Over a year ago one of my best friends Ross Harman took his own life. I managed his band The Gaskets for five years and when he died I decided I had to play manager one more time. I reached out to many of his musician friends and got them to cover songs of his for a tribute album. A year later we had created a tribute album featuring 15 bands and 18 songs.

We were going to just put the album out digitally but the album was so good that we knew we had to do something more permanent so we decided we would try to raise money to put it out on vinyl. We held a fundraiser for him in Richmond, VA and raised over $4000. We raised so much money that now we are trying to raise money to release his solo albums, Calcutta and Symphony, as well.

So we started a Kickstarter fund to raise $2000 of the $5000 or so we needed to really do these albums right.  I put it up late last night and just posted it to Facebook and Twitter and went to sleep. When I woke up we had raised $800 already. It has really been amazing. I sort of feel like we are going to hit our goal of $2000 by the end of the weekend or something crazy like that but I want to keep going and see if we can raise the full $5000.  We could really make something special.

Anyway, I know most of you don’t know who my friend Ross was but he was really an amazing musician. All his music, solo or with The Gaskets, is available for free at TheGaskets.com. Check it out and think about donating to this project.  Plus for those of you who are into my photography you have a chance to get prints of mine on the cheap. There is a bunch of other stuff you can get too. Kill Shop Kill donated some T-shirts and Revolve-CD donated some CDRs for those of you who don’t have a record player.  For just $5 you can get the digital download.  And every dollar counts.

So click here do donate to the Ross Harman tribute album Kickstarter! Thanks!

One year ago yesterday my friend Ross Harman took his own life. I have lost a lot of friends in my life but never one as close as Ross. He was like a brother to me after I managed his band, The Gaskets, for five years. It was insanely difficult for me and the way I decided to mourn him was to put that grief into a project and manage him one last time.  Over the last year I reached out to a bunch of his musician friends and we put together an 18 track tribute album with 15 different artists covering Ross’ music.

Originally the idea was to just release a CDR of the music for friends and then give it away digitally but after hearing how amazing the record was we decided to try to release it on vinyl as a double LP. It seemed pretty ambitious considering to do it right we would need to raise more than $4000 so we decided to do a fundraiser show on the anniversary of Ross’ death and then try to raise the rest of the money through a Kickstarter project. I figured if I put in a few hundred bucks and a few other of his close friends did the same we could get about half way to our goal before we launched the Kickstarter… But evidently I was a bit off on my estimation.

Edo’s Squid in Richmond, VA was amazing enough to not only donate the space but give us 100% of the cash bar they had set up. The bartenders donated all their tips to the project and a bunch of people cooked and brought free food for everyone. The show was completely free and the booze was cheap but we left donation buckets out everywhere. We also sold CDRs of the album and I hit up a few people for some larger donations.

We had a great turnout and a great turnout of musicians who took turns playing their covers to Ross. We had Ross’ best friend and Gaskets partner Teddy Blanks DJ to start off the evening and then Schnitzel, who opens the album, opened the show with a mini set dedicated to Ross. After that we played a music video James Wallace recorded during Burning Man since he couldn’t be at the show and we played the video Ross directed for the Gaskets song Left Hand. Next, Rabbits and Novios reformed to play their covers to Ross and Chris Smith and Shannon Cleary each did two of Ross’ songs acoustically. After that The Atkinsons did a four song set ending with their cover of  “Left Hand” with Teddy Blanks fronting the band for that one song. Finally the night ended with one of Ross’ favorite local band the Ex-Patriots doing a six song set including the Gaskets cover they did for the record and a cover of Ross’ song Posture which I sang on the album and performed with the Ex-Pats.

The whole thing was so much fun and ran very smoothly considering that everyone involved was coming from all over the place to put this thing together. I need to give extra special thanks to Ryan Jones who did most of the event organizing and Brad at Edo’s who went out of pocket for this whole thing. It really is a testament to Ross’ life that so many people would do so much to make this happen. I also wanna thank Todd Raviotta who filmed the event and provided the videos that I linked to in this update. (Click all the links in this post!)

Oh… and did I mention that we raised over $4000 in one day? Fucking unbelievable. We are still going to try to raise a little more on Kickstarter but his record is really going to happen!

