brandon perdue (more widely known as hapa) is the director of the los angeles branch of the scratch academy – a school to train DJs. i never realized there was such a thing, but there it is, tucked away under the 405 freeway in west LA. the day i was there seemed busy. students were practicing in a big main area full of turntables, while another class took place in a closed off back room. my first thought upon arrival, watching (and listening to) half a dozen people learn to DJ was something along the lines of i sure hope DJ classes come with complimentary advil. i was reminded of my father who, when i asked for a drum set as a kid, wisely commented that he wouldn’t mind listening to me play the drums, but definitely didn’t want to listen to me learn to play the drums.

as someone who is old enough to have bought vinyl because that was the predominant medium at the time (my first vinyl music purchase: weird al in 3D, so that should give you some idea), and someone who later contemplated being a musician (bass), i’ve always found electronic music and DJing to be somewhat puzzling. i once got sent to photograph a fatboy slim concert and found myself totally confused. as near as i could tell, it was a bunch of people watching someone listen to records. still, there were so many people there and they all seemed so engaged in what was going on, i’m sure there was something to it that i was just missing.

still, the people at the scratch academy could not have been nicer. hapa himself could not have been more personable and gracious. everyone seemed interested in the photo session and friendly. rarely do i go to any location where there isn’t a single person unwilling to help out or be involved. there was definitely a sense of camaraderie amongst the students and faculty at the school. it’s great to be in a place where everyone is really focused and enthusiastic about what they’re doing, even if what they’re doing is something that i could’ve used earplugs for. then again, i probably wouldn’t have wanted to hear miles davis learn to play the trumpet, either.

toward the end of the day i got to sit in a bit on hapa’s official class. even being there only for a short time, listening to him instruct the students was eye opening. he had a great attention to rhythm and detail and the feel of a song, to how passages of music work together and could play off of each other, and when he explained things to the students it was apparent how much he loved the process.

learn more about hapa here.

visit the scratch academy here.

thanks, brandon.

back in march and october i had the chance to spend a few days visiting matt nathanson in silver lake, california, where he was recording his new album, modern love. matt was the very first person i met at college. he was a year ahead of me and had volunteered to mentor incoming freshmen during orientation week. so when i pulled my 1990 toyota celica into the parking lot of sanborn hall and struggled to get my bass amp out of the trunk, matt was there, ready to help out. i liked him instantly. at that time, with my wire frame john lennon glasses, mike-watt-inspired flannel shirts two sizes too big, a crazy long jewfro halfway down my back, and dreams of being a music major, i met matt and thought, yeah, this is going to work out.

matt ran an open mic every tuesday night at the grove house, a student coffee shop/meeting place on campus. that’s where i met john darnielle, too. i attended those open mic nights religiously, even played every once in a while when someone needed accompaniment. honestly, my freshman year of college is a blur of grove house open mic nights, way too many hours spent playing ping pong, and the revelation of my very first intro photo class in the spring semester. matt (and scarth) would close out each night with starfish and coffee, and to this day there’s no truer version of the song to me than that one.

matt would always play at some point during those tuesday nights. usually it was a song about a girl he knew in high school (remember, we were 19), and the story of unrequited romantic disaster was always as entertaining as the song, if not moreso. especially when he gave out the girl’s full name and actual phone number to the audience. all i can say is that those girls are lucky this all happened at a time when it was uncommon for people to have cell phones, and nobody had a texting plan.

even though i was a music major, my interest in music at that point was overwhelmed by my inner nerd. i was a bass player and only cared about other bass and guitar players. jaco pastorius, les claypool, steve vai.  i was overly impressed with technical proficiency, often mistaking chops for feel. it didn’t take long for matt to try to talk me out of this fallacy, and in the process, over the next several years, after forcing me to accept loans of a number of CDs, i came to appreciate songwriting more. matt’s enthusiasm not just for musicians but for how songs were put together was evident even then, especially when he would spend 35 minutes in a friend’s dorm room playing and replaying the same 45 seconds of a smashing pumpkins song until we all agreed that jimmy chamberlain was amazing. when i think back on what i gleaned from being a music major, i kind of feel like i should have given my tuition checks to my friends instead of to the school.

