I recently started a punk rock cover band called Fucking Bullshit with a few friends. I have probably mentioned it on here and I know I have mentioned them on Twitter & Tumblr but I haven’t talked about the band too much because most of my readers do not give a fuck about my shitty punk band. That being said, it’s time for a Fucking Bullshit update.

When I turned 30 I realized I was really fucking old and I had never been in a band before. I was in this fake band in high school but we never actually played any shows which was probably for the best. I think we only had five songs anyway. But the reason I have never been in a band is because I have no musical talent. Not only can I not play an instrument but I am a uniquely terrible singer. I cannot hit notes and my timing is more than terrible. I figured the only way I could possibly be in a band would be to start a punk band.

I listened to exclusively punk from the day Kurt Cobain died until I was went to college that completely lacked a punk scene. Punk is pretty much made me the person I am today. I continued to listen to punk over the following decade but it wasn’t until the last couple years that I started really getting back into it.

Anyway it took me over a year to put a band together but I found my self a guitarist who is playing bass, a guitarist who is playing drums and another guitarist who is playing guitar. Our drummer played drums for a band on the record label that I started when I was 15 but he hasn’t played drums in 15 years. Our bassist is a guy I met online 10 years ago who is currently a voice over artist.  And our guitarist is a pretty legit punk dude who is an animator for Metalocolypse. He is also the youngest member of the band at 28.  We are a bunch of over the hill washed up punk rockers.

So we started a cover band.  No one over the age of 20 should be writing punk lyrics. We just don’t have that angst anymore.  I don’t think anyone wants to hear songs about freelance clients not paying on time or about lack of affordable health care. So we started pulling our favorite 80’s punk and hardcore tunes. We tossed in a few GG Alin tracks and suddenly we had a 14 song set set.

We played our first show at Hank’s Saloon in Park Slope on Thursday night.  The place was packed and I got drunk which I almost never do. The show went way better than I thought it would and everyone there had a pretty great time. All my friends seemed maybe a little too impressed that I could make for a decent front man. But hey, I knew I could fuck shit up… I just didn’t know if I could manage to sing at the right parts… Turns out I can’t really do that, but the fucking shit up makes up for it.

Anyway, thanks to a man named Jay Fingers we have actual video proof of the show and I figured I would post a few of my favorite videos. I hope you watch at least one of them, I think they are a lot of fun and at the very least the S.O.A video is hilariously sexist. We will be having more shows soon, you can like Fucking Bullshit on Facebook for details. I hop all the washed up 30 year old punk rockers like us come out for our next show…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P8X0LVDciI[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDiuI0yeItM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Do05jFIk8c[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzyKpi8DV8E[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POLVl3Ab1bM[/youtube]

Today I just found out my grandmother’s kidneys have failed and she can no longer drink water. She is currently on an I.V. but tomorrow they are taking her off it and she will most likely be dead in a few days. She helped raise me and is by far the relative I am closest to outside of my immediate family. She is in her 90’s so it’s not exactly a suprise but it’s still messing me up a lot. I am going to go to DC tomorrow to hopefully get a chance to say goodbye.

Long story short is that I just don’t have it in me right now to do a write up of the Maluca Mala show at this pop up nightclub that Heineken has in Soho called “The Spot”. I will just say that Maluca is awesome and her opening acts Los Rakas and Zuzuka Poderosa put on pretty good shows themselves. I should also give Moodswing360 a plug for having me out. And I kinda want to pass on this funny moment from the night. I handed a girl my card after I took her photo and she looked at me and said “We have kissed before. It was 5 years ago. You were cuter then.” It was sort of hilarious, but she probably has a point.

Anyway, I was going to make this two separate posts so I could post one today and one tomorrow but I am not going to do that anymore. So click here to see the crowd shots and the opening bands and then after that click here to see all the shots of Maluca Mala performing at the spot. And I’ll see you guys in a couple days.

