I realized recently that the last time I did any Driven By Boredom clothing it was 2009. I figured it was time to step up my game a little bit and frankly I wanted my own black on black DBB Snapback. Fortunately a friend of mine who does the embroidery for another thing I do asked me to shoot his daughter’s Sweet 16 party. Normally I would have said no, but the guy is a good friend and has done a lot for me so I pitched him the idea of a trade. So a few weeks ago I shot his daughters 16th birthday in what was one of the most surreal events I have ever photographed. Did you know 16 year olds love the Electric Slide? And somehow Soulja Boy is still popular? Wild.

(I actually have shot one other Sweet 16 party but it was for current Fool’s Gold recording artist Leaf and Usher was there an Dev and Shwazye performed so it was kinda a different thing.)

Anyway, in exchange for shooting the party I got a couple dozen hats. I got a dozen black on black, six magenta (pink) and six red. Since I am stealing one of each of them there’s very few left so if you want one you better get one now.

The hats are $28 which is a compromise between the $25 I wanted to sell em for and the $30 that I probably should sell them for to justify a shooting a 16 year old girl birthday party.

I shot my friend Bel Vargas in the hats last night but I didn’t really think about shooting any safe for work stuff because I am an idiot so I guess you are just gonna have to deal with some nipples.

Click here to get your very own Driven By Boredom snapback! 

Ps. Also for sale on my Etsy store is the greatest photo I have ever taken.

As we speak (or as I type) I am on an airplane headed to Austin, Texas on my way to South By Southwest. This is not just any SXSW for me; it is my 10th straight SXSW. I started out traveling to Austin when I managed a dance pop band called The Gaskets. After the Gaskets broke up I started going as a member of the media, covering it for the last six years with a camera in hand. This year I am going to be EXTREMELY busy and I will be on the road for at least two weeks. I have a feeling that I won’t be able to update this site as much as I would like to so I wanted to put this post up. I WILL be updating my Twitter, Instagram and most importantly my Tumblr. I will be posting highlights from every day on Tumblr so check over there if I am slow to update this site.

Anyway, in honor of my 10th at SXSW I wanted to give you a little break down of some of the highlights of the last 10 years. Austin is crawling with musicians and celebrities so this list is going to sound a little (okay, a lot) name droppy, so I apologize for that in advance. Just don’t read it if that sort of thing is as grating to you as it is to most people. I am going to include some links and photos to keep you guys entertained while I am busy taking photos 14 hours a day. And if you are going to be in Texas over the next two weeks hit me up! See you guys in a food truck line! (Read the article)

CMJ is upon us and I have already shot two parties with a lot more to go Tomorrow and Saturday. On Tuesday I headed over to the Box to shoot Benzi’s Get Right Records party. I have been to the Box many times but they mostly don’t let photographers shoot in there so it was cool to get to bring my camera for once although there were no naked acrobats or anything during the party.

The party started off slow and I think it was because of the presidential debates because thirty minutes after they were over the party was fucking bumping and there was a line out the door. Benzi DJd of course but there were also DJ sets from Jason Smith and Solidisco. Master Shortie showed up from London to perform and Silver Medallion fucked the crowd up as well. My homie Shwazye came through as a surprise guest and did one song and my girl Roxy Cottontail hosted and did a couple songs too. It was a good time despite being on a handful of Benadryl after an allergy attack nearly took my life. That might be a slight exaggeration…

Lastly I want to give a shout out to Moodswing360 who sponsored the party and asked me to come shoot it. I shot their CMJ Showcase for them last night too and I should have those pictures up tomorrow so come back!

In the mean time, click here to see all the pictures from the Get Right Records CMJ showcase at the Box.

Back in jury duty after trying to catch up on sleep and hanging out with a friend visiting from Atlanta.  I didn’t get any real work done but I did mostly clean out my inbox.  One more week of slow updates and jury duty will be over and it will be nice enough outside again that I will be wanting to party daily.  Expect some good rooftops parties and summer time madness coming very soon…

In the meantime I am trying to come up with reasons to post and I decided to post some shots from a sweet 16 party I shot a few weeks ago.  Normally I wouldn’t post shots like this, but it wasn’t your normal sixteen year old’s birthday.  This girl Leaf celebrated her birthday at the Red Bull Space in Tribeca and she had performances from Hyper Crush, Dev and my homie Shwazye. Leaf also performed and is a talented musician in her own right. Oh, and did I mention that Usher showed up and was just hanging out?