beyond the music nerd debates, there’s something else that was really important. i soon figured out that matt didn’t offer rambling intros to his songs, complete with full names and phone numbers just to be funny. he did it because that shit hurts. still. you don’t write songs and join a band because you think life is fair. (not unless you’re polyphonic spree) we’re all looking for a catharsis of some kind, or validation, or familiarity, or sympathy, or a way to vent. in those early songs i saw a version of matt that was tough to see then, and very difficult to see now, but one that was probably so clear to him. as awkward as he thought he was in high school, as difficult and inexplicable as he might have found women and relationships – hell, other people – to be, matt knew very early on that acting the part got you at least halfway. he told me once, when i was very young, that if you decide to behave confidently nobody will know that you’re scared shitless. of course, as i enter my late 30s, this advice almost seems obvious, but that was the first time i had heard it. i always appreciated it, and i never forgot the source.

so almost twenty years later i still count matt as one of my dearest friends. in the intervening time we’ve always been close, even if the crazy schedules of self-employed life make it take months in between visits or phone calls. even though we lead very different lives now the foundation of those early years, the awkwardness, the nerdiness, the angst-filled tendencies, they keep us on the same page. matt calls me on my shit when i need it called out, and vice versa.

but i’ve had the chance to see him grow into the bona fide rockstar we always kind of figured he was. i am pleased as could be to see that in the process he hasn’t lost his love of obscure drum fills, the great lyric that nobody notices, and a deep rooted dedication to his own neuroses. hey, man, it’s all part of the process. i am glad to see he’s no longer roaming the halls wearing skirts and arbitrarily flashing people. we all have to grow up some time, even if it’s just a little, right? we both even cut our hair. on that note, when i first picked up a camera back in 1993 matt was gracious enough to be my guinea pig. i rooted through some old print boxes today looking for that very first picture i took of him to put in this post, but i couldn’t find it. it’s probably better that way, as it would’ve been profoundly embarrassing for both of us.

matt’s new album was released last week. the pictures here are out-takes from other photos used in the liner notes booklet with the CD. do yourself a favor and pick it up. you can download it from itunes here.

thanks, matt.

i went to school in claremont, california, in the early-mid 90s. a week or so after arriving at college i went to an open mic night and saw another student sing songs in a way that had never occurred to me before. at that point the mountain goats was just john darnielle, and he wrote a new song nearly every single day. at that point i was still a wide-eyed, long-haired, quick-fingered music major, and those tuesday nights were what college was all about. at that point i’d never picked up a camera at all.

i went to rhino records in the claremont village and bought up all of the mountain goats cassette tapes i could find. they had scrawled drawings for covers, folded paper inserts and handwritten labels. they were recorded on a boombox. the ultimate in lo-fi. but i loved them, anyway, and john and i became friends. he lived off campus with his parents, and sometimes i’d pick him up and drive him to the open mic nights. very briefly, we entertained being in a band together.

john took greek classes at scripps, where i had music theory. every once in a while i’d pass by him walking to class and he’d complain about how much greek was kicking his ass – like i told him it would when he started (i had taken three years of ancient greek in high school – it’s not as easy as it looks). john would never miss a class – he calculated that each one cost him $70. though after cashing a student loan check he guiltily (proudly?) admitted to me that he had spent almost a thousand dollars playing street fighter. “but now i’m really good at street fighter,” he said. i always hoped that was an exaggeration (the money, not the skill).

still, john wrote songs inspired by myth, tragedy, literature and obscure legend. he wrote songs with narrators who often behaved very, very badly, caught up in their own mishegoss. his songs contained people overwhelmed by circumstance and emotion, people desperately searching to escape their own lives, people looking to redefine themselves;  people looking for meaning, people looking to start over but somehow just not quite able to. kind of like a college freshman. well, one with really serious problems, at least.