But if you want to see pictures from Ross Harman’s Memorial Fundraiser at Edo’s Squid click here! I was too busy to take great photos but I took wide shots of everything so that you can see all the bands that played and get a sense of the crowd that was there. I mostly took pictures so friends and family who couldn’t be there could see what we did. Enjoy!

Ps. For updated info on all of this please join Remembering Ross Harman on Facebook!

Let’s get this out of the way right now. I am a terrible singer and I have no business singing in the shower much less recording a song. You may have heard me mention this punk band I started and I am in fact the singer of that, but I decided to front a punk band specifically because my terrible singing can be overcome by intentionally hurting myself on stage and entertaining angry kids with mohawks. I am honestly completely without any musical talent what so ever.  Fortunately for me I have some very talented friends.

When my friend Ross Harman killed himself last September I kept thinking about how many amazing musicians showed up to his memorial.  An hour into the service I knew what I had to do.  I manged Ross’ band The Gaskets for five years and it was time once again to put on my managerial hat and get to work.  I started asking all his musician friends at the memorial if they would be interested in contributing a track to a tribute album in his honor. Everyone there could not have been more into the idea.

Six months later I was wrapping up the CD and making sure everyone was getting in their music.  I think in total the CD is going to contain 18 tracks and I was very impressed with all the music.  As happy as I was to be working on this album I suddenly had the great desire to be a part of it but I wasn’t exactly sure how. I was going to ask one of my friends if I could record some back up vocals or something to a song but most people had pretty much finished already. Luckily I had another idea.

I reached out to my friend Patrick Albertson to see if he would be interested in helping me cover the song Posture which Ross wrote for his solo project Ballpoint Pens. It only had a few lines of vocals in it and I figured I could get throug them.  Patrick was honored to be part of the album and quickly recorded the full song complete with his own vocals.  It sounded amazing and I hated that I was going to have to ruin it with my voice.

Patrick sent his music over to Teddy Blanks who was Ross’ band mate and one of my closest friends. Teddy patiently helped me record my vocals over and over again until he thought I had given him enough takes. They all sounded terrible on their own but Teddy went through each take pulling a word here and a word there until he assembled several vocal tracks that sounded okay and he put them on top of each other and then added Patrick’s falsettos underneath.  He also added some hand claps and mixed the whole thing together into and almost listenable song.

I am really proud of this album, but I am also very proud that I got to contribute to the actual music on the CD.  I am going to be blogging about this album again once it is complete but I wanted to give you a little preview now and let you hear my contribution to the Ross Harman tribute album. So listen to my song below and then head on over to TheGaskets.com where you can download nearly every song Ross or The Gaskets ever recorded for free including the original version of Posture which is taken from the album Calcutta.

Thanks for humoring me I hope you like the song or at least the idea of it. I would love to hear what you think…

Igor & Patrick Albertson – Posture

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.

Last Sunday I was in Richmond, VA to say goodbye to my friend Ross Harman. As  you probably know from reading my site recently my friend Ross passed away on September 6th.  The funeral was in Louisiana and it happened right away so none of his friends got to attend.  A bunch of his friends and coworkers got together and threw a big party in his honor at Cous Cous in Richmond.

It was a very sad occasion but through periodic moments of tears I managed to have a really great time. It was wonderful seeing so many old friends and meeting Ross’ new ones. It brought together so many people and I got to hear a lot of great stories about Ross I never knew. There was a slide show with hundreds of images of Ross and in pretty much every photo he seemed like he was having so much fun.  People brought so much food although I couldn’t really eat anything.  We played a live video of his band The Gaskets and then played his solo material after that was over.

