Today would have been the 40th birthday of my brother from another mother Ross Harman. I met Ross when I was in college when a friend of mine told me I should check out this two man synthy dance band called the Gaskets. Even though I was only 23 I had been working in music since for nearly a decade starting when I was 14 with a punk zine, then running a punk record label a year later, booking shows and of course photographing bands. At the time it probably didn’t make a lot of sense for me to manage a kinda goofy dance band, but they just absolutely blew me away and I kept bugging them until they let me help out and over the seven years between meeting the Gaskets and Ross’ death I became as close to those guys as you could possibly imagine. They were my family and Ross’ death was absolutely life shattering. 

Teddy Blanks was the other member of the Gaskets and is still a great friend of mine. He’s a graphic designer now, who has done all of my books and zines, and oh, also the font for the god damn Barbie movie and a million other incredible things. But as busy as he is he’s spent years working on a project dedicated to the solo music of his musical partner who went by Ballpoint Pens. When Ross died Teddy was given Ross’ old laptop. It was actually Teddy’s old computer that Ross had been using so they could work on music together when Teddy moved to NYC. When Teddy booted up the computer he found tons of Ross’ music on it, from finished songs to rough bits and pieces, all recorded on a laptop mic in a bedroom with ballpoint pens for the drums (hence the name Ballpoint Pens). 

At Ross’ memorial service we played some of this stuff and everyone was blown away. Ross had put a few songs out on his MySpace page, but no one had really heard how much great stuff he had recorded. Most of the people at the service were in bands themselves and I had this idea that maybe we could get some of them to professionally record his music as a tribute album. Luckily people actually followed up and not only did we get enough music for a double length record but we were able to raise enough money to release the tribute album, as well as two more Ballpoint Pens records. It was such and amazing project and I know it meant a lot to the many, many people who loved Ross.

Over the last decade Teddy has been messing around here and there with the music. He used some of the tracks to release posthumous songs with Ross and started trying to clean up some of the old tracks. He had the GarageBand files for a lot of these songs and began to remix them. Over the last few years Teddy has been taking this project more seriously and has spent his own money having these songs professionally mixed and mastered. He’s stated organizing and remixing files, building new songs and using new AI tools to help isolate tracks so he, and other musicians, could re-record some of the instrumentations.  It’s been such a cool experience to get emails from Teddy with brand new Ballpoint Pens songs I had no idea existed and cleaned up versions of songs I have loved for years.

Today, for Ross’ 40th birthday Teddy has released the Ballpoint Pens archive and the first six tracks of the new Ballpoint Pens collection, Mazes. Each week a new song will be added which will give us weekly chances to share Ross’ music with the world. When the archive is finished it will have multiple albums, notes on every song, as well as the remixes, originals and covers for them all. The project is such an incredible way to honour our friend and I can’t wait to see it grow as Teddy continues to work on it.  I just really hope we can get some eyes on it who will be learning about Ross for the first time. It would mean so much to me if you checked out this music and shared it if you enjoyed it. 

Please check out the Ballpoints Pens archive and the first six songs of the new Ballpoint Pens collection,  Mazes.

10 years ago today one of my best friends died. I have had too many friends die, but Ross Harman was like a brother to me. I managed his band, The Gaskets, for six years of my life and when he died I promised myself I would make sure people remembered his music and I sort of think I failed at that. I set up a crowdfunding campaign and we raised a bunch of money and were able to put out three records in his honor. We released his solo album and another compilation of songs that were on his computer when he died as well as a double length LP of other artists covering his music. It was truly incredible, except that after selling the first 100 or so those records have sat in my apartment for the last 9 years gathering dust. 

We built a website to honor him with a bunch of his music that existed up until last fall when my website got hacked and it was easier just to build the site again than fix it. But here we are on the anniversary of his death and the site doesn’t exist. The Gaskets site is down too which now links to a Wikipedia full of dead links. 

Last night I saw someone Tweet about the band Sparks and I went to an old hard drive to see if I could find a video of the Gaskets covering one of their songs. I loved that cover and I was sure I had it somewhere. I ultimately couldn’t find it, but in my search I pulled out the live concert DVD I produced way back in 2006. It is to this day my greatest accomplishment even though I still have a few hundred copies taking up space in my apartment as well. I watched a few minutes of it just to see the beginning and I ended up watching the whole thing. It made me miss that time in my life so much and it made me miss Ross even more. It was such a great feeling to be working with your favorite band every day and seeing how much people loved them again really moved me. 

