One of the only bad things about shooting Voodoo fest a few weekends ago was that I had to miss the “Check Yo Ponytail” tour when it came to NYC on the 29th of October. The tour featured a bunch of friends of mine, The Death Set, Spank Rock, Johnny Nelson and Franki Chan, plus it featured Big Freedia who I had not seen but was properly excited about doing so. Unfortunately work called and I had to be out of town for it. Luckily for me part most of the tour came to Austin for Fun Fun Fun Fest and I got to see Franki, Spank Rock, Johnny and Big Freedia do what they do.

Big Freedia killed it and put on a hell of a show but the light was unforgiving and I only got to shoot her first three songs. By the middle of the set she had half the crowd on stage and it was a crazy party but I had to be working somewhere else by the time things really got going and I only saw the madness from a distance. Big Freedia did make my day when she showed Ryan Gosling her new Sailor Jerry tattoo and my photos showed up all over the internet.

Spank Rock and Johnny Nelson also got Sailor Jerry tattoos and put on a hell of a show as well but I expected that since I have seen Spank Rock more than a half dozen times. He always kills it and with my homie Johnny Nelson backing him up, he cannot be fucked with. Those guys killed it and even though they kicked photographers out after three songs when they performed Johnny’s track “Body Bag” I came running back into the crowd to sing along. Of course I gotta hold it down for anyone with my logo tattooed to them…

Anyway, you need to check out these shots, I really dig the Spank Rock photos particularly. I split these into to galleries so click on those motherfuckers below.

Click here for all the shots of Big Freedia at Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, TX.

And click here for all the shots of Spank Rock with Johnny Nelson at Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, TX.

Since I last posted about Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All some interesting things have happened. When I defended Odd Future’s “attack” on photographers at Voodoo Fest I didn’t realize the shit storm I was about to get caught up in. Odd Future’s publicist forwarded my article on to a bunch of people criticizing the band and I ended up being quoted in Rolling Stone, The LA Weekly and a bunch more. As soon as that happened every music photographer in the country seemed to come out of the woodwork to criticize not only me but my work as well. Attack after attack followed and some photographers actually threatened to kick my ass if I ended up working with them in the same photo pit. It was pretty amazing considering all I was doing was trying to clarify the fact that Odd Future never slapped anyone. They slapped cameras, which is fucked up, but they didn’t assault anyone’s actual person. I also went on to say that I enjoy that kinda violence in music. It was a personal preference and I was not wishing harm on anyone. My point was just that if you don’t like crazy rock and roll violence then you should stay away from dangerous bands. Problem solved.

On top of all of this I got accused of being this fame hungry egomaniac because I blogged about the incident and “bragged” about meeting the band and did an interview with Rolling Stone.  I just want to make it clear that I didn’t do one interview with anyone and that any media I was featured in was purely quoting from my blog. As far as me being an egomaniac or bragging about meeting the band I hope that everyone who reads this blog understands that a big part of my work is telling the story through more than just photography. I write up every blog post with a story about the event or band I am covering and since this is a personal blog I think that is completely appropriate. I understand a lot of photographers just want their work to speak for themselves but this blog is as much a diary as anything and I am going to keep “bragging” about my adventures.

So let’s get to the bragging. The one good thing about all the bullshit that came out of that blog post was that Odd Future’s publicist sort of owed me a favor… or at least he appreciated the bullshit I put up with defending his band. At Fun Fun Fun Fest Odd Future had a strict no photographer policy but they granted me special permission to shoot from the pit. I was warned to stay to the side and stay out of the bands way for my own safety. For the first few songs I shared the pit with Brooklyn Vegan’s photographer but at some point he was asked to leave for some reason and it was just me shooting from the side of the photo pit.

The only member of Odd Future who knew who I was was Left Brain so I didn’t want to get shit from any of the other guys so I stayed the fuck out of their way.  At one point Tyler The Creator got hit in the face with a beer can and in an instant jumped into the crowd looking for someone to fight. His entire band and several other members of their crew just jumped into the crowd with them looking for a fight. The whole thing turned into a mob scene and I was pretty sure that was the end of the night but instead five minutes later the band was back on stage like nothing ever happened. Tyler lost his hat in the ruckus and I found it and handed it to him and he high fived me and posed for a photo before he started playing. After the fight I was pulled out of the pit by security but one of Odd Future’s crew members grabbed me and told security I was cool. A few minutes later while he was in the middle of a song Hodgy Beats, the same guy who threw water in my face at the last show, came over and bent down to the photo pit and shook my hand. It was pretty clear at that point that the band knew who I was and I shot the rest of the show from center stage having a great time.

The set ended with the band challenging both the crowd and the bouncers. They asked their fans to rush the stage but then they reminded the crowd that the bouncers were going to kick their ass if they came over. All the bouncers got this amazing look in their eye and instead of stopping the show they just went to war. All the kids trying to get on stage and the bouncers having the time of their lives trying to stop them. I was in the middle of it trying to get out of the way and get shots at the same time. At one point Odd Future’s publicist climbed on top of the speakers and jumped into the crowd from about 10 feet in the air. You don’t normally see that from PR people.  I ran over and pulled him back over the barrier with one arm while holding my camera with the other. It was just a lot of fun.