I edited this gallery down to mostly just shots of the performances since it’s a little weird to be posting a bunch of shots of 16 year olds on my blog, but I left in a few fun crowd shots and of course pictures of the artists and Usher hanging out in the roped off VIP area.  Why didn’t my 16th birthday party have a VIP area?  Actually maybe it did… I certainly don’t remember it…

Anyway, I should get back to judging people right now, but you guys should click here to see some of the shots from Leaf’s Sweet 16 Party at the Red Bull Space.

As my South By Southwest coverage keeps trucking I bring you one of the crazier parties of my SXSW trip.  We have the Moodswing360 showcase. This thing lasted for 7 hours and featured so many acts that it would take me half that time just to write it up properly.  I took so many photos that my serious flash battery that I only use when shooting all day kicked out on me. So instead of doing a proper write up I am just going to give you a run down of the acts and a few of the highlights.  So let’s go…

It was an official SXSW event held at The Phoenix presented by Moodswing and Oakley and featured just a ton of artists. In alphabetical order we got The Cataracs, CurT@!N$, Das Racist, Dev, DJ PS1, Gilbere Forte, Kelley James, Mann, Ninjasonik, Outasight, Shwazye & Cisco Adler, and Sky Blu of LMFAO.  That list might not be entirely accurate cause Maluca was on that list and I know I didn’t see her but I do know that it was total madness.

Ninjasonik killed it as always, but they played a bunch of new shit that I hadn’t heard before that I was really digging. My girl Jasmine Solano was DJing for them and did a song with the boys as well. The Cataracs have made a ton of hit songs and brought a bunch of people out while they were doing their thing including Dev who got everyone going. Das Racist seemed totally burned out by SXSW but put on an almost better performance just sort of getting into the audiences face, half assing it and having some equipment issues. It was pretty brilliant.  The headliners were Shwazye & Cisco who I have known for years. Shwazye has even talked about bringing me on the road with him a few times so let’s hope that actually happens.  They came out with Sky Blu DJing and he even did some tracks with them as a vocalist. They started out just destroying the crowd but as their set got longer the sound got worse, and they got drunker and the whole thing just sort of devolved into chaos. It was really amazing. They brought a ton of people on stage to do tracks with them including a girl who clearly had no musical talent and it just got weird. Shwazye started karate kicking the drums and I was losing my mind from lack of sleep and the whole thing was the perfect ending to an insane show.

So check out the photos from the Moodswing360 SXSW Showcase at The Phoenix by clicking here. And keep in mind I shot this with a real flash, with my on camera flash and without a flash at all so it looks like 3 different photographers shot this stuff. The pictures are almost as eclectic as the show.

So this is the 6th part in a series called All My Friends Are In Bands. Each time I do this I post three videos from musicians I am friends with or directed by friends or something like that.  Normally I talk a little bit about each band and video and it’s sort of a lengthy post. This time I am using these three videos as an excuse to do a really quick update because I have to go on a secret mission today. You will find out more later or more sooner if you follow my Twitter.

Anyway, real quick, the three videos I have for you are my boy Shwazye’s (aka Aaron Smith) solo track Said It All Before, Trouble & Bass’ AC Slater teamed up with Dell “o8o” Harris for a track called “Right Now” and finally a preview to Loli Lux’s video “Wannabe” which I am in.  Well I am in the actual video that comes out in January, not the preview. Still, I gotta represent.

So yeah, watch the videos and I will talk to you fuckers on Saturday.

Aaron Smith – Said It All Before (Rock Version) from Aaron Smith on Vimeo.

AC & DELL – “RIGHT NOW” [official] music video from Trouble & Bass on Vimeo.

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

So clearly I am running a bit behind on updates but here are the photos from last Thursday’s Moodswing360 CMJ showcase at Santos Party House.  I have been sort of avoiding a lot of CMJ but I had to come out because my boy Shwazye was headlining with LMFAO and a few other friends like Dances With White Girls, Skeet Skeet and Maluca were going to be doing their thing.

