Two years ago yesterday I was in Miami like I am now.  I had no place to stay like right now.  I ran into my friend Brendan, aka DJ VH1, and he told me I could crash with him and the chick he was DJing for if I took pictures of them at some gay bar called Score that night.  I ended up waiting much longer than I planned and was really bored all night.  Finally the girl he was DJing went on with her two back up dancers and made those gay dudes go nuts.  Afterwards we celebrated her birthday and I took pictures of her blowing out a disco ball cake. Almost exactly two years later I sold a couple of those photos to New York Magazine.

The artist? It was Lady Gaga.

Click here to see the pictures from that night.

I know I am not really updating this page like I should be, but I have been shooting 15 hours a day and coming back to edit so I can send them off to my client, Mog.com.  You can check out their SXSW mini site to see a lot of my music shots.  I will have them up on my page when I get back of course, but for now, you have a lot to look at there.  The highlight for me might be the Hussle Club shots but there are a lot of good things there.  Just a few more days and I will have Sunday and Monday mostly free to relax and try to get some pictures online.

And remember, I keep updating my Tumblr and Twitter so check those things out while you wait for me to get to real work on this site.

Anyway I just took a break to charge my phone but I gotta get back out there.  See you guys soon… I hope.

I know about a billion people are going to blog about the Lady Gaga Vs Beyoncé video, but I just have to blog about it, this video has a place in my heart. It’s not that I am a huge Lady Gaga or Beyoncé fan, in fact, I am not really a huge fan of this song, but the video is fucking amazing and for so many reasons.

Let’s start with the fact that Jonas Åkerlund directed it. He is one of the craziest music video directors of all time. Just search for him on YouTube and see what insane shit you find. I have been waiting for the Director’s Label Åkerlund DVD since the moment I heard about the Palm Picures series. Now I am almost glad they haven’t released it yet so Telephone can be on it.

More importantly, I am a big Exploitation geek.  Exploitation Cinema for the point of this conversation is characterized by cheap very specific genre pictures made in primarily the 1960’s and 70’s that “exploited” things such as sex, violence, race, popular trends etc.  Some of the more popular genre’s are Blaxploitation, Grindhouse Horror, Spaghetti Westerns, and Sexploitation films.  But the genre’s get much more specific with things like biker movies, drug trip films, and one of my favorites, Women In Prison.

There are an insane number of Women In Prison films starting with 99 Women in 1969 and continuing through out the 70’s.  The highlights of the genre are the Jack Hill films starring Pam Grier – The Big Doll House & The Big Bird Cage. (Jack Hill also directed the Greir films Cofee & Foxy Brown.  Quentin Tarantino took the name for his film Jackie Brown from Jack Hill and Foxy Brown.) And this Lady Gaga video is purely Women In Prison.  All it’s missing a shower scene and an escape scene. All the aesthetic elements are there.  On top of that it borrows from other exploitation films.  The key theme of revenge is very important to many of the female led action exploitation films of the ’70’s and the wardrobe while very Gaga, has clear influences from biker films, cheesy sci-fi films and Jack Hill’s legendary Switchblade Sisters.

Clearly you noticed the Pussy Wagon from Kill Bill. This video is an homage to Quentin Tarantino’s homages. It takes elements of these exploitation films that Tarantino loves to steal from and recontextualizes them so it looks like Akerlund is stealing from QT. I mentioned that QT loves Jack Hill so much that he named a movie after him, but he also distributed Switchblade Sisters as part of his failed distribution company, Rolling Thunder Pictures. The references to some of my favorite movies, directors and genre’s makes this video in my mind an instant classic even if I could care less about the song. It’s just that good.

I do need to wrap this up quickly because I am ranting but there are two other small things in the video I should mention. One is the line that I am sure will be talked about on all the blogs – “I told you she doesn’t have a dick.” Lady Gaga quite literally shows her critics her womanhood by taking off her pants and revealing once and for all that she doesn’t have a dick.  (Unless of course they used CGI…) Finally confronting these stupid rumors in a video like this takes some balls, which clearly she doesn’t have.

And lastly, my boys from Semi Precious Weapons make a cameo playing exquisite corpses. At least Cole and Justin do.  I didn’t notice Dan or Steve.  I am continuously proud of those guys. You know you have made it when you have been killed off in a major pop video.