if you just listened to john’s songs and never spoke to the guy you might think he was a really stressed out, neurotic mess. he’s said often that the more frazzled he becomes in his own life the worse the people in his songs seem to behave towards each other. of course, that’s only half the story. john continually surprised me with his ability to almost aggressively notice the beauty in often overlooked things. one year around march or april he stopped me in the quad, pointed at a tree and demanded i acknowledge how awesome spring was. the next year i was alerted to spring with an excited and rambling message from john on my answering machine – something about leaves and blossoms. once he stopped me to expound on how amazing he thought snoop dogg was, another time, quentin tarantino and pulp fiction, which had just come out.

john has taught me many things, without meaning to, i’m sure. when i hear his songs i’m reminded that you sometimes have to work hard to keenly appreciate the world around you, and if you put in the work you’ll find it’s worth it. i’m sure thousands of mountain goats fans will agree.

back in the early 90s john routinely played in a side project with franklin bruno of nothing painted blue. the side band at the time was called the extra glenns, and they collaborated often on songs for compilations put out by various indie labels. franklin does my very favorite version ever of my very favorite holiday song (“what are you doing new year’s eve“), though his was the first version i heard. i had just purchased a record player and mistakenly played the song at too slow a speed. it was low and mournful in a way other versions of the song just can’t match. even today, i’ll admit, i often listen to it at the wrong speed just because it has a certain something that i react to. i listened to nothing painted blue albums while working in the darkroom in college, but i didn’t have much contact with franklin personally.

a few months ago john and franklin put out their first album together in eight years, this time dropping two letters, changing the band name to “the extra lens”. the album is called undercard, and is available on merge records, here.

thanks, john. great to see you again.

i photographed ramona gonzalez of nite jewel, at her home in mount washington on a day in august when my car’s thermometer read 108 degrees. i had actually taken ramona’s picture briefly once before, four years prior, and she kind of remembered that.

ramona makes complex, ethereal, richly layered songs that are somewhat hypnotic even though my personal tastes run to the more traditional. while i am rarely personally inspired (or uninhibited enough) to groove, i can appreciate when it’s done well.

so i shlepped gear up a steep stairway and then up the side of a hill behind the house, while her husband sat on the couch and ramona answered the writer’s questions. i really wanted to take a wide shot of her bedroom which was messy in a really beautiful way but ramona nixed it, saying that her mother would be absolutely mortified if she saw the state of things in there. i tried arguing the point, but she won out in the end and we only used a small, innocuous corner of the room. most of the time messy rooms in photos just look, well. . .messy. this one would’ve been good, though. i like the pictures we got, but it’s tough sometimes in photo shoots – the things you could have done are always so apparent, and even though nobody else knows of them later, they linger in your head and you think, if only. . .

on a positive note, when the shoot was done and i was cleaning up, ramona asked me what size shoe i wear. she had just done a show which was sponsored by converse, and as a result she had stacks of shoe boxes in the corner of her apartment. i got a pair of black hi-tops that very nearly fit me. they’re a half size too big, but i wear them all the time anyway. thanks for the shoes, ramona! photographers so rarely get perks.

tommy, a dear friend and an amazing talent, an endless well of energy, ideas and enthusiasm. tommy is never far from a positive spin on a situation, which would be a good lesson for me to notice (especially after knowing him for 17 years) if i were the kind of guy who assimilated those sorts of lessons. in late 1996, when told that his record label had changed their minds about allocating $100,000 for him to make a music video, he decided to make one himself, for free. geggy tah was on the road at the time, but at various points they would stop, go to circuit city, buy some tapes and put them in the demo cameras on display there. they made an entire video inside of circuit city for likely under a hundred bucks.

tommy jordan, lemons into lemonade. (see below)

tommy has been a tricky guy to photograph, as he almost never stays still for very long. years ago i swore he was most himself in a still photo as a motion blur. somewhere out there steve croes has a photo of me literally chasing tommy down the streets of north hollywood, trying to get him to stop moving long enough to do PR photos for geggy tah. these days, though, the moments of stillness are more frequent and every once in a while i catch something a little less blurry.

