Did you guys know I was some way or another involved in the music industry for more than 10 years?

I sort of hate music now, it’s pretty amazing.  I shoot dance parties every day, and hang out with all these well known DJ’s and stuff, but I completely hate all the music.  I am like an old man. I only listen to records and mostly 70’s Soul and R&B records.  Do you know what was on my record player when Teddy Pendergrass died? Teddy Pendergrass.  I am like a 50 year old man. The only reason I know what a Vampire Weekend is is because one of them was this little fat kid everyone used to pick on in high school. He was in my brothers class and I am pretty sure they hated each other.

But I used to love music.  Seriously love it. It was the only thing in my life.  I thought I would be a 50 year old man in a mosh pit up until I tried to go into a mosh pit at 25 and was sore for two days. When I was a little kid I wanted to be in a Monkees cover band.  When I was in the 5th grade I managed a fake band called No More Freedom. In 1994 when Kurt Cobain died I carved a K into my arm with a mechanical pencil.  A month later I was given my first Black Flag album. A year later I was in high school and started a punk rock club.  We put out a little shitty zine which over the next 4 years became a pretty big shitty zine.  In 1995 I started a record label and released a record, two tapes and a CD and an unreasonable amount of random merch. In 1996 I started shooting punk bands which led to an eventual career in photography.  For the next 8 years I shot pretty much nothing but bands.  When I went to college at Penn State in 1999 I was totally disconnected from everything and my closest musical outlet was hanging out these hardcore kids who had a campus radio shot that I would help out with.  Luckily 1999 was when Napster was at it’s peak and I downloaded every song I had ever heard and thousands more. After two years of Hell at Penn State I moved to Richmond, VA where I started booking shows again and started shooting noise, punk and thrash bands.  In 2003 I was in a shitty dive bar when I witnessed two college freshman play weird pop music out of a little box.  It blew my mind and a month later I was their manager.  I managed the Gaskets from 2003 until they broke up in 2008. During that time I helped them release two records, booked hundreds of shows, sold their merch, ran their website, drove them all over the country and produced a live DVD of their first performance with a full band.  The DVD took me 18 months to put together and we spent $5000 on it. I have never put more energy into anything in my life. It is my crowning achievement. We sold less than 200 copies.  I have 500 copies of it in my kitchen. After the Gaskets broke up I realized at some point I stopped liking music.  I figured from 1994 to 2008 I probably have seen around 2000 sets of bands and probably 1500 of them have been fucking horrible. I just can’t stand in the back of a room waiting for a band to play any more.  It is really sad.  The only music I ever want to listen to is music I have already heard before.  Still, we try to move on. I try to have a socially relevant blog, and that means pretending to like hip shit that the kids are into. You crazy kids you.

So, in order to stay super relevant and “in the know” without hiring 20 year old interns (just kidding Nicky, I know you know what’s up) I am going to post some music that other people have told me I should like.

Let’s start with Hussle Club.  Fortunately Hussle Club is awesome and I love Prince Terrence.  What you should do, is just go back and read what I wrote about Hustle Club a few weeks ago, and then appreciate the fact that he finally has music out that you can download.  Seriously. This song is called “I Have High Expectations For What I Want To Be But In The Mirror I Don’t See Them Staring Back At Me” and despite the pretentious and unfortunately long title, it is really great.  The Mp3 is below, and there are remixes of it here. I am pretty excited for Terry’s album and you should be too.

hussle-club-i-have-high-expectations-for-what-i-want-to-be-but-in-the-mirror-i-dont-see-them-staring-back-at-me.mp3

Nextly, we have Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers.  Not quite as clever a title as the Grey Album but I downloaded this full length Wu-Tang/Beatles mash-up today and it is pretty fantastic.  I don’t really have any idea who Tom Caruana is, but he seems to have put together a pretty great record. I was a big 36 Chambers fan and then I sort of gave up on Wu-Tang until Ghostface’s Fishscales album and most of the Wu-Tang stuff is off their later albums, but it sort of makes me want to pick up Wu-Tang Forever again. I wish there was a bit more Beatles vocals on it as I am a life time lover of the Beatles, but when the Beatles sing back up to the Wu Tang it is fantastic.

