While everyone is busy watching the fucking Grammys for some insane reason I am going to be posting photos of a band that while probably hasn’t written a new song in a decade is deserving of whatever Grammy they give out for pouring beer on their fans.  If that is not a category it probably should be.

When I went to the Philly Tattoo Convention I had no idea that Murphy’s Law was going to be there. I was pretty fucking psyched when I saw their name on the schedule. They were one of my favorite bands when I was an angry punk rock youth.  I probably saw them a half dozen times in the 90’s but I haven’t seen them since.  I still listen to their music though. I just had one of their CD’s in the car that I was borrowing a few months ago. The point is that even if I am way to old to get in a circle pit I still love this fucking band.  Serious New York hardcore that is as fun as it kicks ass. Also, Murphy’s Law’s front man Jimmy Gestapo is one of the owners of NYHC Tattoo on the Lower East Side which I just won a $100 gift certificate to at one of the fundraisers for Jessie Lee.  Clearly it is fate that I would get to finally see Murphy’s Law again…

As I mentioned I have seen Murphy’s Law a bunch of times and they were always fucking amazing. Their shows were crazy and violent and distinctly remember knocking some guy out with an elbow at one of their shows when he was trying to hurt people in the pit. Any time you get a band that has a huge punk, hardcore and skin following it always got a bit rough.  Still, they were so fun and didn’t take themselves nearly as serious as the other hardcore bands I was listening to back then so seeing them was always just a really good time. They would pass out beers and smoke weed with the crowd and even for a straight edge kid like myself it was always a great show.

I had a feeling though, that this show at the tattoo convention was not going to live up to their normal standards.  The show took place in a fluorescently lit room surrounded by people tattooing and people selling tattoo related stuff from little cubicles. The crowd was clearly not there to see Murphy’s Law although they had about 20 serious fans standing in front of the stage. But a lot of these fans were my age and older and I was pretty free to take pictures without worrying about getting my camera smashed.  And although I was enjoying taking pictures I was pretty disappointed in the vibe.

Slowly that started to change.  More and more fans gathered and as they played their hit songs the area in front of the stage really started moving.  A decent pit started moving and this girl decided to flash the band and the crowd and started making out with people.  Beers got passed around, bottles of Jager started being chugged and people started getting loose.  As the show got better shit started getting weirder.  Jimmy got off stage and got onto the mechanical bull for an entire song.  When he got back on stage a man in a giant zombie Gumby costume was waiting for him.  Soon a guy dressed as bloody bunny joined them on the stage.  Half naked Bombshell Brats and burlesque dancers got on stage.  The band was fucking losing it with all this weirdness going on.  The crowd got more and more into it and realized some shit like this could only happen in a brightly lit hotel conference room.  People started climbing the make-shift scaffolding they had set up for the suspension show and people started jumping on stage.

By the last song the place was just chaos. Half the crowd was on stage singing along.  It ended up being maybe on of the best Murphy’s Law shows I have ever seen and I would venture to guess one of the weirdest of all time.  A lot of the photos I took sucked. My flash was suffering a bit because I had taken more than 1000 photos that day and the fluorescent light made it nearly impossibly hard to make the show look any good from a photography standpoint. That being said I think these photos give you a pretty good idea of how insane the show was and there are a few quality shots in here somewhere. Also these photos are not safe for work which is a weird thing to say about live band shots, but it’s not every day that a band headlines a burlesque show.

Anyway, this write up as gotten a bit long and rambely so I am going to shut the fuck up now.  Just understand that urphy’s Law are fucking awesome and this show was completely fucking bizarre. Oh yeah and fucking click here already to see all the pictures of Murphy’s Law at the 2011 Philadelphia Tattoo Convention.

I cannot express to you how annoyed I am right now. I have 7 new galleries waiting to be uploaded for you guys and yet the program I use to upload these galleries keeps freezing.  Tomorrow I have a meeting with a design firm to talk about a new design for Driven By Boredom and the first order of buisness is going to be dealing with my galleries. I hate everything about them and hopefully in a few months problems like this will be a thing of the past.  Currently I am talking to people in web forums trying to fix this issue and god willing this problem will be solved by tomorrow.  If not I am going to temporarily upload the galleries to Flickr or something until I solve this issue.