I didn’t even realize I was watching it 10 years to the day after Ross died.

I woke up to a Facebook notification reminding me today was the day. I am certainly not one to believe in any sort of spirituality but I couldn’t believe the coincidence. It really was incredible. I don’t think I have watched it since Ross died and suddenly I am watching it on his anniversary. I don’t cry very often, but when I went back and reread what I wrote about Ross on here 10 years ago tears spilled down my face. I loved that motherfucker so much. 

Despite my failure as a manager to make the Gaskets a household name or to do more to spread Ross’ music since he passed there are some very good things that came out of the Gaskets. The other member of the band, Teddy Blanks, has gone on to great success as both a graphic designer and a director after blending design and film doing credits for countless movies and TV shows. His first credit sequence? That live concert DVD. His solo music has scored many films including Tiny Furniture, the breakout film from Lena Dunham (who in college directed a Gaskets video) and Red Flag made by his current directorial partner Alex Karpovsky. For me the Gaskets turned out to be the beginning of my photography career. I always thought I would work in music, but I went to school for photography because I thought it would be a good skill to have in the music industry while I as at the same time trying to figure out my place in the world. Music didn’t work out for me but all the first photos I ever published were for the Gaskets. I am not sure I would have ever made it as a photographer if I hadn’t managed that band. 

I had no idea what this blog was going to be about when I started writing it this morning. I actually took a break after the first sentence because it hurt too much to write. I don’t even know what the point of this was, but I had to write something. And I figured I could use this as an excuse to promote Ross’ music again even though not that much of it is online right now. 

First of all Handstand Records still has all the Ross “Ballpoint Pens” records in stock. They also have the concert DVD and even the Gaskets second album. I could not more highly recommend this stuff. 

Secondly, The Gaskets YouTube channel has not been updated since a few days after Ross’ death when we uploaded a fun interview they did with Blender in 2007 but it’s still a pretty good place to see some of the Gaskets music. A bunch of it is on Spotify and things like that but The Gaskets were one of the best live bands I have ever seen so it’s a good chance to see some of that.

Thirdly, please listen to this Teddy Blanks song. It is the only song on the tribute album that isn’t a cover. This song Teddy wrote about Ross using music he found on Ross’ computer. It makes my eyes water every time I hear it and it’s been in my head all day today. 

I also promise that in the near future I am gonna get his website back up and I will do another post about that when we do. His tribute album has never been made available digitally and we need to make that happen. Hopefully it and the Gaskets site will return soon.

Lastly I am going to leave you with a couple of videos. The first is for the Gaskets song Left Hand. Teddy wrote it about Ross’ drinking problem that ultimately lead to his death. Ross never talked about what that meant to him but he spent weeks by himself painting and animating this video. It means a great deal to me. The second video is from the Tribute album by Ross’ favorite artist Matt Mahaffey aka sElf. I couldn’t believe he said yes to recording this when randomly I reached out to him out of the blue. I have no idea who uploaded this but I really appreciate it. 

Please take a second to listen to Ross’ music. He was a brilliant fucked up man who I will never stop thinking about. I love you man.

Ps. I managed to find this Mp3 I uploaded of Ross’ solo song Symphony.

Tonight at 10:30pm EST a new TV show called Cake premieres on FXX after It’s Always Sunny. It’s a weird mix of live action and animation and I mention this because my friends Teddy Blanks and Alex Karpovsky aka The Spielbergs (I shot their press photo) directed a bunch of short episodes of a show called “Oh Jerome, No” that is one of the live action elements of Cake. It’s based on their short film of the same name and it stars Mamoudou Athie as Jerome. If you haven’t seen Patti Cake$ you should probably watch it. He is great in it.

Each episode is a different look into Jerome’s dating life starring a completely different cast (outside of Mamoudou) and each episode is then broken up into pieces inside of the larger Cake episode. I have no idea how it’s going to work, but I am excited to see it. I also know that the Jerome episodes will be also available to watch online as stand alone episodes. 

Jerome filmed mostly in a studio in LA but since it’s supposed to be set in NYC all of the exteriors (and a few interiors) were filmed here so I spent a couple days following the crew around shooting some behind the scenes photos. I only was there for a few hours each day but I think I got some nice shots that you could check out. I honestly really enjoyed doing it and it’s something I would like to do a lot more of in the future. If anyone wants to hire me to hang out on the set of their short film or music video shoot or something let me know. 