On Saturday the Village Voice threw their first summer music festival that wasn’t Siren Fest.  Siren was an annual NYC tradition held at Coney Island for 10 years until it was replaced this year by the 4Knots Music Festival. 4Knots was headlined by The Black Angels and Titus Andronicus and featured a handful of bands which originally seemed a little disappointing compared to the two stages of bands and some of the bigger headliners Siren had over the years. But 4Knots in my opinion ended up being a lot of fun and in a lot of ways it was better time than past Siren’s have been.

The first improvement is obviously the location. As much as I love Coney Island the hour train ride leaves a lot to be desired. Coney Island also tends to be pretty brutal weather wise. The South Street Seaport in lower Manhattan is in the city and quite actually right on the water giving you a nice breeze no matter how hot it is. As great as it was to have so many bands play at Siren I spent half the time running back and forth between the two stages.  At 4Knots you could just hang out in one location and have a good view of the bands from anywhere.

The biggest 4Knots improvement had to be the VIP area. I know it’s sort of unfair to talk about that considering most people at the fest didn’t have the opportunity to enjoy it but at Siren the VIP area was a little tent with one open bar that people had to wait 30 minutes to get their drinks. At 4Knots the VIP area was an entire fucking pirate ship with a much bigger bar space and short lines all day. Plus you could actually see the bands instead of being behind the stage like at Siren.

Whatever the case I loved Siren Fest and I think if 4Knots becomes a yearly tradition I am going to enjoy it just as much and I am pretty sure NYC is going to feel the same way.

Anyway, before I get to the pictures I should point out that I was pretty sick on Saturday so I didn’t get to the South Street Seaport until about 5pm. I also was hired by the Voice just to shoot crowd shots so there aren’t really any photos of the bands. There are also shots in here at the beginning and the end of the gallery from the indoor lounge that featured DJ’s until midnight. I’ll stop talking now. Enjoy the pictures.

Click here to see all the shots from the Village Voice 4Knots Music Festival at the South Street Seaport.

Hello my friends. I am in Austin, TX and town is fireworks free due to threat of “dangerous” wildfires.  It sucks because I am missing the Coney Island hot dog eating contest for the first time seven years.  But on the plus side I am having a completely insane time driving from Los Angeles to NYC.

I don’t have time for a full recap as I am supposedly about to go on a boat somewhere but let me break down the trip a little bit.  I just wanted to let you know I was still alive.

My friend Whitney decided to move back to New Jersey for the summer and reached out on Twitter asking if anyone wanted to help her drive her car back.  I don’t know Whitney that well but I do know that she parties really hard and likes to get naked a lot. She is also pretty hot.  All of these things make for a pretty good traveling parter.

The first night we drove to Scottsdale, AZ and my one friend there decided to get drunk and pass out before I could meet up with her so we ended finding a pool party at the W Hotel and just went swimming.  We got out of town early and just drove until we wanted to fall asleep and we ended up in Ft. Stockton, Texas where neither of our phones got reception.

The drive through Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas is beautiful but also pretty fucking boring so we amused ourselves by hitting up roadside attractions like the mysterious “The Thing?” and taking topless photos of Whitney every time we stopped.

On the way to Austin her friends kept posting planking photos on Twitter and she decided that she couldn’t be beaten so we made a few stopps as she planked cows and a tractor and we even broke into a farm so she could plank a broken airplane. I even got my plank on at some state park in Texas.

Anyway we finally arived in Austin on Saturday and I was planning on crashing with my friend Isabel for a few days but she decided to go to Mexico for no reason and since I don’t have my passport I just am staying at her house.  Austin has been pretty nuts so far as we have been partying with Whitney’s stripper friends and terrorizing local bars. There as been a lot of nudity and madness and fun things like that and I have shot a ton of film. I also performed live band punk rock karaoke and got pretty much completely naked at a party last night.

I haven’t taken too many photos digitally and I am going to do a huge update about all this shit when I finally get back to NYC this week, but in the mean time you need to follow my Twitter and follow my Tumblr for crazy photos and tales from the road!

