The first night I of SXSW my friend Michael was not in a very good mood.  He was on a head of mushrooms and decided to drink about 10 Red Bulls and vodka and he may of pissed one or two people off… but I will get to that in detail in a later update.  The only reason I wanted to mention that is because he was trying to get me to leave the Red Bull Moon Tower as soon as fucking possible.  I was having a good time but clearly he was not in the mood for such a thing.  I understood and was about to leave when these strange dudes in late 60’s era costumes started setting up their gear in the middle of the crowd.  They kinda looked like pretentious assholes so I was ready to split but this girl just turned to me and was like “You will want to shoot Monotonix.”  I could tell by the way she said it that she was serious and I didn’t inquire further.  I told Mike that we had to stay for two songs… We stayed the full set.

They lost all sense of pretension when they got out of their clothes, into spandex suits and put on gold chains.  Then the lead singer pretended to swim through the crowd like a fish very slowly, most likely on a head full of the very same mushrooms that Mike was on, and then he climbed onto his drummer and posed on top of him like some long haired circus acrobat.  Then they played.  At once every one in the crowed tossed their Red Bull and vodkas at the band and into the center of the crowd where I happened to be.  Every other photographer fled and climbed on stage to get shots from above.  I have too many years shooting in mosh pits to be smart enough to get out of the way and I plowed through.  Michael took his underwear off and threw it into the crowd.  He loved it.  It was the only good spot of the night for him.  At one point the singer took the kick drum and moved it into the crowd.  The guitar player walked over to it and started playing it while he was still jamming.  The drummer kept playing without the kick drum.   A few moments later the singer rode on top of the crowd on the same drum and then stage dived off of it.  This was after he had already taken a ride above the crowd in a trashcan.  It was pretty intense. After it was over I was covered in Red Bull and I found ice cubes in my back pants pocket.  My camera somehow survived and I got some insane shots.

If you click right here, you can see all those shots in their full glory.  These might be my favorite images of the trip (although the re-edits I did for this site look a bit over exposed).  More Red Bull Moon Tower shots tomorrow.

Dan Baxter has made another crazy, way too fun looking video documenting the Wednesday night party at Cain, Playhouse.  Playhouse is currently my favorite party of the week and if anyone wants to come out let me know.  Just watch this video and you will see for yourself how crazy it is.  Look for shots of people in Driven By Boredom T-Shirts and DBB Tattoos because one of the nights Dan shot was my 8th Anniversary party there.  So this has to be my favorite video by him so far because it makes me look good.

Also, on my fucked up computer front, I have a appointment with a “Genious” at the Mac store tonight, so hopefully I will be back in business soon.

Playhouse – “freshycakes” from Daniel Baxter on Vimeo.

In under 2 hours tonight I broke my keyboard and possibly my camera.  I had a photo shoot that went well until my shutter jammed.  After removing the lens it seems to be working fine, but I do not know.  Later my keyboard had a few letters stop working.  That is making typing this very hard.  Cutting and pasting letters is not fun.  So I am going to make this short.

These photos are from the Sailor Jerry party at Beerland at SXSW.  I posted the Circle Jerks shots, now here are the party photos.  Do not ask me who the other bands are because I have no idea.  There is a photo of the flyer in the gallery if you want to figure it out.  I shot these for Inked Magazine.  These are the out takes.  The best of the bunch will be published in Inked soon.

Click here for the photos.  I will update tomorrow on the computer I use solely for editing images.   Fuck.

Before I went to SXSW I hit up the Gods Girls forums to see if anyone was going to be down there who wanted to get naked on the internets.  I was going to be shooting Chelsea and I figured I might as well shoot some more n00dz while I was in town.  The first night I was there Chelsea ended up getting my tattoo, but then she got really sick (hopefully not related to the tattoo) and we never did end up shooting.  Fortunately Kleio (No psychic jokes please) hit me up on the GG Forums.  She lives in Austin and was excited to shoot.  I hijacked my friends creepy van for the shoot and we shot in there.  There was like rope and weird things in there, it was pretty awesome.  People kept looking in the van while we were shooting as it was just parked on the street.  Luckily we were not arrested.  Keep Austin weird right?  I was doing my part.  Kleio is super cute and she is also a MILF. Can you believe she has had two kids?  That is pretty impressive.  She is happily married but looking to do more adult work, so if anyone out in Austin needs a hot naked girl for your van, let me know and I’ll put you in touch…  Anyway, these shots are pretty hot, you should look at all the NSFW shots by clicking on this link right…. HERE!

PS. I am now caught up on all the n00dz I have left.  Let’s get to shooting more. Who wants in?

Live fast, die young? Hell no. Keith Morris is still living fast and still not dead. When I saw the Circle Jerks over a decade ago they were still way too old for this shit. Fast forward 12 or so years, and these dudes are still too fucking old, but destroying all the young kids in their wake. I was too old for punk rock when I was about 25. I remember coming out of a Municipal Waste pit and thinking “Fuck, what the hell happened to me?” I made the most of it though when the Circle Jerks played Beer Land in Austin at a party sponsored by Sailor Jerry Rum. I jumped into the pit when all the other photographers got the fuck out of the way. I thought “Hey, I have been doing this for 15 years, what is one more pit?” Fortunately my camera made it out alive (barely). I had to keep taking breaks to cool off and catch my breath. Meanwhile Keith, Greg Heston and the guys played balls to the wall for well over an hour. Look at their set list! Eventually I put my camera down and jumped in the pit full force for their encore. It was amazing. Keith was really playing up his punk rock elder status telling stories about Black Flag and The Circle Jerks back in the day. It was fucking awesome. The venue was super small and it was a top secret show so that the party was a really intimate experience. That plus the fire marshall wondering the streets kept the already small club under capacity making for a really amazing experience. It was like seeing the Circle Jerks 25 years ago before every Hot Topic in the country started selling their T-shirts. It was amazing, and I am really happy with a lot of the shots.  You can see them all by clicking here.
PS. I wanted to give a shout out to Inked Magazine for whom I shot all these photos and got me into this sick event. You will be able to check out the rest of the shots from this party in an upcoming issue of Inked.

