When I looked at the schedule for the Gathering of the Juggalos one of the things I was most excited about was Method Man & Redman. They went on right before the Insane Clown Posse and the place was packed with people.  All of those people were there to see ICP but most of them were also pretty fucking psyched to see the stars of How High? (I was surprised as you are that they make music too!) When they came out people went nuts started throwing plastic bottles around the crowd.  These bottles weren’t like the stuff thrown at Tila Tequila, this was just people having a good time. Maybe a few of them just wanted to see ICP, but 99% of the people throwing shit were just throwing bottles of water just to get people wet.

Unfortunately I am not sure anyone told Method Man & Redman where they were playing.  They just kept calling the crowd “Illinois” as if these people all lived in this 350 person of Cave In Rock, IL. They also seemed pretty confused why no one was clapping.  Juggalos don’t clap… When they like someone they “Woop Woop”. You can’t “Woop Woop” very loud and you can’t do it for very long so I think the guys were feeling disrespected.  When people started to throw stuff Method Man said “If you see someone throwing something, punch them in the face”.  That was probably the wrong tactic because a few seconds later he got hit in the face with a full beer can.

He grabbed his face and threw off his hat and Redman stopped the show. When Redman saw Meth was bleeding he said “He’s cut, we are cut.” and was ready to walk off stage.  Method Man on the other hand was not.  He flipped out.  He grabbed a barrel full of water and threw it on the stage. He started screaming “Who the fuck threw that!” like he was going to go into the crowd and kill them himself. It was nuts.  He refused to leave and started the next song and absolutely killed it. Everyone was so pumped up. He had this huge gash in his face but just kept going getting crazier and crazier.  At one point he got into the crowd and was rocking it.  Even security that lined the front of the stage was dancing and getting down. It was awesome.

I am still not sure that the guys got who they were playing for.  They kept repping Illinois and were upset that the crowd wasn’t louder.  When they had everyone clap in unison the crowd did not do a great job of staying with the beat. It was actually pretty funny. The juggalos sensed that the Wu were not feeling enough love so they started chanting  “Fam-i-ly, Fam-i-ly” which they do to let artists know that they have been accepted into the culture.  They also started chanting “O-D-B” giving props to the former Wu Tang member Ol’ Dirty Bastard who actually recorded a song with ICP a few years before his death. The Family chants confused Meth and Redman who asked “is this good?”  When they realized what they were saying Method Man seemed genuinely touched and he pounded his hand to his heart and said “I hope whoever threw that shit at me can hear this. We are family!”  The guys then grabbed all the bottles of water left on the stage for them and threw them into the crowd.  It ended up being really great and I felt pretty much just the opposite of the way I felt when Tila Tequila went down. That shit was just upsetting.

Anyway Method Man is suing ICP too, so I guess he didn’t deal with it quite as well as I thought, but it was still a nice end to a moment that should never have happend. Who the fuck throws a full beer can at Method Man?  Fucking savages.

Click here to see the pictures of Redman & Method Man rocking the Gathering of the Juggalos and a lot of pictures of Method Man bleeding from the face.

And then click here to read my Village Voice editor’s report with quotes that are accurate and actual audio clips from the show.

Ps. They also talked about making How High 2. They better not be fucking with me…

For complete 2010 Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

I have spent the last few days talking about pretty much nothing but Tila Tequila. It is a weird thing for me since I didn’t know a thing about her before Friday. I vaguely had some sense of who she was, but I had no idea she made music until I saw her on the Gathering of the Juggalos schedule. I still, days later, haven’t figured out why Juggalos hate her so much. Some girl told me it was because she is on MTv but so was Tom Green and the Juggalos loved him.  Tom Green actually came out on stage during her set and no one threw anything at him.  If you look at the picture of him below you will notice that the Faygo bottle flying in the air is actually going past him.

Now let me explain how I got these pictures. I had actually just left Tom Green.  I was hanging out with him before his set at the Gathering. I was a big fan growing up and I love his web TV show, so it was great to meet him and I wanted to see his set. Plus Gallagher was hanging out so the level of surrealness was through the roof. I didn’t want to leave but I was afraid I would miss something exactly like what ended up happening.

I had heard all these rumors that people were going to attack her but I didn’t really believe it. I hadn’t seen any of the Juggalos throw more than a half full Faygo bottle at anyone. Everyone was so nice to us I couldn’t really see them throwing rocks and fireworks and shit and piss at her. Still, if they did and she got kicked off stage it would be something I needed photos of for the Village Voice story I was working on.  I made my way over to the second stage and waited, and waited, and waited….