Now my plan was to post this video a little bit later in the week because I had so much photography to get up but since I am just sitting around waiting for my problems to be magically solved I figured this was the perfect time to get this update up.

I have talked to you many times on this site about my friends Teddy Blanks and Ross Harman. The two of them made up the band The Gaskets that I managed for about 5 years. They broke up in 2008. Since then their names have come up on my site because Teddy has been making his own music that I have shared with you and because tragically Ross took his own life in September.

Recently Teddy was interviewed by The Mixed Tapes which “through a series of casual conversations with unsigned and independent musicians, Mixed Tapes explores new artists’ early influences, their struggles, their shifting conceptions on making music, and the challenge of living and working in New York City.” Teddy was interviewed for 3 hours to get the nearly 10 minutes of footage for this interview. It is really well done focuses on his solo music as well as the music of the Gaskets.  And of course a significant section of the interview talks about his relationship with Ross, Ross’ death and how Teddy has been collaborating with Ross one last time.  It is really moving for me as someone so close to both of the guys but I think it’s very much worth watching for anyone.  At the end Teddy performs a cover of Sinead O’Connor’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

I hope you take the time to watch this and enjoy it.  If you would like to hear more music from Teddy Blanks or The Gaskets click those links.  Also Teddy just joined Twitter. You should follow him and maybe he will actually post something. Thanks.

Mixed Tapes: Teddy Blanks from Michael Melamedoff on Vimeo.

During CMJ I saw Das Racist for the first time.  They were playing the Moodswing360 showcase at Santos Party House.  They were playing on the stage downstairs which I always hate shooting on.  There’s a ton of uneven front lighting, no back light and the ceilings are black so you can’t bounce a flash for shit.  So when they played it was super hectic down there and I knew I wasn’t going to get great shots so I just popped off a few shots and went back up stairs. I have a lot of mutual friends with the guys so I wanted to check them out but I honestly didn’t even remember much about them when it was all said and done.

That show ended up being a pretty interesting one for both Das Racist and myself.  They got signed to Moodswing and I ended up getting Moodswing as a photo client.  They are really high on Das Racist and told me that their show last Thursday at the Highline Ballroom was going to be nuts. They told me they had a guestlist of 150 people and it had been completely filled up. The venue was totally sold out and I heard that people were paying as much as $100 for tickets on eBay.  So clearly photos were needed and Moodswing sent me out there.

I got there pretty early because my friend Jasmine Solano was opening up. She DJ’d for a bit and then did a couple songs before Detroit rapper named Danny Brown did his thing.  They both were great and got the crowd going crazy getting ready for Das Racist.  I went upstairs and hung out in the dressing room which was quickly filling up with people. Atrak and Nick Catchdubs from Fools Gold were there as was El-P of Def Jux.  People seemed to be getting drunker and drunker. I just figured shit was about to pop off.

When Das Racist finally went on stage the crowd went crazy.  They rocked that shit completely and had the whole place moving.  I have seen a handful of shows at Highline Ballroom and the only person who has come close to rocking it like that was Andrew WK. I hung out on stage taking snaps and trying not to get run over.  At some point I did a lap and took some crowd shots and even the back of the room was going off. It was just a lot of fun. They brought a bunch of guests on stage throughout the night.  Not really sure who everone was other than El-P and Danny Brown but it was clearly a party.

I took like 600 photos or something and it was total madness.  I need to just stop talking about it and you need to look at the pictures.  I feel like this show will be one that people are talking about for a long time.

Click here to see all the shots from the Das Racist show at the Highline Ballroom.

On Friday night Hussle Club did a in-store appearance at Mishka’s 350 Broadway flagship in Brooklyn. I was on my way into the city to drop off a bunch of rolls of film from my trip that I needed to get developed.  I had a bout 10 shots on the roll of film that was in my camera and I thought that stopping by their  in-store would be the perfect way to finish off the roll.