Santos was totally hectic and packed all night. I think it was pretty much a good hectic though and lots of fun bands played on both levels. I finally caught Das Racist which I had been meaning to check out and I thought it would be fun to shoot LMFAO (it was until I got champagne sprayed all over my camera). There were so many California based playing that it was one of the most California parties I have ever been to and I have been to a lot of parties in California. Also due to LMFAO’s “party rock” vibe there was a weird fist pumping Jersey Shore set there as well making for an odd, but ultimately fun vibe.

I sort of half assed it on my coverage because their was so much to shoot and I knew I could do very little work and still have a ton of pictures. I took a few pics of each band and I shot a few crowd photos but I mostly just hung out with friends who I haven’t seen in ages.  I had an awkward conversation with two people who I didn’t recognize because I am an asshole and have a terrible memory and I met a cute girl who asked me if I needed an intern. In the two seconds I talked to her she seemed qualified but I haven’t heard from her, but at least it reminds me to put the word out again.  I wasn’t going to look for a new intern until it got closer to the new semester, but I’ll put this out there anyway. I am looking for a reliable intern who is in college and is NOT a photographer. I am looking for marketing, PR, or tech people who can help on the website side of things, not the photo side.  Get at me if you are interested.

Sorry for the tangent, let’s get back to the party photos.

Click here to see the photos from the Moodswing360 CMJ Showcase at Santos Party House.

The All My Friends Are In Bands series continues. Every time three of my friends have a new music video out I post them up here for you bastards to enjoy.  This week I was sitting on two videos that I wanted to post but I didn’t have a third so I reached out to my Twitter account for a third video.  I got a few suggestions but they weren’t exactly what I needed so I picked a special video for the third one. You should check out those suggestions anyway.  Check out BST’s band live, check out some insane thing Dan Baxter is working on and check out a video for a band that my friend Brian produced. (He produced the music not the video. Anyway, let’s move on to the videos….

We start with a video that my friend Trev directed. I don’t actually know Ralphy Boy, but I don’t hate him at all. Trev runs The New Pop and wrote and directed the movie epically I starred in. Ralphy Boy’s song is called “Get It” and the whole thing reminds me a little bit of “What’s Up Fat Lip“. So check it out already.

Next up we got the new video from my boy Shwazye.  He just came out with a solo album under his real name “Aaron Smith”.  It’s called Love Stoned and you can get it completely free online.  The album is pretty killer even if it’s a little California for my tastes. That hasn’t stopped me from listening to it a bunch.  I met Shwazye at Sundance a few years ago because we have the same watch.  Dude is always fun to hang out with.  You should read this story about the time I went to Beatrice with him. Crazy night.  Anyway, check out his video for “Said It All Before” right now.

And lastly, this video is not new but clearly very important. As you probably are sick of hearing about by now, my friend Ross Harman died last Monday. His memorial service is this Sunday so tomorrow I am going out of town for it. I will be back Monday or Tuesday. I miss the kid so fucking much but I hope that once I properly grieve with friends and family I can start to move on and get back to my life. Anyway, this is Ross’ band The Gaskets’s video for a song called “Eiffel Tower. It was directed by our friend Grier Dill. It got accepted into the SXSW Film Fest and stars yours truly as the Hitleresque villain Hell bent on destroying pop music. I hope you like it, it’s pretty fucking amazing. And remember all The Gaskets music is available completely free now on TheGaskets.com.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xiyL52TbeU&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/14941623[/vimeo]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdwEhWxLp10[/youtube]

So Perez Hilton did his big party in Austin and a ton of bands played and there was an insane crowd of people trying to get in and total madness and all that.  I just sort of shoved my way through until I was somehow over a barrier and the security grabbed me and I started yelling shit about the Village Voice and they brought me to some table at which point they let me in without even asking my name or to see any ID. Then again, as media you didn’t really get to actually enjoy the party.  They sort of ran us around like sheep, keeping us in this caged off back area. At one point before Snoop came in we had to all stay in one room that was about 100 degrees and all of the photographers missed shooting Estelle because of it. We also didn’t get to see more than one song of Snoops set.  I was pretty annoyed.  So I did get out a little bit to shoot the crowd but I had to keep coming back to get lined up for shooting the bands.  But it was much better set up last year, which is why most of these crowd shots are actually back stage shots, with just a handful of actual crowd pictures.  I’ll be back with the band photos in a few minutes, until then…

…Click here to see all the crowd and backstage photos from Perez Hilton’s One Night In Austin party at SXSW 2010.