Anyway, sorry for the rant but it is 3am and I have been getting ready to leave town for three weeks all day today.  I think might be losing my mind a little bit. I am headed to SXSW and then to Winter Music in Miami where almost exactly 2 years ago I photographed a barely known pop singer’s birthday party. Oh right, that was Lady Gaga.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ95z6ywcBY[/youtube]

On Sunday I went down to watch the US / Canada Olympic hockey game at Nice Guy Eddie’s a sports bar that just happens to be right next to Ella where Ninjasonik was recording the video for their song “Picture Party” which features Anton Glamb of Radical Outing who wrote the hook. I stopped by during periods and then hung out after the game. Ironically the video is making fun of parties that people go to just to have their picture taken. It’s pretty much a shot at party photographers, so I sort of had to represent.  They put me in a couple shots but I’m not sure if I will actually be in the video, but they might incorporate some of my photos somehow.

A lot of these pictures aren’t so much pictures of the behind the scenes going on but just pictures of people partying.  At some point they were shooting upstairs and they had everyone go downstairs while they worked on a shot. Hiro was DJing downstairs and played some Radical Outing tracks and Star City started getting everyone going.  Three songs in and the place was going harder at 630PM than I have seen a club all year. It wasn’t even part of the video. Amazing.

The idea for the video is pretty clever, im not sure exactly how they are going to pull it off, but I can’t wait to see it.  I will keep it a secret until the video is out, but I promise I’ll post it when it comes out.  The video was directed by Lazlo who did the hilarious Somebody’s Gonna Get Pregnant video. I think it’s gonna be prety great.

Check out all the behind the scenes shots from the Picture Party Ninjasonik video shoot.

I don’t really have a name for the show I put on last Saturday so you get a very uncreative post title. I think I have talked enough about what was going on with the show, but if you need a refresher, click here.

As far as how the show went, it was amazing. Four great bands played and it was packed the whole time. It was completely full of people from 10:15 until 3, but a lot of us were still there at 5am.  Kingdom is a brand new spot so we had a scare when their PA satrted smoking, but they somehow managed to get a new one and Great Tiger was ready to play by 10.

Great Tiger plays crazy electronic beats with vocoded robot vocals that got everyone dancing. It was early but by the time they they finished their set and came out into the crowd to rock people’s faces everyone was grooving pretty hard.

After that Theodore Grimm took the stage.  They brought a ton of kids with them from Jersey and made those kids glad they came.  The Grimms are the least dancy, most like a real band of the four acts, but the kids ate them up and they all stuck around to see the other bands.

My boy Teddy Blanks came on next and played probably the best set I have seen him do as a solo performer.  He told me it was his favorite show yet so that means a lot.  He got everyone dancing and I had a bunch of people talk to me about how awesome he was.  I was really glad some of my friends finally got to see him do his thing.

Finally Gang ended out the night.  They had the trickiest sound and I was running the board and I have no idea what I am doing so their first two songs were a disaster, but when I finally figured out what was going on they started fucking people up left and right. Their set was tight, people were dancing like crazy and when they ended with a cover of Rage’s Killing In The Name Of, people lost it and started moshing.  I was pretty sure something was going to get destroyed, but everything was cool and it was a perfect end to the night.

Shout outs of course to Sean Motherfucking Roberts who spun between all the bands to keep everyone dancing and stayed after DJing until everyone had left.  At one point at 3:45 when there was only a handfull of us left he was killing it so hard that he brought in a group of 10 people off the street who figured there was big party. The look on their faces was great when they saw about 10 people sitting at bar talking.

The show was great, I got to pay all the bands and a few hundred people got to check out Kingdom. You should check it out for yourself soon. It’s a great spot with awesome owners and it’s right next to a San Loco.  It’s on N. 4th and Bedford in Williamsburg.  Look into it.  Tell ’em I sent you.

Anyway, I don’t have much more to say, but thanks to everyone who helped make the show awesome and thanks to all my friends for coming out.  I am so glad I could put on something this awesome for these bands.  Everyone needs to see these guys.

Because I was doing 100 things at once, I took really awful photos, but at least you can get the idea of what the show was all about.  Click here to see all the pictures from the first DBB Presents show at Kingdom.

It’s one, two, three and to the four. Dr. Dre turned 45 so we partied some more. Dre Day 2010 was celebrated in NYC at The Williamsburg Hall of Music. It was totally packed when I got there and the air smelled like the 1992 debut Dr. Dre album The Chronic.  RokOne invited me out and he and Nick Hook were behind the tables when I got there. There were low rider bikes, a giant $20 sack pyramid and a shit load of Colt 45 40oz. Nothing but Dre related tunes went off all night. There was a pretty low rent wet t-shirt contest that featured two girls and lasted around 20 seconds, but was hilariously hosted by Dances With White Girls.  And there were a lot of people dressed like LA gang members which is always pretty funny.  I myself rocked kakhis and some Chuck’s with a buttoned up flannel.  Ironicly I purchased both the flannel and the Chucks for my Kurt Cobain costume on Halloween.  I guess gangasta rap and grunge had a lot of similar sensabilites.  I mean who wasn’t wearing flannel in the early/mid 90’s?