After the show a few members of Odd Future came up to me and thanked me for having their back with the whole Voodoo fest thing and that meant a lot to me. I don’t regret defending them at all but I think I would have been a little bit more careful about it if I knew the amount of shit I was going to get for it, so to at least know that the band appreciates it made the bullshit a little easier to deal with.

But anyway Odd Future are fucking great live. I probably won’t be going out and buying a bunch of their records but I would see this band any day and I hope I get to photograph them again soon. They are putting punk rock into hip hop like it should be. Hip hop and punk rock have been the two most important genres of music in my life and there are so many similarities from the energy to the DIY nature to the aggression and it’s great to see a band blur the lines between my two favorite forms of music. Plus they make for some awesome photos.

Click here to see all of my shots of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All At Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, TX.

I keep running into the Black Lips. I met them at SXSW, Lollapalooza and at the Vice.com party. They took my boys Cerebral Ballzy on tour with them and one of them is dating my friend Katy. I have heard nothing but good things about these guys and they all seemed like good people. I was really hoping that when I finally saw them I was going to like their band.

Luckily I did. Those guys kicked ass at Fun Fun Fun and put on an amazing show. Slayer started playing in the middle of their set but after I shot Slayer’s first couple of songs I ran back across the festival grounds and caught the end of the Black Lips set. I came back just in time to see my friend Faith make a poorly executed stage dive where she hit her legs on the crowd barricade and was limping around the rest of the trip. Despite her fail it was actually fucking amazing move especially for what appears to be this innocent looking adorable girl.

Anyway, the Black Lips were awesome and I can’t wait to check them out again in a rock club instead of a big festival with Slayer playing 300 yards away… I’d love to get some better shots of these guys.

Click here to see all my shots of the Black Lips at Fun Fun Fun in Austin, TX.

So after Major Lazer’s show at Voodoo Fest and the tattooing that followed I made a new friend out of their insane hype man Skerrit Bwoy. He is one of the best live performers I have ever seen and a hell of a nice guy. He also really likes it when we give him bottles of Sailor Jerry rum. During the first song of Major Lazer’s Fun Fun Fun Fest set Skerrit Bwoy saw me in the photo pit and pulled me up onto stage with him and gave me a shout out to the crowd. I wasn’t planning on shooting their whole set but once I was on stage I clearly couldn’t leave and boy am I glad I stayed.

Major Lazer’s set ended with a crazy dance party and Skerrit Bwoy was posing for photos with girls on stage while he was still performing. Diplo had only one CD turntable but still managed to keep the party going. Ryan Gosling was on stage holding a inflatable bunny and I somehow convinced Skerrit Bwoy to do an a cappella stage dive after the show was already over just so I could take a picture of it. It is one of my favorite shots ever and ended up running on the Huffington Post and in the Village Voice in print.

That night I rolled with Skerrit Bwoy, my Sailor Jerry mother Dana Dynamite, half the Black Lips and some more of the Mad Decent crowd over to the greatest restaurant I have ever been to in my life, Lambert’s in Austin. If you are ever in Austin, you need to fucking eat there. It was a Hell of a Saturday night and it wasn’t even midnight yet. The next night Skerrit had gone home but I got into some really weird shit with Diplo that I can’t even talk about… but I can at least link this video…

Now just click fucking here and see the pictures of Major Lazer at Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, TX.

Slayer was the real main headliner of Fun Fun Fun Fest. Every night there were there big bands playing with everyone from Danzig to Public Enemy, but everyone seemed to be pretty fucking excited about Slayer. Even Odd Future thanked everyone who came to their show despite Slayer playing. One of the food vendors had a Slayer Dog for sale for $6.66 and there were more Slayer shirts at the fest than anything else.

It hadn’t rained in Austin for months before Sunday yet the skies opened up a few hours before Slayer played. I am not going to comment on the rumor that it was raining blood and frogs but let’s just say with the combination of the dust storms and the blood rain I was pretty sure the world was going to end when Slayer took the stage. Fortunately for us it did not and they just played what was described to me by a huge Slayer fan as their best show in a decade. I only shot two songs but it was an epic experience.

Click here to see all my photos of Slayer from Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, TX.

As you better fucking know by now I front the world’s greatest band. We are called Fucking Bullshit which is the world’s greatest band name and we play punk rock music. Specifically we play punk rock music that was written by other people when we were still in diapers. We pretty much do all early 80’s punk/hardcore covers with a few other things thrown in (Cop Killer by Body Count for example). We ruin lives and there is a good chance I will bleed or vomit on you if you come to the show.

Since we do all covers we are never going to release any music but we need some way to pay for our practice space so I reached out to my pal Nicholas Gazin to draw us up a t-shirt. He did the iconic Cerebral Ballzy shirt and I figured if we had an iconic shirt maybe it would make up for us not being a real band somehow.  I then hit up my friends over at Kill Shop Kill and they made me a bunch of shirts in exchange for the advertising that you might be looking at right now on the top of this very page.