After the party was over a few of his close friends went on to the roof of Sticky Rice, the sushi place he worked at, and set these flaming lanterns off on the roof.  They were paper lanterns that when set on fire they fill with hot air and rise into the sky until you can’t see them any longer. They were very beautiful but I think the best part about them was how dangerous they seemed.  We kept making jokes about setting Richmond on fire or getting arrested for arson. This seems really silly but I think it cheered everyone up a bit as they went home. I know it cheered me up a lot. We actually got stopped by the fire department after one of the lanterns got stuck in a tree. But the fireman who stopped us was really nice and actually suggested we set them off in the middle of the street. He actually lit one of them himself.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank everyone who came out and everyone who helped out. Special thanks to Cous Cous, Sticky Rice and Sticky Togogo who provided food, drinks and a place for everyone to gather. Also I wanted to thank Ryan Jones and Heather Bregman who put the slide show together and possibly most importantly my old friend Kirsten Lewis who organized this whole thing and bought all the lanterns and memorial wrist bands and dealt with a lot of shit that Teddy and I couldn’t deal with. Oh, and I also wanted to thank Ross’ older brother Braden for giving me Ross’ flask. That really means a lot to me.

This is probably my last update about Ross for a while but I am not going to let people forget about him. We have a tribute album in the works and we are going to organize a show to raise money for a scholarship fund set up in Ross’s name. I also just wanted to mention one more time that you can download all of Ross’ music for free at TheGaskets.com.

Now please click here to see photos from the Ross N. Harman memorial party at Cous Cous. Thanks.

Teddy Blanks was Ross Harman’s bandmate and  best friend.  In 2007 Teddy compiled an album of Ross’ solo work (aka Ballpoint Pens) called Calcutta. When Ross died Teddy went to work immediately putting together Ross’ work into a second album called Symphony. Teddy then took down the website for their band and put up a brand new site that has free downloadable versions of Calcutta and Symphony as well as nearly every Gaskets release. Pretty soon their feature length concert movie Loose Change Live will be available for free download as well. I also have a pretty obsessively organized scrap book of Gaskets flyers, press clippings and photos that I hope to scan and get online as well. Hopefully the site will become a pretty good archive of the history of The Gaskets.

Anyway, you should click here to download Symphony. It features 17 tracks including his song for my brothers film “Cows on a Popemobile” which was used for the credits of a featurette on the Snakes on a Plane DVD.

Here are two sample songs from the album and make sure to check out The Gaskets website for much more free music.

Ballpoint Pens – I Don’t Need Your Symphony:
Ballpoint Pens – I Don’t Need Your Symphony

Ballpoint Pens – My Lord:
Ballpoint Pens – My Lord

PS. For those wondering who I have not talked to, Ross’ funeral was today in Louisiana and was just a small family only affair. We will be celebrating his life on Sunday September 19th at Cous Cous in Richmond, VA. Any of Ross’ friends are invited. Contact me for more details.

From 2003 to 2008 I managed a band called The Gaskets. They were my entire life during that time period and the two members, Teddy Blanks and Ross Harman, became my closest friends. The Gaskets were one of the best live acts I had ever seen and are one of my favorite bands of all time. The two members had been friends since they were kids and had an amazing chemistry and made amazing music together. They were very different people but worked very well together. I know the Gaskets would have been a hugely successful band if not for Ross’ troubles with depression and alcohol.

On Monday morning was found dead on his roof after taking a bottle of pills in order to end his own life.

Many times in my life I have said that I hated Ross and I probably did. He caused me more pain that pretty much anyone I have ever met. But one thing I have found in life is that the only people who can hurt you like that are the people you love the most. The last two fist fights I have had were both with Ross andI have screamed and yelled at that kid more times than I can count, but I fucking loved that kid and I am just so glad that he and I were back on good terms after several months of not speaking to each other.

I have tried several times to write this post but I haven’t been able to do it. Every time I try I just start to cry. Even now tears are rolling down my cheeks. It’s so much easier to think of all the bullshit he and I went through than to think of the good times because whenever I think about the Ross I loved it makes my chest seize up. I have had a lot of friends die in my life but no one anywhere near as close to me as Ross and I don’t know how to deal with it. Even before Ross died I couldn’t listen to some of his old music without getting tears in my eyes thinking about the kid I knew before the drinking really took hold of his life.

Ross was a brilliant musician but he was also just an amazing guy. He was so fucking charming and when he was on point everyone loved him. I think that is why it was so hard for everyone to deal with the other Ross. He was so fucking smart and knew as much about music and film as anyone I have ever met. He was funny and so much fucking fun. Probably too fun. When Ross was happy everything was a party and no one ever wanted to stop partying with him.  And when people started to worry about him he could always find a whole new group of people who were ready to party with him.