I didn’t think she was ever going to show up but I was having a pretty good time hanging out on the back of the stage.  I was the only photographer there and I was talking to Sugar Slam who is the star of the Gathering of the Juggalos infomercial which was like talking to Tay Zonday or Chris Crocker or something. I also was flirting with this cute girl with one leg who is an internet sensation of her own. Maybe an hour after she was booked to go on security came by and kicked everyone off the back stage but with my VIP pass I managed to stay on stage.

I was towards the back when Tila Tequila finally showed up. As she played people immediately started throwing things at her. I had already been hit with a glass liquor bottle and I was in the back.  She was getting hit by everything her security guards couldn’t knock down but she kept going.  She was going full steam as the juggalos tried to take her down. She got hit in the head with a rotten egg and just kept on using it like styling gel. At this point all my shots were from the back so I decided to do something stupid.  I walked out on stage.

I asked a security guard if I could come out on stage and he told me that I would be an idiot to try it but he wasn’t going stop me.  So I set up camp on the front corner of the stage while she stayed to the back and started shooting.  While I was on the stage I got hit with all sorts of shit, literally. I got covered in what was probably a mixture of beer, Faygo and urine.  My back hurt for two days from stuff I will never know. I saw on the stage rocks and dildos and garbage and rotten everything. It was so gross and the rocks were so big.  M-80s were going off and I am pretty sure people were intentionally trying to hit me with stuff.  Still, I didn’t care. I was the only member of the media there and I wanted to get my shots of this epic show. (Click here if you want to see a video of the show so you can see where I was shooting from.)

Eventually my editor at the Voice showed up with Tom Green (read her account here) and Tom came out on stage to try to settle the crowd down. It did not work. After he left it became a battle field. A guy tried to charge the stage and security ran into the crowd to take away a huge barrel from an angry juggalo. It was chaos. For some reason she took her shirt off to try to persuade the juggalos that she was awesome.  And she was awesome. She was killing it and taking so much fucking abuse. She needed to be playing in front of chicken wire or something. She is the GG Allin of reality TV or something.  Seriously, I was so fucking turned on by how bad ass she was. I have never seen anyone take that much violence with out even blinking. And she never stopped playing.

I didn’t see what hit her in the eye, I heard it was a brick and I heard it was a fire cracker. Either way she was holding an afghan scarf to her face while she sang.  She looked at me for a second and held it to her head and she played on.  A few minutes later she was hit by something else and was leaking blood out of both sides of her face.  When security saw that they basically carried her off stage, but she never relented and talked shit until the very end. It was so bad ass and I got the only shots.

The juggalos chased her into the trailer and started rocking it and breaking windows.  We left with Tom Green and crew and I didn’t see what happened but she did eventually escape with her life. It was one of the more fucked up things I have witnessed but it was pretty amazing to be part of a national news story like that.  I just want to say that as cool as the juggalos were to me, shit like this is pretty hard to forgive.  Most of the people I talked to thought that bricks went to far, but I didn’t find many people who didn’t think she deserved some of it. That’s pretty hard for me to imagine.

Anyway, Tila Tequila is a fucking bad ass in my book. I would go see her any time and I will have her back any time anyone is talking shit.  That girl is a bad ass fucking front woman and she has my respect forever. The juggalos are still mostly cool in my book but this was by far the low point of the trip.

But let’s get on to the pictures finally: Click here to see pictures of Tila Tequilla attacked by juggalos at the 2010 Gathering of the Juggalos. NSFW.

For complete 2010 Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

I return from the longest break in recent Driven By Boredom history with a bang. I was in the middle of nowhere in a town called Cave In Rock, IL for an event called The Gathering of the Juggalos. If you don’t know by now, The Gathering is a four day music festival created by the Insane Clown Posse and their record label Psychopathic Records. If you don’t know who ICP are, you shouldn’t be on the Internet because you are not good enough at it. To get to the Gathering I had to take two planes, drive over three hours in a 30 foot RV and then take a ferry from Kentucky over into Illinois and then drive down about 5 miles of gravel roads into the woods. There was no cell service much less internet. I got back in the early afternoon yesterday but I spent about 5 hours trying to sell images of Tila Tequila getting attacked, but more on that later… I finally fell asleep around 9PM after being awake for 30 straight hours after sleeping about three hours a night for 4 days. It has been a weird journey.