Download the whole thing for free here. 

And lastly, just so you kids know what is up. Check out the Neurotiks.  They were my favorite band when I was 15. They were on my record label and once on the way back from a show they jumped me because they thought it would be funny. Years later the bassist very humbly apologized to me for fucking with me so much. I told everyone about it and made fun of him for trying to get his life together.  We never talked again after that. Still, they were fucking amazing.  You probably might not understand why they are amazing, and I am pretty sure everyone in this band is probably embarrassed of it, but they changed my life.  And this track was my favorite song on the record I put out when I was 15. That, my friends, is fucking history.

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

Shay Ryan could be big…

A year ago I was in LA and I shot a Burning Angel and Gods Girl named Envy Amor in this sleazy motel on Hollywood and Sunset.  Last week I returned to the infamous LaBrea Motel where I called up Envy to shoot again.  She came, and she brought company.

Meet Shay Ryan.  Shay wants to be a porn star. She wants to be a Burning Angel. And I think we all want her to succeed in those goals.  This girl had never been photographed naked before in any sort of professional way until she showed up to my creepy motel room. If she is serious about doing porn, I think she will be huge in a year.  This girl is nearly 6 feet tall, looks amazing naked, and is super awesome.  I think she was a little nervous doing the shoot and you can tell she doesn’t have a lot of modeling experience, but she is only 18 and she has plenty of time to practice. It has become my personal goal to get her naked on the internet as much as possible.  I am trying to convince her to come to NYC for a week to shoot with all my friends, but if you are in LA you should be shooting with her right now.

So this set is not my finest work, but then again, I am never very happy with anything I shoot.  There are just terrible shadows everywhere and the yellow walls make the light look awful.  Still, these photos are super hot, and the ones of her and Envy Amor together are even hotter.  I will post those at the end of the week, so get excited.

And remember, this week is a Not Safe For Work week.  I have nude pics for you every day this week even though we are starting a day late.

In the mean time, Click here to see Shay Ryan doing what she does best: Standing around naked looking super fly in high heels. 

Ps. Follow Shay on Twitter!

Last Tuesday I was in LA and Vegas party photog Hew hit me up and told me we were going to the Dim Mak Tuesday’s party at Cinespace. That guy is a mad man so who am I to argue.  We got a late start but ended up at Cinespace in time to see the Phenomenal Handclap Band perform.  At one point they brought up The Lady Tigra and people were going pretty crazy.  I took a few pictures, talked to a few girls and said what’s up to Aoki and a few random other heads I run into once in a while.  Then Hew and I drove over two The Room (even though it was less than 3 blocks away) for Rony’s party.  That shit was a good time.  I got to see Rony’s boy Gino who I love and talked to some more cute girls. We got there super late though, and had to leave after about 25 minutes. Bars closing at 2am is both weird and upsetting. I ended up walking back to my motel at some point, but not before seeing one of the better street fights I have had the pleasure of witnessing.  Unfortunately there were some downsides to this fight, the primary one being as it involved Gino’s cousin Frank who I just met.  My other issue was that it happened so fast that I wasn’t set up to shoot outside and ended up taking terrible photos of the whole thing.

What happened was Gino made Frank some pants.  These British dudes were asking about the pants, and Gino took that as them mocking the pants.  After Gino and the British dudes started arguing, Frank just started swinging. He was taking shots at pretty much anyone and just barely missed one of the greatest cheap shots you could imagine.  He was arguing with one guy, and out of nowhere swung on the guy next to him.  It was pretty nuts. Frank was pretty drunk and it soon became a one on one fight with a guy who had no real interest being in the fight, but did not like getting punched.  After they exchanged head shots a few times, the British guy decided to try to get away from the fight even though he was winning. As Frank chased him, the British guy turned and punched hitting Frank right in the mouth KOing him on the sidewalk.  After a second Frank got up and tried to give chase, but he couldn’t get his barrings and stumbled off in the other direction.