They were scheduled to play at 7pm and I had to be in the city by 8.  Unfortunately they didn’t start playing until about 7:40 and since I knew that I couldn’t shoot much of their set I figured I would just burn the end of the roll and then jump in a cab. I caught about two of their songs and they sounded really good as a scaled down three piece. I actually haven’t been to any of the other Mishka in-stores but the sound was actually really good. Oddly it might be the best, soundwise, I have heard Hussle Club. Plus no one got iced this set…

Anyway, I finished the roll and made a break for the city and made it to my film lab (Luster for those who care) by 7:58pm.  Perfect timing.  So usually I leave you guys with a whole gallery of photos, but instead I just picked out three of my 10 shots and posted them below.  Sorry about the lack of gallery but I hope you enjoy some of my 35mm snap shots.

I will be posting tons of my 35mm snap shots from my Vegas/LA trip over the next week on my Tumblr so make sure you are following that.  If you aren’t into Tumblr I feed all my tumblr stuff to my Twitter so you can just follow that.  If you aren’t on Tumblr or Twitter you probably don’t know how to turn on a computer and you probably can’t read this, so I won’t stress it too much.  See you guys tomorrow!

Here comes the newest installment of All My Friends Are In Bands where I bring you semi regular updates of my friends bands amazing music videos.  Today we have some good ones including one video that I am actually in.  I feel like I should be in all of my friends music videos but clearly they have no idea what they are doing so for whatever reason I don’t end up in all of them. Weird.

Luckily some people are smart enough to realize talent when they see it. Loli Lux is one of those people. She got a two for one deal when she asked me to come hang out at her video shoot.  Not only did I take amazing behind the scenes photos but she got the pure talent that is “Igor” in front of the lens as well.  If you look carefully you can see me lurching around in there taking pictures awkwardly.  It will bestill your heart.  Seriously though, this is the first video from Loli Lux and it is pretty bad ass. She got all of her weird and sexy looking friends, put them in a bar and just started shooting. It was a good time and it ended up being a good video for a good song. Watch that shit.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWvEB14Qw8Q[/youtube]

Next up we have our boys the motherfucking Death Set. I know you guys saw the pictures I took of them with hot tattooed naked girls recently and I am sure you know they have this new album coming out.  Well they just released the first single off that album called “Slap Slap Slap Pound Up Down Snap” and they have a pretty fucking awesome video for it.  This video is so good that they had to release another video just to hype it up. Clearly you need to watch it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlX6ClGXtXY[/youtube]

So these updates always come with three videos for some reason and I didn’t have a third video this week.  I solved that problem by uploading this old video of me icing Prince Terrence while Hussle Club was on stage at the Knitting Factory.  Remember when Icing people was so funny? Giving people Smirnoff Ice was like a sport for about a week. If you got one you had to bend down on one knee and rink it.  It was pretty funny for a second and then everyone got over it. Probably for good reason.  I shot this at the very tail end of the Icing craze and by the time I took it off my camera no one cared anymore. I haven’t even looked at this video since. I probably should have edited it or something but I don’t actually give a fuck so enjoy it the way it is. Just skip to the 30 second mark if you are impatient. I gotta go shoot naked girls and hang out in the sun in LA now. Have a nice weekend.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emF9jpQeOX8[/youtube]

I am leaving town for a two week trip to Vegas and Los Angeles, but don’t worry I have plenty of stuff to update the site with while I am gone.  I still have two parties and two naked girls left over plus some surprises. I will even try to get an update up before I leave tomorrow so I don’t leave you guys hanging. That being said I have a few things I wanted to mention that I figured I could put all in one update so I get this important stuff out of the way before I leave town. So let’s get into it…