Because they were shooting exteriors from several episodes I am not sure what I shot exactly, but I do know the scene with Natasha Lyonne is in the first episode that airs tonight. I got to see it a couple months ago and I really enjoyed it. I am actually in it, but I have a feeling you won’t be able to spot me considering Teddy didn’t even notice until I pointed out my blur in the back of a movie theater. The photos do feature one spoiler from the first episode, but it’s also in the Cake trailer so I don’t think I am giving anything away by posting it. That being said, if you are interested in seeing the show you might want to watch tonight’s episode before looking at these photos or watching the trailer.

Lastly, and completely unrelated to this post Boing Boing finally published my last article from the 2019 Gathering of the Juggalos and I am a huge Boing Boing fan so I figured I would share that with you.

Anyway, go look at these photos and watch Cake tonight at 10:30pm on FXX! See if you can spot me!

Click here to see all my behind the scenes photos from Oh, Jerome No and Cake.

I have always promised myself I would never shoot a wedding. I am not exactly sure why. Most of the working photographers I know that work full time will at least shoot a wedding from time to time to keep the lights on but it’s a dumb point of pride for me that I’ve never shot one. I mean wedding photography used to be pretty awful but now so many people shoot it documentary style and that work honestly a lot more interesting than plenty of the stuff I shoot. But whatever the case, I still have never shot one.

That being said I always have a camera at my friend’s weddings and take a least a few snapshots with my 35mm point & shoot. A few years ago two of my best friend’s got married in the same month so I did a post with a bunch of 35mm from their weddings. One of them got married an hour from Nashville so I got some stuff I liked there before I ever went to the wedding. And then when Prince Terrence got married in Vegas I got some fun shots there so I posted those as well.

So I come to you with my third 35mm wedding photography post. This time we have two weddings and a bachelor party and about 50 mediocre photos for you to look at.

First up back in August my friend OJ aka Slutlust got married to my old roommate Kara. They got married on the same city bus they met on and it was pretty fucking fantastic. OJ is a NYC nightlife icon so pretty much everyone at the wedding I had met at a bar at 3am. It was pretty wild to see everyone at 9 in the morning waiting for the M14 bus. We all got on and the bus was so packed with all of us that the bus just blew past all the stops until it reached the stop where OJ was waiting. He got on the back of the bus unfortunately so I couldn’t even get any photos of the wedding. A few stops later Kara got on and our friend Brendon James married them in the back. The bus was so packed that none of us in the front could see anything so we actually watched the wedding on Instagram live. It was pretty funny.  From there the bus took us to the Standard Hotel for the after party at Le Bain and it was kinda crazy being on the roof and seeing that club during the day. Hell of a view. I managed to get sun burned in a few hours and went home to pass out by 4pm or something.

Last month my friend Teddy got married. I used to manage his band in college and he runs the graphic design firm CHIPS. He designs all my books and his partner at CHIPS designed the logo to my website. He had a tiny wedding that was just family the night before but then he had a party at his apartment the next day. I was pretty excited about it because I had never actually met his wife which is kinda incredible given how many times I have heard about her. Her name is Molly and she seemed really rad and I need to hang out with her sooner or later but glad I got to finally meet her. The party was fun and I got to see some old friends like my college girlfriend and my fucking little brother who flew in from LA for 24 hours for the wedding and didn’t even tell me he was coming. Also you may recognize Teddy’s filmmaking partner Alex Karpovsky. They make music videos and commercials and this series where famous people talk about therapy and you should check that out because talking about mental health is important and also I took their press photo.

Oh also in this gallery are two whole photos from Teddy’s bachelor party where we went to this virtual reality arcade called VR World which was really amazing even though VR makes me kinda sick. It’s well worth checking out. I also went to OJ’s bachelor party but my camera ran out of batteries as I was taking the first photo.

Okay, I am gonna stop talking now. Time for you to flip through some 35mm snapshots from my friend’s weddings.

Click here to see all the 35mm photos from OJ, Kara, Teddy & Molly’s weddings!