I went out to Webster Hall last night for Trash and Boys & Girls. I didn’t know if I was going to actually take any photos until I saw two girls in silver bikini’s painted in all green. It was for some promotion for Star Trek. It turned out one of them was my roommates best friend who I didn’t even recognize dressed up like an alien. Then today, I was going through my SXSW shots and I saw another girl dressed up in exactly the same manor in Austin. It seems as if Martians have landed. Either that or the new Star Trek film might be worth watching.
I don’t really have a whole lot to say about last night except that the gallery has some pretty Not Safe For Work shots due to Trash’s burlesque show; specifically the antics of Madame Rosebud and the wardrobe malfunction of Pandora.

Anyway, there are some fun shots all around. Designer Drugs DJ’d upstairs. Check out all the photos here.

Due to Clicksor Advertising being the worst company I have ever worked with, we had to take a short break today to completely rebuild my entire web galleries.  You see, I wanted to put small banner adds on all my gallery pages due to the fact that I get between 700 and  900 thousand page views a day and I thought maybe I could make a little bit of money that way.  I ended up making pennies a day and my site started freezing up and playing audio from sever commercials at the same time.  I am not sure if you noticed this, but it has been happening.  I rebuilt the gallery and got rid of them all, but evidently I didn’t save it and my site tried to put them back.  Now I have to start all over again, but in the mean time there should be no ads. If anyone out there wants to pay me a reasonable fee to put banners that don’t make noise and don’t advertise for pornography or online dating, please let me know.  In the mean time, while we wait for my gallery to rebuild itself so I can upload new photos, let us take pause to honor those engaging in the sacred holiday of Mustache March. I completely forgot about it this year, but those who did not, I give thanks.  So dear comrades, please watch this video from last year, when the hair on my head was short, but the hair on my face was long (well, relatively speaking).

Good night and good luck.

PS. I have two posts ready to go up the very moment my gallery has pulled itself together, be warned.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5l-DZVYrPg[/youtube]

Once upon a time there was this girl name Heidi who lived in New York. One day this handsome party photographer fell in love with her. Because of the way things are, she had to move to a far off distant land called Oklahoma where the party photographer could never get to her. That is until one day her band played in a magical town called Austin, Texas where the party photographer happened to be shooting bands just like hers. The photographer loved her soooo much that he blew off shooting Kanye West to see her band play. It was worth it because they were amazing and he got to hug her a lot. Unfortunately she has an evil boyfriend back in Oklahoma and could never be with the handsome photographer. Fortunately though, Mr. West played a secret show a few hours later and the photographer got to shoot him anyway so he lived happily ever after. The end.

Seriously though, Trash Yourself are fucking awesome. They played at the Lose Control party at Canvas. mThere show was insanely fun and I am trying to bring them to NYC. If you want to book them at the end of April hit me up. Check out all these amazing photos of them here, and then listen to their new song DIE featuring the Toxic Avenger below. You know you want to.

Trash Yourself – Die

I used to be friends with this girl Kickball Katy online. She was a cam girl and I had an early blog (before blog was really a word). The cam girl and early blog scene sort of went hand in hand. The girls would send us photos of them that we would use for content, and then they would get traffic from our blogs to get people to buy them stuff off their Amazon Wishlist or something. Although Katy was a cam girl, she was really way to young to be involved in that stuff as she was like 14 or 15 at the time. Still we used to talk a lot and kept in touch over the years. When I moved to NYC a little over two years ago she was living in New Jersey and came out to visit one day. It was the first time I had met her in real life and she was all grown up and super hot and fucking awesome and I got this HUGE crush on her… The girl has a milkshake tattoo, what is not to love? Despite her witnessing the greatest parallel parking job of my life, she was less into me and although we continue to talk online, I really only run into her at SXSW every year despite her living in the same borough as me now. Still, when I found out her band, The Vivian Girls has blown up, I was super proud of her (or something that sounds less condescending) and I knew I had to see her at SXSW.

The Vivan Girls played about 20 times during SXSW but I only had a chance to catch them once at the Mess With Texas party at Waterloo Park. I sort of suck at shooting bands in the day time, so I wish I got to shoot them in a club, but I am going to try to hit them up in Brooklyn sooner or later so I will get another chance. Still, they rocked it and I got some decent shots. At some point during the show they some how convinced some of the most awkward kids I ever seen in my life to come on stage and stumble around like new born puppies in an attempt to dance while pretending there weren’t hundreds of people watching them. It was pretty great. I can’t wait to see them in a real rock music setting instead of a day time concert cause they pretty much fuck shit up… in a very pretty fashion. I mean how can you not love a band covered in tattoos of delicious food? I am sold.

Check out all the Vivian Girls pictures by clicking here.