Anyway, there are a lot of pictures of the whole thing that you can see by clicking here and some of my photos were used for a pretty funny write up about Dre Day on the Village Voice.  Check ’em out.

I haven’t seen Mad Happy in years.  I used to book them shows all the time in Richmond, VA with the band I was managing, but after The Gaskets broke up I hadn’t heard much from them.  The other day I got their email blast and saw they were playing a show at Santo’s Party House with Bad Brilliance who I had been wanting to see.  The show started at 8 and I headed down there at 930 thinking I wouldn’t have missed much.  I ended up missing all the bands, BUT Mad Happy.  I was glad to see them but I was pretty bummed I had missed Bad Brilliance and some of the other people I met after the show including Tayisha Busay who look awesome.  After the show I went to get Chinese food with Bad Brilliance, two of his friends and Tessa from Tayisha Busay.  It was pretty awesome and there were dollar bills all over the walls.

Anyway, back to Mad Happy. Mad Happy are a couple who make super weird electronic rap music.  They wrote a musical about Armageddon that is playing in NYC soon and they tour constantly making friends with everyone everywhere.  In fact the first time I ever saw Girl Talk was in 2004 when Mad Happy invited the Gaskets to be part of an electronic music showcase in the basement of the Delancy.  There were only a handful of people there but all the acts were out of control.

This was the first time I have seen Mad Happy since they have added their third member, a six month old girl named Rinah who mostly acts as a roadie simply holding the mike cable for Rivka while she does her thing. It was pretty adorable and don’t worry, she was wearing ear plugs.

Lastly, I wanted to apologise for taking pretty awful pictures of them. A lot of this can be blamed on the smoke machines, bad stage lighting and unbounceable ceilings, but mostly I have just been off my game the last couple days. Still, there are a few nice shots in here somewhere.

Check out all the pictures of Mad Happy and some of the random goings on after the show by clicking here.

This is officially your reminder.  Come to this show on Saturday. It is going to be a blast.  You can read why right here.

Remember: The Amazing Great Tiger + The Incredible Theodore Grimm + The Fantastic Teddy Blanks + The Stupendous Gang + The Above Average Sean Roberts = Dance Time Madness.

9PM.
At Kingdom. 170 N. 4th Street between Driggs & Bedford.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
FREE.

Here is the Facebook invite. Here is the flyer. Fuck Yeah.

So I have mentioned it a million times on here before but I used to manage a band. I did it for 5 years.  And before that I ran a small record label and ran a punk zine.  I shot nothing but bands for the first 8 years of my photography career.  Music was my life.  I have been booking shows since I was 12 years old and booking my friends grunge cover band, Manly Stanley, at classmates birthday parties. That being said, although I have promoted some parties over the last few years, its been at least two years since I booked a legit show.  That drouth is over.

Saturday so many good things came together at once.  I had been trying to get Teddy Blanks the lead singer of that band I managed a show that my friends could come see for a while.  He has had lots of shows but they all cost money or were in some weird place.  I also had been trying to book everyone’s favorite Theodore Grimm a show because they are making me DBB buttons and I needed to return the favor.  On top of that one of my favorite bands, Gang from Philly was asking me about shows because they hadn’t been to NYC in ages. All of this came together and I realized that all three of these bands are super dancy and needed to play a show together.  I added another awesome dancy electronic band called Great Tiger who feature the guy who designed the DBB Productions graphic.  It was a solid bill.

Then I just needed a location.  I went to 200 Orchard first but the had to cancel the show two days after it was booked because the cops were cracking down on there cabaret license.  I posted a help call on my Twitter and the awesome Bob Bland responded.  Bob is a lady believe it or not and she designs a clothing line called Brooklyn Royalty and she was just opening a venue called Kingdom in Williamsburg on N. 4th and Bedford,  just 3 blocks from the Bedford L. The grand opening is tomorrow night actually for the Brooklyn Royalty fashion week party.  (Its free, you should go!)  Bob is looking for a way to introduce people to her place so we worked out a deal where some of the bands could get paid but we could still keep the show totally free.

The show is going to be great. Sean MF Roberts is DJing in between bands and after the show so you won’t stop moving all night long.  You can check out the Facebook invite here. You have to come, it will be awesome and I will be taking lots of photos. On top of that I will have new Driven By Boredom stickers I will be giving out and I will probably give out a few DBB Tshirts & Tote bags.  Don’t miss it!

Here are videos from each of the bands.  I will be posting the flyer on Friday.  I can’t fucking wait.

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

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2bwzXP4anY[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0vo1MfxXkA[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYStTP1rX9c&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]