Normally when leaving town for two weeks I would throw mini updates on the DBB Road Trip blog and not update the main page but my motel’s internet sucks and other than Ho99o9’s release party I didn’t shoot a ton of photos the first few days I was here. So I decided I would just throw up a little update on life and a music video that people I like a lot made. Seems reasonable…

So far in LA I have photographed Ava Dalush who you guys just met, an old favorite Ivy Diamond and the insanely babetastic Chanel Preston. I also shot a babe that was roommates with my friend Juanito Blanco named Jade Nile. I took some weird 35mm shots of her and her boyfriend which might see the light of day eventually. They are all having a party on Wednesday so hopefully I can get some more weirdness. I also got to see Kimberly Kane (and her dog!) who I hadn’t seen in over a year. I think the only photo I took of her was at a diner but perhaps we will shoot something before I leave town.

Now on to this music video. My friend Teddy Blanks directed his first music video. He is a graphic designer who has designed all my books and zines and he did the design work for the band Tanlines new album Highlights. During the design phase they had a conversation about how Teddy’s friend and actor Alex Karpovsky looks a lot like one of the guys from Tanlines. A few months later Alex and Teddy were directing a video for the song Palace starring Alex and Natasha Lyonne with cameos from Leo Fitzpatrick and that dude from High Maintenance. On my first night in LA Teddy showed me the video and it finally came out yesterday. It’s pretty rad.

Also my brother, who is a tremendous editor, cut the video so it is extra amazing. But then again he’s letting me sleep on his couch this weekend so I guess I would have to say that. Seriously, go watch this video because anything that Teddy and my brother do together has got to be awesome. Plus Alex and Teddy hired me to shoot the poster for Alex’s movie Red Flag which Teddy designed and art directed. So everyone rules.

Okay, I need to go photograph some babes now and enjoy LA for the week I have left. Talk to you guys soon. Check my Tumblr for daily updates.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rorAAsQUfvo[/youtube]

I got a bunch of random small things to mention to you guys so I figured we would do it all in one post. It’s not very exiting content wise but I gotta get the word out. Let’s do this.

The big thing I need to mention is that my site works again. This site does massive amounts of bandwidth. This site gets around 100k visitors a month but the average visitor tends to spend a lot of time on the site and looks at a lot of photos so we are talking of MILLIONS of page views every month and every one of those page views has at least one picture on it. I was on a shared server and when I would get a big link or something my site would just stop functioning or move really slowly. On Monday my awesome host Constant moved me over to my own server so the site is super fast now and hopefully we won’t have any crazy errors popping up any more. They really hooked it up on the price but it’s still nearly twice as much as I was paying so if you dig the site and want to support it you can help me out by signing up for my app, buying me some film or you can email me about advertising or buying prints. Any of that would be awesome.

Secondly I should be announcing the release info for my Route 66 book tomorrow. I am just waiting on a flyer. I can give you some of the info now though. The book is called “Get Your Kicks” and the book release will be in LA at the new Mishka art gallery above their LaBrea location. There will be a big solo show to go with it. There will be a smaller NYC release at the Brooklyn Mishka store with free booze and stuff but no art or anything. I am so excited for this I can’t even tell you.  A few books will be available online after the releases and if you donated to the fundraiser they will be in your hands by the end of the month!

Thirdly I threw a big party at Slattery’s Midtown Pub on Monday for this DolfansNYC thing I run. It was Monday Night Football so we went big on it.  I know people hate it when I post Miami Dolphins photos on Driven By Boredom so I am only going to mention it in this post in case anyone is interested. The Dolphins got killed but we raised over $1200 for charity through raffles and ticket sales. It was pretty amazing and my dude DJ Tropic killed it DJing during breaks in the game. You can check out all the pictures here! 

I also wanted to mention the B-Sides section of my site. I launched it a while ago but I haven’t really promoted it. I thought my site would be redone by now and the B-Sides are going to be a major feature of that, but we are way way way behind schedule on this thing and the B-Side blog has taken a back seat. I did update it the other day though with a really weird video from my friend Teddy Blanks that was directed by SXSW Film darling M Blash.  Check it out.

I gotta leave you guys with SOME content so rewatch this video about how awesome  and important I am. It’s the right thing to do.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/30523163[/vimeo]

As you may recall I spent an insane amount of my life over the last year and a half curating, fundraising and putting together by force a tribute album to my friend Ross Harman who died in September of 2010. I got about 15 band to record tracks covering Ross’ music, organized a big fundraiser, raised another $4,000 via Kickstarter and put out not just a double LP tribute albums but also Ross’ two previously digitally released solo albums on vinyl as well. It has been completely exhausting but it was honestly the only way I knew how to mourn one of my closest friends.