But anyway, Happy 4th of July and I hope you New Yorkers are enjoying the hotdog eating contest without me. We are headed to New Orleans tonight or tomorrow so I think I will just leave you with this…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-cT6SwFIHA[/youtube]

Two years ago when I was in LA I got to catch the band Magic Mirror at the Echo Plex.  They are the band that one of my best friends, Tom Danbury, plays bass in. They are super bad ass and people seem to like them very much. You should like them too.

I got a chance to see them two days ago where they are doing a residency at a bar called Casey’s in downtown LA. I had just come from a shoot and right after I saw them I went home to charge my phone and accidentally slept because I was exhausted. During their set, despite my exhaustion I managed to snap a few pictures of the band. The pictures are terrible, but the band is not. You should check them out. You should also just look at the pictures I took of them two years ago because they are a lot better than the new ones.

Also, I figured I should mention that Tom is currently on a five day bike ride to raise money for charity that benefits Haitian children. You should donate some money right fucking now because it is the right thing to do.

Okay, click here to see the pictures of Magic Mirror at Casey’s.

I had planned on heading to DC to start my vacation-like trip during the day last Saturday but I wanted to shoot something before I left town.  I knew that Rocky Business and Ninjasonik were playing at a spot called the Suffolk and I knew that was the play before I hit town.  When it was all said and done I didn’t start packing until after 5am and I ended up leaving for DC until 7 in the morning.  Whoops.

The Suffolk reminds me a lot of the old punk shows I used to go to at Churches or VFW Halls or something.  It was just a room with a shit PA set up and the band playing on the floor. People brought in their own booze and in one case, their own orange juice.  It was a pretty good vibe at first even though there weren’t a lot of kids there. I think the first band was Azores but I am not 100% sure. I missed most of their set and the rest of the show but luckily I caught all of Rocky Business and Ninjasonik.

Rocky Business fucking killed it. Those guys have really stepped up their game since I first saw them just a few months ago. Seeing them kill it at SXSW in front of a thousand people was amazing, but seeing them put on just as good of a show to 30 dudes says a lot about them as a band. These guys are sure to blow up one of these days and hopefully I’ll be seeing my logo tattooed on SB’s arm on the cover of Rolling Stone…

When they ended their set they knocked over all the drums and fucked a bunch of shit up. For whatever reason I missed most of this due to the fact that I am an idiot.  It seemed like it was a lot of fun until I realized none of the equipment they were smashing was owned by them. It was the Suffolk’s back line and the club flipped out even though nothing was really broken. They just sort of knocked it over. Rocky Business got kicked out of their own show which is clearly punk as fuck and I was pretty sure the show was over.

Everyone started to leave and I was about to until I saw Ninjasonik setting up. Somehow, somebody talked someone into letting the Ninjas play and they managed to get out a short set before someone got really drunk and ended up starting a fist fight with a bunch of girls. This seemed like a bad move and he got kicked out and shit looked like it was about to get ugly. The Ninjas were told they only had one song, but shit calmed down a little and they ended up doing three.

Overall, total chaos was ultimately avoided and despite no blood or rioting it ended up being a pretty good show anyway.

Click here to see all the photos from Ninjasonik & Rocky Business at The Suffolk.

This All My Friends Are In Bands series is getting a little out of hand I think.  My friends clearly are making way too many music videos or something.  It’s okay, I gotta do my best to let everyone know about them right?  One day if I ever finally do the redesign of this site I have been planning for years I can post one video at a time when it comes up, like I do on my Tumblr, but until then these bulk video updates are the solution.  So let’s see… Who do we have first?

Let’s start with the new Cerebral Ballzy video Drug Myself Dumb. They got a new video out where they all go to Vegas and take LSD. I haven’t actually talked to them about it but I am pretty fucking sure they are actually on Acid for most of the video. It’s a pretty good concept for a video and a fucking great song if you are into good punk rock, which I of course am.  Also I should mention that yesterday I had a small role (one line) in my friends HBO TV show called Girls that will be out in January and I was wearing my Ballzy Shirt on the show.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FbENveaRvM&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Speaking of drugs, if you follow my Tumblr you have seen several photos I posted of my dude Ease DaMan smoking meth out of a light bulb. I tried meth about ten years ago when it was called “Crystal” and it was a cheap club drug and no one was thinking about faces of meth.  I thought it was pretty boring and not scary at all.  Ease wanted to dispel some scary meth myths and one night he hit me up to take photos of him doing it. He smoked over $200 worth of meth and I took pictures. He came to the same conclusion I did. It’s fucking boring.  What is not boring is jumping out of a plane. Ease jumped out of a plane and turned the footage of it into a video for his song We Do Drugs of his “Average Size Penis” mix tape.