The first thing is the most important. I have shot a number of events that featured the Disgraceland Hook Squad. This is a group of crazy kids who do suspensions and flesh pulls and all sorts of other insane shit involving sticking giant hooks into themselves and running around like mad men. You can’t help but love them.  Several of their members got into a car accident back in July and while most of them are recovered one of the people, Spliff is still in the hospital and needs financial help so he can raise the money to move from Texas to NYC.  They were in Texas when the accident happened and they have had to stay there all these months.  They have found a treatment center in NYC that will take Spliff but it’s going to cost a huge amount of money to bring him home. They need to get back home now because his wife Jill, who was also in the accident, is about to have their first child.  She needs her family and friends help to raise the baby and also take care of Spliff so they need to get home before the baby is born. My friend Doug who introduced me to Spliff and Disgraceland has written this blog with a lot more details. You can go there or to Spliff and Jill’s website to donate money.  So many people came out for Jessie Lee when she got injured, I hope you have a little more in you to donate to another friend of the Driven By Boredom family.

On a much happier note I am in a group show at Shadow’s Space art gallery in Philly.  Shadow’s Space is the sister gallery of Fuse gallery in NYC and I am pretty excited to be showing there.  The group show is called “Paper Trails” and it is curated by NYC graffiti icon Chris “DAZE” Ellis.  DAZE and I collaborated on some work for a show a long time ago and I was really glad he thought of me when curating this show.  Unfortunately I am not going to be able to make the opening on Friday because I will be in Vegas but I know a bunch of people from Philly read this site so I hope you guys check out the show. I have four 11×17 photos in it, all shot on 35mm, and they are all of girls naked in public on the streets of NYC.  They are pretty rad.

While we are here I guess I should talk a little about my trip too.  I am headed to Vegas for the weekend to shoot the Adult Entertainment Expo, the AVN Awards, the Consumer Electronics Showcase and all the goings on before and after these events for the Village Voice and the LA Weekly. I might actually skip the AVN Awards and for some reason I haven’t heard back about my CES press credentials yet but I’ll play it by ear when I get there.  I never know what the hell I am doing in Vegas but I do know that I booked a two bedroom hotel suite for myself for some reason so I am going to have some fun either way. After Vegas I am headed to LA for just over a week.  I don’t really have any plans but I think I found a place to stay and I have set up shoots with a bunch of girls. I am going to be doing some more work for the LA Weekly and hoping to shoot some random parties while I am there.  There is also a benefit for Jessie Lee on Thursday which I will be blogging about next week. I am also going to see Jessie Lee for the first time since her accident as she is finally moving to LA the day before I get there. The whole trip should be a lot of fun, a little bit relaxing and hopefully very productive.  It better be because it will be a miracle if I break even on the adventure.  Either way I will be updating DBB often while I am gone so keep coming back. Also, I will be updating my Tumblr with previews of all the crazy shit I am shooting while I am in LA so you should probably get on that.  And of course following my Twitter while I am adventuring is a fucking given.

Finally, I figured I would leave you guys with something fun.  If you have ever wondered to do the secret handshake pioneered by NY nightlife icons like Ninjasonik and The Death Set there is now a how to video which will teach you the handshake. Looks like the “Slap Slap Slap Pound Up Down Slap Snap” handshake is not so secret anymore. You no longer have any excuse not to be down. Get on it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqxHOmkz9T0&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

So I haven’t updated since Christmas.  Bad form, but fuck it, everyone else was on vacation… I guess I was too.  Really I just didn’t have internet for a few days but I’ll pretend I was vacationing. I finally made it back to NYC today.  I am pretty jealous that I missed some serious photo opportunities in the blizzard.  Today my cab got stuck in the snow a block away from my apartment. Somehow snow came through my air conditioner and I made a snow ball in my bedroom. It was nuts. None of that matters… It’s time to get back to work.

I am going to start this week off in a totally weird and random way… with songs written by professional wrestlers.  I want to do more Mp3 blog posts on Driven By Boredom and I felt like today would be perfect for one since I haven’t slept yet and I need to crash for a bit and then try to catch up on life.  I almost thought about not posting at all again today but I need to get some stuff cooking for you guys.  I haven’t shot any parties in a while so I need to get back to work. I have a bunch of nude stuff that I shot over the holidays but I might wait until after New Years for most of it.  We shall see.  I got on another trip on the 6th of January but I am going to do a better job of keeping DBB up to date while I am on the West Coast.