I haven’t really been a big part of his life the last two years but I thought he seemed a lot better. When I would talk to him he actually seemed happy and had been working the same job for years. He had a lot of people around him that loved him. But I knew he would never really be happy. He had too many demons in him and I know there is nothing anyone could have done to help him. I know, because Teddy and I tried fucking everything.

Right befoe Ross died he sent Teddy a text message telling him he loved him and I know Ross loved me too and I really hope he knows I loved him. Of all my friends Ross is one person I know would have always had my back and even if I couldn’t count on him for a lof of things I know he would be there for me if I really needed him. I just wish I could have been there more for him in the last few years.

I have so much more to say about Ross but I gotta stop crying. I haven’t cried like this in probably five years, the last time I though Ross killed himself. He managed to pull through that time but I guess it was just a matter of time before he finally followed through.

I am going to end this now with one of the last photos I took of Ross, a music video Ross directed and my favorite one of Ross’ solo songs. The video is for a Gaskets song called Left Hand. Teddy wrote it about Ross, their friendship and Ross’ drinking problem. Ross was really upset at first when Teddy wrote the song but grew to love it. Ross was an amazing painter and created this video completely himself by hand. My little brother put the video together, but everything else was all Ross.  The song I am posting is called Nine Times Out Of Ten. It is not only my favorite song by him but so appropriate. It’s about his drinking problems and even though it is written to a girl, I think it is a little bit of an apology to his friends for what he put us all through.  At the end he asks us to celebrate with him. And I guess from here on out I will try to celebrate with Ross and celebrate the life of a kid that meant fucking everything to me. I will be posting more of his music soon so you can enjoy just a little bit of what I did in the 7 years I knew my friend Ross Harman.

I will miss you forever you fucking selfish asshole. I love you with everything I have.

Ross Harman – Nine Times Out Of Ten: Ross Harman – Nine Times Out Of Ten

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

When I got a pretty decent gig working SXSW Music I realized that I could afford to spend another week in Austin and check out the film festival.  To do that I would need to get a film badge.  I asked the Village Voice if they would hire me to shoot SXSW Film and Interactive for them and they agreed. Originally I thought I could just shoot a film party or two and just watch a bunch of movies, but then I got all these press junket invites and realized I could do a pretty cool portrait gallery for the Voice.  The odd thing is that the Voice still hasn’t run these portrait yet, although they tell me they are going to.  A lot of the people in the gallery you might not have any idea who are, and frankly I don’t want to explain it all, but I will link the Voice gallery when it’s up and it will have all the captions.  Also if you mouse over the photos below it will give credits for my favorite shots.

The highlight of course was shooting the Get Low junket.  I got there late due to the cabs in Austin being the worst things ever so I was worried I was going to miss my chance to shoot Bill Murray, Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek.  Luckily they squeezed me in, unluckily I only had 2 minutes with them and they weren’t so excited about posing for me.  Bill Murray made fun of me, Robert Duvall was mostly trying to just eat lunch and Sissy Spacek was worried about me shooting with a wide angel.  But when I showed Sissy the photo on my camera and she loved it and later on the red carpet for her movie she came over and hugged me and told all the other photographers that I was amazing. Speaking of amazing, while I was waiting to shoot the cast of Get Low I got to shoot Sissys daughter Schuyler Fisk, who is a musician, actress and totally rad girl, not to mention absolutely stunning.

The other thing really worth mentioning was that I went down to shoot portraits at the Tiny Furniture premiere.  Tiny Furniture was directed, written and starred in by my friend Lena Dunham and my boy Teddy Blanks did the score. Their film won best narrative feature and I was so excited for them.  I am going to do a full review of it right before it screens in NYC so you will get to hear more about it, but it was amazing and I am so proud of those kids.

Anyway, I shot people from the movies Get Low, Tiny Furniture, MARS, Monsters, Helena At The Wedding, and fucking Lemmy from the movie Lemmy.  Amazing.  Click here to see all the portraits from SXSW Film 2010.

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]