Next up we have a video directed by my friend Phillippe Grenade. It’s by a band called Silent Rider and the song is called I Was A Bomb.  I don’t really love the music and I can’t say much about that side of it, but the video is fucking beautiful and really really creepy, not unlike Phillippe himself. And be warned if you click that last link, it is pretty NSFW.  The video is just mildly NSFW and you will undoubtedly enjoy it.

And lastly we have for you the new Ninjasonik video featuring my dude Mr. Starcity. The track is called Bloodymary and you should probably just watch it. The beat is pretty minimalistic and it features my friend Lena as a dominatrix. It’s pretty nuts. I gotta go to band practice now so one day I can make a video so I am gonna get the fuck out of here. I’m done talking watch the fucking video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSkh_Wukjm0[/youtube]

Today we are going to take a break from photos and just regale you with stories.  I was thinking about what I was going to update with today and I realized I didn’t really have anything which led me to realize that I haven’t shot many parties or anything really. But I feel like the last week or so has been pretty productive and interesting so I guess I will just tell you a few stories and you will just have to imagine the pictures in your head… at least until I get my film developed.

I think my week of reasonable productivity began last Sunday when I photographed Veruca James naked in public.  Those are the last pictures I took that you have actually seen.  On that shoot I found out that my friend Colin had died two weeks prior and no one had told me. I missed the Facebook invite to his funeral. I was on very little sleep and while I had been expecting his death for some time it really had an effect on me. I had been planning a trip to Virginia to go to his memorial service for a few months ever since he checked into hospice and finding out that he died and I didn’t know about it really fucked up my head.  I wanted to see a movie to get my mind of things so I tried to get my friend Promise to go see Pirates 4 with me because it would allow me to zone out for a while but she wanted to see something with a little more substance so we went and checked out a movie called Blank City about the No Wave and Cinema of Transgression underground NYC film movements of the late 70’s and early 80’s.  The movie was so inspiring and so depressing to me. Here were these people making so much art and collaborating and just living in NYC when it was this burned out shell of a place where you could live for $50 a month. And here I am 30 years later taking photos of drunk people instead of making something relevant or important.

So this post ended up being obscenely long so I need to create a jump. If you want to keep reading click below unless of course you came to this post directly making these instructions just confusing and unnecessary.

(Read the article)

My homie Pablo has a band called Boy N Girl and he keeps trying to get me to come see them which is what people in bands do.  He’s a good dude and pretty weird looking so I figured his band would be pretty nuts.  Last night I was just really looking to get out of the house right when I got a text from him announcing the first of perhaps many Boy N Girl parties at the Panda Lounge on the LES. My boy Chad Dubz was DJing and there were going to be cupcakes. How could I pass this up?

I headed down there around 1230 and Boy N Girl were just setting up for a mini stripped down set they were doing. The spot wasn’t packed or anything but it was a fun crowd and I was excited to see them do their thing. Unfortunately the sound was fucking nightmarish and their first song was basically all feedback.  Pablo and his partner in crime Bella powered through their short set list anyway and actually got an encore despite the shitty sound. Pablo put down his guitar and rocked it standing up. It was pretty great.  Clearly I need to see them again for real but it was a good first impression.

Oh, did I mention that Bella is insanely hot, has possibly the greatest boobs ever invented has a sexy accent and kept talking about sluts? Yeah, clearly you need to see Boy N Girl and luckily for all of us they are playing Sunday with the homies Hussle Club and Trouble Andrew at the Canal Room.

While we wait for their show, click here to see all the pictures from the very first Boy N Girl Party at the Panda Lounge.