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.

During CMJ I saw Das Racist for the first time.  They were playing the Moodswing360 showcase at Santos Party House.  They were playing on the stage downstairs which I always hate shooting on.  There’s a ton of uneven front lighting, no back light and the ceilings are black so you can’t bounce a flash for shit.  So when they played it was super hectic down there and I knew I wasn’t going to get great shots so I just popped off a few shots and went back up stairs. I have a lot of mutual friends with the guys so I wanted to check them out but I honestly didn’t even remember much about them when it was all said and done.

That show ended up being a pretty interesting one for both Das Racist and myself.  They got signed to Moodswing and I ended up getting Moodswing as a photo client.  They are really high on Das Racist and told me that their show last Thursday at the Highline Ballroom was going to be nuts. They told me they had a guestlist of 150 people and it had been completely filled up. The venue was totally sold out and I heard that people were paying as much as $100 for tickets on eBay.  So clearly photos were needed and Moodswing sent me out there.

I got there pretty early because my friend Jasmine Solano was opening up. She DJ’d for a bit and then did a couple songs before Detroit rapper named Danny Brown did his thing.  They both were great and got the crowd going crazy getting ready for Das Racist.  I went upstairs and hung out in the dressing room which was quickly filling up with people. Atrak and Nick Catchdubs from Fools Gold were there as was El-P of Def Jux.  People seemed to be getting drunker and drunker. I just figured shit was about to pop off.

When Das Racist finally went on stage the crowd went crazy.  They rocked that shit completely and had the whole place moving.  I have seen a handful of shows at Highline Ballroom and the only person who has come close to rocking it like that was Andrew WK. I hung out on stage taking snaps and trying not to get run over.  At some point I did a lap and took some crowd shots and even the back of the room was going off. It was just a lot of fun. They brought a bunch of guests on stage throughout the night.  Not really sure who everone was other than El-P and Danny Brown but it was clearly a party.

I took like 600 photos or something and it was total madness.  I need to just stop talking about it and you need to look at the pictures.  I feel like this show will be one that people are talking about for a long time.

Click here to see all the shots from the Das Racist show at the Highline Ballroom.

I am headed to Philly in an hour or two for a tattoo convention and some parties and some madness. I have no idea where I am staying or exactly what I am doing but I guess that’s the fun part of traveling when you are me and never make any sort of plans. Anyway, I probably am not going to bring my computer with me on this trip which means I won’t be able to update this weekend so I wanted to get something up really quickly today so you guys don’t suffer.  I would hate to deprive you of new DBB content for 3 days.  That would just be mean. So…

Last night I shot this crazy Das Racist show at the Highline Ballroom, but before I went over there I stopped by the New Era flag ship store to say what’s up to the Mishka guys who were having a party to celebrate their collaboration with New Era.  They designed two exclusive hats and matching T-shirts for New Era.  I took a few shots for fun so you can check them out and then run over to the New Era store on E. 4th street and Broadway and check these fuckers out for yourself.

Hey guess what today is? It’s Ladie Lane’s birthday! And you guys are getting the presents.

I found out about her on Burning Angel and I think she used to be a Suicide Girl at some point.  I was instantly a big fan and I have been bugging her for a while about shooting with her one day. That day finally came when we both were in LA at the same time. She was there doing shoots for Kayden 420 and I came over one evening and we shot in her hotel room.  I hate shooting in hotel rooms and I didn’t love the way these photos looked as photos, but  fortunately Ladie is fucking so cute and so fun to hang out with that I think ultimately there are some really nice shots in there even if the light sucked.  She actually told me that these shots captured her a lot better than many of the shoots she does and that meant a lot to me.  After we shot we went across the street to a $.99 store because I was trying to find a cheap roll of film and I convinced her to pull her boobs out in the store.  The photo ended up being the most popular photo I have ever posted on Tumblr.  The moral of this story is that I love this girl and I hope you do to.

Click here to see all the naked pictures of Ladie Lane. They are really cute, not at all safe for work, and very poorly color ballanced.

I have been trying to shoot Kimberly Kane for years but every time I would head out to LA she wouldn’t be able to shoot. I met her finally in Vegas last January but we only talked for a few minutes.  One year later, back in Vegas I ran into her again and we made plans to meet up when I was in LA but she didn’t really seem like she wanted to shoot. In LA I ran into her at the art show for Jessie Lee and we got to talking. She told me she hates doing photo shoots and that’s why she had never made time to shoot for me. Fortunately I had an ace up my sleeve.  She told me that she didn’t have any money on her but she really wanted to buy one of my photos in the art show. She asked me if there was a way she could buy it later.  I had a better idea.  I had made a bigger print of the same photo for an art show in Philly. I made a few copies so I knew I had one just sitting in my apartment.  I told her I would send her the print if she shot with me.  She agreed to my terms and we made plans to shoot.

I had lunch with a friend that ended up running late so I rushed across LA to try to beat the setting sun so I could shoot Kimberly with natural light.  She told me there was great light in her apartment but I was unfortunately a little bit late.  We decided to get right down to it and she jumped on her bed in her underwear.  The sun was setting right in front of her window and we had harsh but really nice light in the room.  We started shooting and an hour later we had shot all over her apartment, played with her dog, eaten really creepy blood oranges, hung out in her bathroom and had some fantastic conversation all the while.  I have no idea why Kimberly hates shooting cause she was so easy to shoot with, looks totally amazing and just fun to hang out with.  I really love a bunch of these shots and I hope you guys do too. So yeah, go to Kimberly’s website cause she is fucking awesome and she’s won a bunch of AVN Awards so you know she doesn’t fuck around.  Let’s just hope she likes another one of my prints enough to let me shoot her again…

Click here to see all of the pictures of Kimberly Kane hanging naked out in her apartment in LA. Do I even have to tell you these pics are NSFW?