Now before we get into this, let’s set the record straight. More than 12 years ago I lost my virginity to a Juggalette. Juggalos, as you probably know, are probably the most mocked and hated subculture on the planet, but when I was 17/18 I just thought the Insane Clown Posse were funny. I had a bunch of friends who liked them and my first girl friend was also a Juggalette and by the time I started dating her I was a full blown Juggalo. I was a punk rock kid first and foremost, but I got painted up with clown make up to see a couple shows and I had all the albums and even had the action figures. When I went to college I pretty much left the clown make up behind and as I got older I looked at my love of ICP as the biggest musical regret of my life. I have listened to worse music, but not with such passion. Since ICP has become a viral sensation in the last couple years thanks to their Gathering infomercials and their Miracles video I have found myself defending my earlier love of ICP and made a decision. I had to go to the Gathering.

Eleven years ago ICP held their first Gathering of the Juggalos and I wanted to go. I tried to get all my friends to go with me, but we all pussied out. It was too far or too much money or something. I don’t really remember. For all I know maybe my parents wouldn’t let me go. It would have been a wise decision on their part. More than a decade later I decided I had to make the pilgrimage to the ICP mecca. I had to see the Gathering for myself. Luckily my editor at the Village Voice (Camille Dodero) wanted to go as well and she pitched the idea to her bosses and we got a budget and headed out for what would be the weirdest four days of either of our lives. We were going as outsiders, and while we were going there with an open mind I think both of us were going mostly to point at the freaks and laugh, but we quickly changed our minds almost before we got there.

I made Camille listen to nothing but ICP the entire drive to Cave In Rock. To my surprise she was pretty excited about this and took notes as I told her about the ICP mythology. As we listened to more and more music I found myself singing a long and remember why I loved this band in the first place. They were funny, the music was catchy as hell and if nothing else these guys have a real DIY spirit that the punk rocker in me loves. These guys really have done their own thing and said “Fuck the World” to the rest of the planet.

As we spent time with these kids we really started to like them. Everyone is so nice. They were on all sorts of drugs and doing all manor of fucked up things but I only saw one fight the whole time and it was broken up immediately. Except for the obviously horrible Tila Tequila incident and someone hitting Method Man in the face with a bottle any time anyone would try to mess with someone else’s good time other Juggalos would step in. They chant “Fam-i-ly” over and over again to let the troublemakers know that these are their people and they need to have mad “clown love” for each other. “Don’t throw shit” was another popular chant. I have to say that when they attacked Tila Tequila I sort of had to wonder about these kids, that was one of the most fucked up things I have ever seen, but most people I talked to after agreed that people went too far. Everyone was in support of throwing shit at her… just not shit that could hurt her. Bottles of Faygo are the acceptable choice of decent.

Every single person I talked to accepted me into their family even though I told them I hadn’t been “down with the clown” since the ’90’s and from now on they have a defender. So if you want to talk shit about my family, be prepared for an argument. These kids may be fucked up, psychopathic lowlifes, but they are my fucked up, psychopathic lowlifes. Much clown love.

Okay, maybe that is going a little too far… A lot of these kids are fucking idiots. And besides some of these shots are fucking hilarious so go a head and mock away…

I am posting 100 of my favorite shots from the Gathering. I have 1700 photos to upload and I will be getting them up a bunch at a time all week long so keep checking back. These photos are very Not Safe For Work.

Click here to see the best of the 2010 Gathering of the Juggalos. Woop Woop!

For complete 2010 Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

Our homegirl Loli Lux shot her first music video at 105 Rivington last night… well at least the B Roll for it. The track is called “Wannabe” and it is off her new EP that I shot the cover for. You should buy it. Mostly it was just scenes of people hanging out at the bar.  I shot some behind the scenes photos but I also took a lot of shots playing myself in the video. I was just sort of in the background shooting photos. You will notice most of these shots don’t look like my normal work because I was just popping shit off instead of shooting people like I normally would.  Really I was just acting like I see most party photographers shoot which is that they just point their camera at stuff and don’t compose or care how anything looks. Still, there are a few nice shots of interesting looking people so obviously that is important somehow.

Anyway, click here to see all the photos from Loli Lux’s “Wannabe” video shoot.

When I saw the bill for the 4th Anniversary of Eugene Mirman’s comedy show Tearing the Veil of the Maya I knew I had to be there. When I first moved to NYC I was at underground comedy shows like Tearing the Veil two or three times a week. I hung out at comedy parties and I knew most of the down town comics.  When I saw the bill for the show at the Bell House I realized I used to hang out with every person on the line up except for the Daily Show’s Wyatt Cenac who is fucking hilarious. I knew it would be a good show and a good chance to see old friends.