This whole thing came to ahead last weekend when I threw a record release party in Richmond, VA for the record.  I met Ross when we were both attending Virginia Commonwealth University and I saw his band The Gaskets play a dive bar on campus. I started managing them and booking them all over the place but most often at a club called the Nanci Raygun at 929 W. Grace St.  I threw the last party ever there which the Gaskets headlined in 2006. Since then the Raygun became a bagel place and then two years ago it reopened as a venue once again… this time as Strange Matter. I knew this was the only place to do the show.

The show at Strange Matter was completely free and featured five musical acts (and Shannon Cleary DJing between sets) starting with the Miles O’Brien Band who are made up of a bunch of Ross’ friends from the Richmond, VA music scene. They played a couple of Gaskets tunes and a couple of other songs that Ross loved. After that our friend Gary Atkinson performed a few songs in between sets. We met Gary at an open mic night the Gaskets used to test out new songs at and Ross loved Gary’s music. After that the real show began with Jim O’Brien and his band Schnitzel doing a full set of Gaskets covers. It was amazing to see how many people still knew all the Gaskets songs including a lot of old ones I hadn’t heard performed in many, many years. It was an amazing set.  After that Ross’ Gaskets partner Teddy Blanks performed his solo material for the first time in Richmond. It went over amazingly and was great to see Teddy up on the 292 W. Grace stage again. Finally the Voltron like supergroup featuring members of Novios, Rabbits and VCR headlined. Between those three bands they accounted for 5 songs on the tribute album and they played those and a ton more songs that Ross wrote. It was an amazing set and they closed the night perfectly.

We sold a bunch of records but more importantly everyone had a great time. It meant so much to talk to Ross’ friends who were so touched by this project. I worked my ass off on this thing for the last year and a half and in a way I am pretty glad it’s over. I think I can finally move on with my life now and I am so glad I will have something to remember my friend forever. RIP Ross. We fucking love you.

Click here to see all the pictures from the Love Me When I’m Gone: A Tribute To Ross Harman record release party at Strange Matter in Richmond.

Ps. One of these days I will set up an online store where you can buy these records and if you ordered one through Kickstarter already I will be sending them out at the end of March when I get back to NYC. If you can’t wait you can always listen to Ross’ music for free at RossHarman.com. Also if you are in Richmond or NYC I can let you know how to get a copy of the record if you email me.

I have talked about my friend Teddy many, many times on this website but it’s been a while so it’s time for a refresher. Teddy Blanks was the front man for The Gaskets the band I managed for 5 years. They broke up in 2008 and Teddy started making solo music. During this period he released a free EP called Complications which we will come back to in a second. Teddy started playing shows out and he scored the soundtrack for the very successful indie film Tiny Furniture (out Tuesday on Criterion DVD).

A few years ago Teddy co-founded what has become a very successful graphic design studio and put his music on the back burner a little bit but he has now shifted back into full on music making mode. Yesterday he released a bunch of new music starting with a re-release of Complications. Complications has been remixed and is fully ready for you to put into your face. The album is a concept album based on the writings of New Yorker staff writer and surgeon Atul Gawande. If you have never heard pop songs about medical oddities and songs using disease as metaphors for life this is your lucky day. The album is completely free you can listen to it below or download it here.

Teddy also has released all the music that he wrote for Tiny Furniture. Much of it didn’t make it into the movie including a Sinead O’Connor cover that they couldn’t afford the rights to. Most of the music is instrumental but there are a couple pop gems in there including When You Come Home, the song used in the trailer for the film. You can download all the Music From & Inspired by Tiny Furniture for free here.

On top of all that Teddy has released three new demos.  You can download all three demos here. Teddy is hard at work on a new album but these tracks didn’t make the cut, but they are still great songs. Somewhat Hasty is a personal favorite of mine.

Lastly, yesterday Paper Magazine debuted Teddy’s video for the opening track to Complications, Faint & Shaky. The video was directed by Ry Russo-Young who’s new film Nobody Walks was a hit at Sundance and was picked up for distribution by Magnolia Films. The video is peep show themed and Teddy does a little strip tease for your viewing pleasures. So watch this video and if you enjoy it, as I know you will, go back and check out all the other amazing links to music I just sent you!