Anyway, this post keeps getting more rambly and incoherent as I type so let’s start talking about this music so I can go to sleep…

For some reason I have two full albums of rap songs written by pro wrestlers on my computer. I am not sure when I downloaded these but they are fucking hilarious.  The first one, Hulk Hogan’s is called “Hulk Rules” and is credited to him AND “The Wrestling Boot Band”.  This 1995 album is a classic and is filled with song about Hulk Hogan and eating vitamins.  The most mocked song on the album is probably “Hulkster in Heaven” which is about one of his fans dying and he sings a sentimental tribute to him. It’s absolutely horrifying. That being said, I chose for you a more uptempo jamming hit called “Hulkster’s Back” because I love you.

Hulk Hogan – Hulkster’s Back

The next track is off “Macho Man” Randy Savage’s classic “Be A Man“.  This rap album feels like a response to Hulk’s album only it came 8 years later.  While Hulk’s is cheesy in that early 90’s celebrities rapping kinda way, “Be A Man” is actually trying to be some sort of actual rap album. I feel like Randy Savage really thought that this was going to give him some serious street cred.  He hired what appears to be actual black people to help him with his album.  They rap with him and hype him up throughout the record. (As a side note whatever rap careers those rappers had ended the day this record dropped.) The whole thing is substantially more embarrassing due to the earnestness of Savage’s attempt to become a rapper. And while this album is absolutely full of hits I really had no choice but to drop you guys with the title track “Be A Man”. It is a homophobic diss at the Hulkster himself.  He calls out the Hulk and his movie rolls, while praising his own cameo in Spiderman. It’s all very adorable. You just wanna hug him.

Macho Man Randy Savage – Be a Man

I wanted to give you one more Mp3 because it seemed like that would be the reasonable thing to do, so I googled Pro Wrestling Musicians and found out that John Cena has a rap album too… but I don’t give a fuck about that guy because he didn’t wrestle in the 1980’s so I dug a bit deeper into google and found this amazing Rowdy Roddy Piper song called “I’m Your Man”.  It’s actually kinda awesome and since I couldn’t find a good Mp3 I am going to hook you up with this sweet video of it. I mean seriously, it’s no “They Live” but it’s pretty fucking amazing.

See you guys tomorrow…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa1Q6xpoM8c[/youtube]

I don’t even know where to begin. Last Thursday Camille Dodero, my editor at the Village Voice asked me if I wanted to go see the Insane Clown Posse in Worcester, MA the next day.  It didn’t take long for her to convince me that this was a good idea.  As you probably remember a few months ago Camille and I covered the Gathering of the Juggalos for the Village Voice.  It turned out to be one of the most successful stories in the paper’s recent history and was even heralded by ICP as one of the truest stories about ICP and juggalo culture.  For me it was pretty successful too, I took over 6000 pictures that ended up becoming 21 of the most successful posts this website has ever had. I sold photos to Vice, Rolling Stone and Radar Online and I did 2,000,000 page views in one week. Juggalos and their haters rule the internet.

Most people see photos of juggalos and laugh.  They are supposedly these violent poor white trash kids who dress in goofy make up and listen to bad music.  But I come from a slightly different place.  I can laugh at some of these kids and be horrified by pictures of naked fat girls, but I my self was once a juggalo.  I have told the story before but it’s time for a refresher.  When I was 17 I lost my virginity to a juggalette. The next year my very first girlfriend was also very down with the clown. Between two of them and small group of friends that I met in my 10th and 11th grade years of high school, we became huge ICP fans.  I think one Christmas I asked for pretty much nothing but ICP rarities and memorabilia. I saw the band a number of times, painted my face and had a hell of a lot of fun, but by the time I had graduated high school I pretty much regretted the year or two I spent as a juggalo.