I had no intention of shooting the show but I happened to have my telephoto lens on me from an earlier shoot so I pulled it out and took about two photos of each comic. I wasn’t really thinking about doing a post about it but I figured I could maybe put a few shots on my Tumblr or something. It was really too dark to shoot anything. The show started out with AD Miles and Leo Allen just completely killing it. Miles told a story about how his wife busted a robber who broke into their home and Leo did a slide show that explained that dogs were funnier than cats, and vomit is funnier than diarrhea. It was joyful. Wyatt Cenac came on next and was fucking great. I had only seen him once before and I am a pretty big fan so it was great to see him get into it. But right after Wyatt finished the night took a weird turn.

A special guest was introduced. It was Gibby Haynes from the Butthole Surfers. I was pretty excited. This guy has made a career out of doing crazy shit (plus making awesome music) and I was pretty excited to see what he would do.  He came out and did some jokes about child rape and just horrifying shit like that. And people were less horrified than they were confused. Pretty soon it was clear that him telling these jokes was the actual joke.  He then introduced himself and explained that he had been doing cover jokes, like he was a cover band and then he proceeded to do his actual set. It was pretty clear that Gibby Hanes is not a comedian, but he is a showman and as he offended more and more people with his poorly timed totally offensive jokes people actually started laughing and when he pulled out a little plastic doll leg from his bag he almost had the crowd on his side… A least until he referred to it as a “negro leg”. He said “negro leg” about 10 times before some girl in the audience yelled “stop saying negro!” and then “you aren’t funny!” He got on her case and started yelling offensive stuff at her.  The crowd reaction was mixed. It got the biggest laughs but people also started yelling shit out at him in her defense.  At some point he asked to be booed off the stage which he may have been going for to begin with, but people wouldn’t do it and so he told the crowd he had one more thing for them.  He reached in to his bag and was about to pull something out when the girl who started the whole thing jumped on stage and tried to grab the mic from him.  When Eugene Mirman ran on stage to stop her she turned to head back to her seat which is when Gibby shot her in the back of the head with the confetti cannon he was trying to pull out of his bag. He had probably meant to spray the audience, but it was perfect kismet that the the climax of his act just happened to be the perfect weapon.  The crowd was pretty much silent as he walked off stage, but as Eugene Mirman tried to calm down the crowd people started to realize what we had just seen and everyone just started uncontrollably laughing.  I was pretty much crying. The whole thing was so fucked up and so funny and so brilliant. I was almost  hoping the girl was a plant because that would have been some real Andy Kaufman shit right there… Either way it was life changing.

Eugene finally settled the crowd down and the love-of-my-life Kristen Schaal read Taint Monologues from her new Sexy Book Of Sexy Sex. She was amazing and it really got the crowd back into it immediately. Then Todd Barry performed and there are few comedians as good at just talking about what just happened as Todd.  Todd’s material is great but when he is just ranting at the audience and making shit up he is brilliant. Gibby gave him so much material and he fucking killed it. It was the perfect ending to easily one of the best comedy shows top to bottom I have ever seen. And I have seen a lot of comedy shows…

Like I said I barely took any photos and most of them sucked, but I needed to tell this story and there are a few okay images of some really fucking funny people. So you should click here to see all the photos from the 4th Anniversary of Tearing The Veil Of The Maya at The Bell House.

I shot pictures last night but I have a meeting and then plans and I am not going out tonight so I can get that stuff to you tomorrow AOK No Problem. I figured I would spend today catching up on some things that I have sitting around. This is going to be a two part update. The first one, this one, I have fun stuff for you like videos and links and good content like that.  In part two I just want to get some feedback about random stuff going on about my site. Sound like a good time? Let’s begin.

First off, let’s talk about this fucking cat.  I know after my bout with kittens you are probably sick of me talking about cats. I would be too. I kinda fucking hate cats. I am allergic and they are gross and have weird bugs and sores and all sorts of gross shit.  Also most of them are mean and the his and bite and scratch. Either that or they just lay around all day totally indifferent to the life that is happening around them. Now my vote for worst cat ever might be my friend Darenzia’s cat. I went over to her apartment for less than ten minutes because we were going to a party together and I met here there.  While she was getting dressed I was left with her cat who is fucking clearly possessed by Satan.  This Devil cat speaks in tongues and would not stop hissing at me and trying to murder my fucking family. Seriously, watch this quick video I shot and tell me he is not trying to plot a way to kill my parents.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RYl42-aNOc[/youtube]

Nextly, I mentioned this on my Tumblr but I wanted to mention it again. My friend Cortne Lanier is an amazing painter and she has a show in Brooklyn right now that you should check out.  Three of her paintings are based on photos I took so clearly they have to be awesome.  The gallery is near like 10 different trains so you have no excuse.  For more info and to see the paintings based on my photos click here.

