dead Homie.  I missed the Psychopathic Rydaz and Boondox this year… Also it should be noted that they announced at the Gathering that Vanilla Ice has been signed to Psychopathic.  Seriously, I am not at all kidding. No word on if he will wear face paint or not…

Okay, let’s get on with it… We have 8 more updates to go!

Click here for all the live band photos of the Psychopathic Records family at the 2011 Gathering of the Juggalos.

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

Time to dump on you guys the rest of my Lollapalooza shots. These are all the crowd shots and the fun party people and so on and so forth. I found the best partying was going on around the Perry stage which was sort of the rave tent. I spent a lot of time shooting the crowd around Skrillex and Afrojack on the first day. Shot a bunch of the artist lounge on day two and almost no crowd shots on day three. Luckily I shot so much on day one there is a pretty serious gallery for you to look at.

Also, if you missed my Lollapalooza band shots click here.

And lastly before I get to these pictures I should mention that I am headed back to the Gathering of the Juggalos again and if it’s anything like last year I should be pretty much off the grid.  That being said I was told there will be internet access so I would be checking my Tumblr for daily updates.  Either way I will be back by Monday at the latest with the rest of the pictures from my Chicago trip and they are pretty fucking wild.

So click here to see all the crowd shots from the 2011 Lollapalooza in Chicago, IL.

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.

I didn’t make any plans over the weekend because I thought I might have to attend my grandmother’s funeral as she has been unable to process liquids for over a week.  Fortunately, she seems to be invincible and refuses to die. So when I realized that I was going to be in town this weekend I started looking for things to do.  I decided to hit up the Vans House Party on Friday and I realized that the Mad Decent Block Party was on Saturday.  Right as I was about to start emailing people to try to get on a press list I got an email from PBR asking me to shoot the event for them and Colt 45’s new brightly colored malt beverage Blast.  As a former resident of Richmond, VA where PBR is considered the only respectable beer to drink I have long been a fan of Pabst.  I don’t actually drink beer but if I did clearly I would drink the only drink to be mentioned in both my favorite David Lynch movie and my favorite book about a serial killer and landscape architecture.

Anyway, the point of all of this is that everything worked out perfectly. I got an all access pass to the party, got paid to shoot, and then sold the pictures to the Village Voice which of course made PBR happy. It was a win-win-win especially since I am the brokest I have been in a couple years. Wait, why the fuck am I talking about all of this? Clearly I have taken too much 5-Hour Energy this afternoon. Let’s get on to the party…

I didn’t get down to the South Street Seaport until around 5:30PM and it was packed. It was completely wild how many people showed up.  I don’t think I have seen anything like that in NYC outside of Madison Square Garden. Not even at the Jelly Pool parties. My homie Maluca was on stage when I got there but unfortunately by the time I got my passes and got to the stage she was finished. Zeds Dead went on after her and the crowd was bumping. I spent most of their set shooting the back stage and VIP areas because PBR was giving out free PBR & Blast back there and also cause most of my friends were back there.  During Gang Gang Dance’s set I ventured into the wild masses of people and shot a bunch of crowd shots.  The night ended with Claude Von Stroke DJing until they finally had to kick everyone out.  There were so many people down there it took me 45 min to find a cab and then he wouldn’t take me home so I walked a mile to a subway and went home and passed out by midnight only to wake up 4 hours later…

All and all a great day.  Click here to see all the pictures from the Mad Decent NYC Block Party at the South Street Seaport.

If I were going to make a list of the top 25 bands I want to photograph both the Cro Mags and Fucked Up would be on it. Luckily I got a chance to cross them off on Friday when they both co-headlined the Vans House Party in Williamsburg. I kinda did a half assed job shooting them so hopefully one of these days I will get a second chance, but still the show was a lot of fucking fun. It was unreasonably hot though and I got so much sweat into my point and shoot camera that I think I broke it which is a total fucking bummer.

Anyway, I am just gonna make with the pictures so I can get back to not doing anything today….

Click here to see all the pictures of Fucked Up and The Cro Mags at The Vans House Party.