Fast forward more than a decade and ICP hits the internet with a viral explosion.  First with their advertisement for the Gathering of the Juggalos 10 and then again months later with their Miracles video.  I thought they were pretty funny too, but secretly I just kept thinking about how much fun the Gathering looked and how fucking crazy it would be to go there and take photos.  So when the 11th annual Gathering of the Juggalos was announced I quickly got to work trying to find someone to pay me to go to it.  Luckily Camille was thinking the same thing and we pitched the Village Voice the story.

So we went off to the middle of nowhere and spent 4 days with 10,000 juggalos and almost no cops.  When I finally left the Cave In Rock, IL campground I was very happy to leave, but I honestly had a lot of fun and met a lot of really nice people.  Yeah, they did attack Tila Tequila, but they were nothing but cool to me and Camille. They embraced us as family and I sort of realized why I loved this band to begin with. They are fucking fun. They play music that is basically the equivelent to watching a bad horror movie. And there is a real sense of community, even if it’s slightly cultish and scary.

Friday afternoon Camille picked me up in a rental car and drove to Worcester, MA. It was supposed to take us less than 4 hours but because of traffic it took us close to 7.  We listened to ICP the entire drive. It was pretty intense.  When we got to Worcester I was totally sketched out.  The place looks like it is just crawling with crackheads. It looked like the most shady place I have ever been to and I grew up in DC in the ’80s. When I got to the club we got searched head to toe TSA style and we dropped off some toys we bought on the way for the Toys for Tots drive they were doing. I spent the rest of the time photographing people in the lobby while Camille talked to people for a story she is writing on New England juggalos.

The club was called the Palladium and was actually an amazing club.  Their security didn’t really know how to handle juggalos and took a really strong armed approach to policing them which led to a few incidences, but the club itself was fantastic.  It’s and all ages club with three floors including a balcony up top from which you could watch the show without getting covered in Faygo.  (Wish I had known that, I would have brought my telephoto lens and actually shot the band.) The main bottom floor has stadium style seating going down to a pit area in front of the stage, but their were no assigned seats so people just sort of roamed. It was a pretty cool environment.

When ICP started playing everyone went nuts. Faygo flew and people just got mental.  I found out that they are on the “Old Shit” tour and only played old songs which meant I actually knew about 90% of their set list.  I was amazed to find out how many lyrics I still knew. I was rocking out with the crowd but of course mostly taking their pictures.  The show ended with a huge brawl in the back of the crowd and a lot of people doing Nitrous in the parking lot.  So yeah, they might be a little violent and a little bit white trash, but juggalos know how to fucking have fun and that is more than a lot of my hipster friends know how to do…

Now that I have done my little speech you are free to laugh or whatever you want to do with these pictures.  Either you love them or hate them, but anyway you put it juggalos make for some fucking awesome photos.

Click here to see all the photos from Insane Clown Posse in Worcester, MA. And if you are new to this site, click here to see all my pictures from the Gathering of the Juggalos.

Oh and by the way, I didn’t want to disappoint anyone so yes, there is some juggalo porn in this gallery so we get to rate it NSFW.  Woop Woop.

So this is the 6th part in a series called All My Friends Are In Bands. Each time I do this I post three videos from musicians I am friends with or directed by friends or something like that.  Normally I talk a little bit about each band and video and it’s sort of a lengthy post. This time I am using these three videos as an excuse to do a really quick update because I have to go on a secret mission today. You will find out more later or more sooner if you follow my Twitter.

Anyway, real quick, the three videos I have for you are my boy Shwazye’s (aka Aaron Smith) solo track Said It All Before, Trouble & Bass’ AC Slater teamed up with Dell “o8o” Harris for a track called “Right Now” and finally a preview to Loli Lux’s video “Wannabe” which I am in.  Well I am in the actual video that comes out in January, not the preview. Still, I gotta represent.

So yeah, watch the videos and I will talk to you fuckers on Saturday.

Aaron Smith – Said It All Before (Rock Version) from Aaron Smith on Vimeo.

AC & DELL – “RIGHT NOW” [official] music video from Trouble & Bass on Vimeo.

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