Also, you should be following my Tumblr because I post all sorts of amazing stuff on it that you are missing out on by just reading Driven By Boredom. Twitter works too, as I post everything from both sites on there.

Lastly, we have my friend Kayvon Zand’s new video. I wanted to blog about this with some other videos but it seems right now none of my friends have new videos out so he gets bunched in with this odd update. Kayvon is clearly a total weirdo, but he said he would make me a giant hat if I posted this video. It also has all sorts of people I love in it and it is a very cool looking video even if it’s a little bit overexposed. Plus if you are into like goth industrial stuff or whatever the kids are calling it these days, the song is probably pretty awesome. So watch this madness video and I will be back later with a really boring update.

Also some old stuff: Look at this, this and this. Bye!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zlt-qDDahoc[/youtube]

By far and away the biggest highlight of the Siren Music Fest were Matt & Kim. I mean clearly they had some advantages over the other bands. They had one of the last spots so the light was better, I have actually heard a few of their songs, and we have so many friends in common that I really wanted to like them.  I didn’t have to try to hard.  As soon as they came out they looked so happy to be there.  As Brooklyn natives they talked about how excited they were to play in front of thousands at Coney Island after playing basement shows in Bushwick. They were super energetic, really fun and put on an amazing show.  They were funny and they got into the crowd and they just straight rocked the fuck out. I had to leave to go shoot Holy Fuck, so I actually missed the two songs I know by them if they played them at all, but I had a blast for the 5 or so songs I got to see.  The only reason I know the two songs is because the homies Ninjasonik cover them, so I went home and listened to both versions of both songs.

Also, because of the better lighting, my better mood and because they put on such a great show I took much better photos of them then I did all the other bands combined.  I am posting about 70 pictures of them and about 100 pictures of the other 7 bands and so I decided they needed their own section. Thanks Matt & Kim for redeeming my day.  I just wish I had given you guys a chance years ago.

Click here to see all the awesome pictures of Matt & Kim at the Siren Music Festival at Coney Island.

And we are back… We keep clicking on with Siren Music Fest.  This time we have the bands! I got there around 4pm so I missed a lot of the earlier bands but I photographed in chronological order Night Marchers, Earl Greyhound, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Harlem, Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Cymbals Eat Guitars and Holy Fuck.  One band is missing, but I will get to that in the next update.

Of the bands there I was pretty underwhelmed.  That’s not to blame the bands, it’s pretty fucking hard to put on a great show during the day time especially when you are playing in 100 degree heat and 20 feet from the crowd. There was a press/vip pit between the band and the real fans making the band play over a bunch of cameras to the crowd. I managed a band for 5 years and one of the things I learned was that no matter what outdoor concerts were a mistake. They always were terrible shows and we turned them down unless they paid a ton or we got to play a museum in Virginia Beach, VA opening for Mudhoney. Seriously.

Anyway, the one band that stood out was Earl Greyhound. They were pretty fun.  I also thought it was cool to finally see Ted Leo. Harlem seemed like a band I could have been into if I was at a house party at 2am instead of at the beach. So maybe it was the atmosphere or the heat or the fact that I was too tired, but I was overall unimpressed with the bands. I didn’t get great photos either, which is probably not a coincidence. I pretty much shot every band in less than two songs and then walked back over to the other stage. Back and forth all day. I think it probably just comes down to me being too old for this shit.  But I don’t know what 30 year olds are supposed to do for fun, so I guess I will just keep doing it… at  least until I get somebody pregnant.

So click here to see (almost) all the band photos I shot at the Siren Music Festival at Coney Island.

Ps. For 10 bonus points, please vote on which one of these bands has the worst name.  It’s a tough choice…

So as promised in the last update, here are the pictures of Loli Lux at Trash on Friday night. Loli has Dj’d all over the world but this was her first performance as a pop diva. She sang to promote her first EP, Batteries Not Included, that I shot the cover for. Clearly it was an historic event.

Loli did four songs as part of Trash’s late night cabaret and she pretty much killed it.  You could see her get a bit stiff and not work the stage as much as she could during times, but overall for a first performance it was pretty bad ass. When she gets back from a month on the road she is going to be fucking shit up left and right. The songs are tight as well and she clearly knows what she is doing… Oh and she also happens to be pretty fun to look at…

I am pretty sure I had something else to talk mention, but I think I will just let you look at the photos of her and go to sleep instead.

Click here to see all the hot pictures of Loli Lux perfoming at the Studio at Webster Hall.