The British guys actually turned out to be really nice dudes and it was pretty unfortunate the whole thing happened.  I just hope Frank is okay, I never found out.  But in his defense, even though he lost the fight, he put on a hell of a show and didn’t quit until he couldn’t stand. There are no losers in this fight… except maybe the bouncer who did absolutely nothing to stop it and just stood there watching the action with the rest of us.

 Click here to see all the pictures from Cinespace, The Room, and the late night fight.

So partying in Vegas was pretty much a bust. I spent more time just hanging at the casino bars than anything else.  I went to the crazy fetish party I go to every year and I saw a clown staple playing cards to a girls vagina, but they don’t let me take pictures in there so it was mostly just upsetting to see such wild shit and not be able to document it.  I was really excited for the parties on Friday night, but they didn’t exactly work out as planned.

On Friday night several of my friends were throwing two different parties. The Burning Angel kids were doing one at the Playboy Club and Bronques and Eon McKai from Vivid Alt were doing a party at LAVO called Fake Lashes.  My plan was to hit up the BA party early and then head to Fake Lashes.  The Playboy club was mostly a nightmare.  They wouldn’t let me wear my hat, or take my bag in so I had to walk it to the car.  Once I got in I searched all over for the BA kids until I found out they weren’t even there yet.  Frustrated I left and headed over to LAVO.

Instantly I was greeted by a long line and a demand to take off my hat.  I think that is such a weird rule.  Luckily I saw my friend,  host and porn star Dana DeArmond outside and she pulled me into the club.  One of the managers was really cool and let me bring my camera in and made sure I had anything I needed.  Unfortunatly the other people in the club were not so nice.  When I got in there the only people I knew were Dana and Bronques.  None of my other friends were there.  It turns out that Eon ended up getting into a fight with security because they tried to make him wait in line. My friend Violet was with him and Mandy Morbid didn’t get in because she is allergic to smoke and they wouldn’t let her wear her resporator.  There was some other drama as well and I ended up taking 20 shots and then heading back to the Burning Angel party.  There I still wasn’t able to bring my camera in and one of the girls got kicked out for getting naked.  I was going to leave with her and my friend Daisy to shoot some photos in my hotel room, but Daisy’s phone died and I lost them.  I ended up at the Circle Bar at the Venetian at 5 am, but no one was even around. Total bust of a night.

There are still about 20 pictures from Fake Lashes though, and you can see them here.  Annoyingly safe for work.

Switch was Djing at Girls & Boys upstairs at Webster Hall.  As I am sure you know, Switch & Diplo Voltron together to form Major Lazer and if Major Lazer is around Skerritbwoy can’t be to far away.  Skerritbwoy destroyed the crowd with his amazing performance of which the singing was least important.  He was daggering aplenty.  Girls took their clothes off, 2’x4’s came out and Skerritbwoy dove off the DJ booth onto a fat girl being held aloft by two of his friends in the crowd.  It was pretty much epic. I missed him mid air, but I got some pretty great shots anyway.  I need to shoot him again asap.

Also that night I met a bunch of kids who are from Richmond, VA and went to VCU which is where I went to school to learn how to take photos of drunk and naked people.  Good times.

Click here to see the pictures of Switch & Skerritbwoy doing their thing at Webster.

I had no intention of taking any pictures Friday night. As you know I have a ton of photos to go up from my trip, so I felt like taking the day off. I wouldn’t have gone out at all last night but it was DJ Jess‘ birthday so I had to come out for a minute.  I ended up getting home around 7 am.  Woops.  Nothing all together exciting happened at Trash but it was actually a really good party and at 430 when they kicked everyone out the place was still going strong.  There was a crazy burlesque show that I missed, but the gallery is NSFW anyway due to an old friend and a new one, both pulling out their boobs for no particular reason.  Thats the kind of friends you want to have.

So click here to see all the NSFW pictures from DJ Jess’ birthday at Trash and I’ll be back in a bit with the shots from the Switch show upstairs at Webster.