So now that I had this awesome shirt I needed to take some pictures of it. At the same time a girl named Alias Blue hit me up on Model Mayhem and she asked me if I would take photos of her naked. This is something I rarely say no to and she had half her head shaved so I figured she would be an ideal Fucking Bullshit model.  We rolled over to the Fucking Bullshit practice space an hour before practice and we got her naked in our new shirt.

The photos kinda suck because they were shot in an ugly practice space with an on camera flash and they are generally uninspired but there are two important elements that make these photos awesome anyway. 1) The shirt is the greatest thing that has ever existed and 2) Boobs. You cannot fuck with that logic. Also after the shoot we walked out into the Bushwick night and took more photos while dudes in bands walked by. Those photos are a lot better.

Anyway, you can get one of these shirts for your own for just $10 if you come to Lit Lounge tonight at 11PM to see the greatest punk cover band that has ever existed in humanity. I will probably have a Pay Pal thing set up later if you want a shirt but they will cost more and you will have to pay for shipping and you won’t get to see the greatest band to ever bleed from the face.

So I will see you motherfuckers tonight. Both the show and this gallery are NSFW.

Click here to see the dirty photos of Alias Blue wearing Nicholas Gazin’s Fucking Bullshit T-shirt.

For the second weekend in a row I found myself at a music festival in an airstream trailer watching bands get Sailor Jerry tattoos. At the Voodoo Fest in New Orleans we tattooed members of Fishbone, Major Lazer, Peelander Z, TV on the Radio and Boots Electric. This time at Fun Fun Fun in Austin we tattooed Big Freedia, Spank Rock, Johnny Nelson, members of Passion Pit, G-Side, Paint It Black and nearly everyone in EYEHATEGOD.

Big Freedia was a highlight, not only because she got a hilarious tattoo but because later when she was talking to Ryan Gosling she showed him it and I got a picture and it blew up all over the internet and made my client very happy and ultimately that will lead to me going on more adventures like these. My homie Johnny Nelson is on the road with Spank Rock and he got a shark right near his Driven By Boredom tattoo and Piink from Major Lazer who got inked last week came back and got a tattoo this weekend that actually says Sailor Jerry on it. It was pretty amazing.

All the tattoos were once again done by Terry Brown at Uptown in New Orleans. Next time down there you should get him to tattoo you… just don’t get him started on his love for Public Enemy or he might never stop tattooing you.

Anyway, I got a busy day today and my band has a show tonight so I am going to get out of here, but check back in a little bit because I have one more post for you and it’s a good one….

Click here to see the Sailor Jerry tattoos from the Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin Texas.

Just like on Halloween Weekend at Voodoo Fest Sailor Jerry set up one of their airstream trailers in the artist area of Fun Fun Fun. They gave out rum drinks and actual tattoos to artists, media and festival staff. The airstream also became a place to hang out. There were benches out front and the airstream was one of the only dust storm proof place at the fest.

This star studded gallery is a collection of photos taken in and just outside of the airstream. Lot of rad bands and cute girls stopped by and you clearly need to look at these pictures. I will be back tomorrow with a sequel of sorts to this gallery when I show you all the Sailor Jerry tattoos that were given out at the airstream. Get excited.

Click here to see the party inside a party that was the Sailor Jerry Airstream at the 2011 Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin Texas.

This is post one of a series of photo posts from the Fun Fun Fun music fest in Austin Texas that was held last weekend. I was asked to cover the crazy three day party for Sailor Jerry who seemed really happy with my work at the Voodoo fest the previous weekend. They did tattoos and passed out free drinks and I documented at all but I also got to have fun fun fun at the fest and I shot a bunch of bands and a bunch fun times and a bunch of Ryan Gosling.

This first intro post is just full of the crowd shots I took that don’t fit into any specific galleries. These photos are from all over the fest but most of them were taken in the artist/media area that I spent most of my time in because I needed to stay close to the Sailor Jerry trailer. Plus most of my friends are pretentious VIP types and they don’t like to pay for drinks or venture out into public with the unwashed masses.

Also since this is the intro post of Fun Fun Fun I should mention the Ryan Gosling thing.  He was filming a Terrence Malick film called Lawless during the fest and he was there all damn weekend and then he was at all the after parties. I ran into the guy 50 times and EVERYONE was talking about it constantly. Yesterday when I was in Chicago I felt like there was a hole in my life and I didn’t know what it was… I realized that no one had mentioned Ryan Gosling to me in the last twelve hours. So in the next three galleries will be full of “RyGo” as people kept calling him (seemingly just to intentionally make my skin crawl). After that we will move into band photos and this website will once again be a Gosling free zone. So enjoy your Gosling while you have it ladies.

Anyway, I am about to get on a plane so let’s get it on.

Click here to see all the crowd shots from the 2011 Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, Texas.