Okay, we have to take a step away from the Vegas and LA stuff for a minute.  I shot Circa on Thursday and two galleries at Webster Hall last night so clearly I have to get that stuff up.  I also I have three more non naked girl galleries to go up from my trip.  One of those galleries was the AVN red carpet which is already on the Village Voice, so we will hold off on that.  That means I have three NYC galleries, and two west coast galleries to get up asap. I think my goal is to get up the NYC today and tomorrow, and then starting Monday post a naked girl gallery every day of the week. Still, I don’t know when I am going to manage to fit in the other two galleries, but I will figure it out somehow.  I should just post it all tomorrow hate posting too much content on the weekend when traffic is lowest.

Okay, moving on to Circa. As I have mentioned it is my new party on Thursdays. The party was still awesome despite some small issues.  The mixer was broken and I think we opened both sides of Darkroom too early.  There were a lot of people there, but the left side was a little bit empty.  I think it would have been better if just the right side was open until it got too packed. We shall see, it still was a really good party and I had a lot of fun.  A bunch of people I never see came out for it so that was awesome.  There is even some nudity thanks to this dope chick Julie B.  We did a mini bathroom shoot at like 4am with like 4 other people stuffed into the little Darkroom back bathroom. The pics sort of sucked so there are only a few, but I think Julie and I are going to shoot next week.

Oh yeah, I also forgot to change my flash batteries so I was basically shooting with an on camera flash so the photos aren’t up to my normal  incredibly high standards, but click right here to see all the shots from the new Thursday night party Darkroom anyway.  Long live Circa.

Another year another porn convention in Vegas.  This year I was responsible for shooting both CES and AEE for the Village Voice so I had less time to talk to people so I am not sure I got as fun shot as I did last year, still there are some pretty choice items in this.  I find porn conventions super interesting to shoot.  They offer a great combination of hot scantily clad girls, freakish scantily clad girls, and weird fan boys. The draw back is the horrible mixed lighting and the fact that you often feel like a weird fan boy when there are 5000 other people with cameras there just shooting for their spank bank back home. Still, I love the freak show and a lot of people in porn tend to be really awesome if slightly high strung. I had some friend there, but the Burning Angels didn’t have a booth this year.  Joanna Angel and Misti Dawn were signing for Hot Movies though so at least I could stop by and say hi to them every few laps.

There were some pretty good moments this year. I found out that Sasha Grey knows my name which was pretty great.  I was forced to take an autographed picture from Bobbi Starr who I went to Disneyland with in July.  She signed it “Let’s go to Disneyland and stare creepily at little children.” I took my first halfway decent picture of Ron Jeremy after about 20 attempts over the last 3 years. I ran into Sean Michales a bunch who is probably one of the nicest people in porn.  I saw Joe Gallant who gave me a copy of his porn film that I was an extra in. And lastly I met several people that might help make me money, and amazingly none of it has to do with porn… well, not directly…

Anyway, enjoy the super weird, and clearly NSFW shots from the 2010 Adult Entertainment Expo.

In the first of a series of kinda disappointing galleries from my disappointing trip to Las Vegas let’s start with the Consumer Electronics Showcase or CES.  I didn’t manage to get my CES credentials until nearly 4pm on Friday so I didn’t get a chance to shoot it at all until Saturday. I was only there for about 3 hours because I was also shooting the Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE) and to get to CES you had to take a shuttle bus and it really screwed up the timing of everything.  So I shot about 200 pictures in three hours, which is not too bad until I realized that most of the pictures weren’t very good.

Still the CES was super fun.  I would way rather spent time there than the AEE, but AEE is way more photographic. People just don’t look that interesting looking at gadgets.  People at porn conventions are either half naked girls expecting to get their photos taken, or creepy weird guys getting autographs from people who fuck for a living.  Personally I’d rather spend my time standing in line to try cool new inventions or play with toys or get chances to win labtops.  Seriously, at CES everyone has some cool demo or is trying to give something away.  And not bullshit like bad porn, they are giving away computers and ipods and robotic dinosaurs. If I didn’t have to work, and had a friend with me I could spend all day there.

It’s a HUGE space and I was trying to cover a lot of area in a quick time so I can’t really tell you a lot of the highlights, but there are a million web pages dedicated to tech coverage so I will leave that to them.  I will point you towards all the photos I took and have you check that out.  In the mean time, I am going to go to Darkroom for my new party Circa and then I will return to you guys with photos from the AEE.  See you soon.