also it should be noted that the way to his heart is with ridiculous amounts of tabouli. in case you’re wondering.

circuit city “lotta stuff” video below, as well as – somewhat randomly – a woman hula hooping to tommy singing “holly oak”.

bill foreman, “san diego”, march 7th, 2010 from Max S. Gerber on Vimeo.

bill foreman writes some of the best songs you’ll ever hear. heartbreaking, complex, layered and soulful songs. i was lucky enough to get the chance to record one of them when he was in town a few months back, crashing on my couch for the night while attending a teaching conference.

click the video above to hear bill sing his tune, “san diego”.

visit bill here. he deserves your time, your money and your respect.

thanks, bill.

i first met tommy almost fifteen years ago. i used to do sound for the bands that came to play at the school (yes, i was that geek), and geggy tah was a staple in town. tommy lived nearby in pomona. he was one of the first people to give me any credit as a photographer, before i even really knew i was one myself. i took some awful publicity photos for them, not really knowing how to do anything at all. one day in november of 1995 tommy showed up at the school’s darkroom with gina, the band’s boston terrier mascot, and we managed to take a picture that was probably my first real successful image. it got put on t-shirts, stickers and greeting cards. every six months for the past 13 years i’ve gotten a (small) residual check from sales of the greeting card, though i’ve only seen it in a store one time.

tommy has more energy and enthusiasm and optimism than any other ten people i know. i’ve always been glad for this influence in my life, since these sorts of impulses are not something i generally have when left to my own devices. tommy dances the night away. he takes spontaneous trips to strange places. he walks up and down stairs on his hands. he can do a standing backflip. he breaks into hotel swimming pools, getting stopped by security guards even though he’s a full grown man. from his porch in pomona you can see fireworks at the LA county fair. he can play any instrument without thinking much. he’s just one of those naturally musical sorts of people. there are those who are virtuosos on a particular instrument, and then there are those people who almost are music themselves, and anything around them becomes an instrument. that’s tommy.

tommy must be mellowing because for a long time it was very difficult to take a picture of him. he had so much energy, so many ideas, moved so fast, that any still frame didn’t seem to really look like him. and it was infuriating because his ideas would go so fast that by the time i set up for one of them he’d already be on to the next one. at one point the only thing that made any sense was to have him be a blur. he seems somewhat more comfortable being static now than before, and i take that as a good sign. we’re all growing up, i guess.

i live in pasadena, which is in the greater los angeles area. it just so happens, though, that the greater los angeles area is very, very big. it encompasses many different cities and neighborhoods, each with their own individual identities and personalities. it also happens that when people who don’t live in the greater los angeles area consider what it means to live in LA, they think of a very few specific things that really have nothing to do with how i live in LA. first they think of celebrities and superficiality (and sometimes plastic surgery) and extravagant spending – beverly hills, parts of santa monica. if they’re a different kind of person, though, they think of hollywood.

i hate to spoil it for all of you out there in the middle of nowhere, but the plain fact is this: hollywood – the real hollywood – is kind of a shithole. it’s a bit of a mess. hollywood blvd, the “walk of fame” is full of tourists. the rest of it is just run down and dirty. like new york city, but it smells less of urine, maybe slightly more of desperation. people in nyc seem trapped. people in hollywood look like someone has just pulled a fast one on them, and they’re tragically trying to stick to whatever dream they might have once had that brought them out there in the first place.

hollywood is also the birthplace of rock n’ roll. well, kind of. maybe that’s more memphis, really, but LA is home to the welcome to the jungle variety of rock n’ roll that you would’ve grown up with if you’re like me, in your mid-thirties. and before that, if you’re somewhat older, the same clubs were the birthplace of the kind of rock n’ roll that you needed herbal supplements and really big pants to enjoy. new york gave you punk rock, LA gave you psychedelic music and hair bands. sorry about that. anyway, as a result all these clubs – the whisky a go go, the roxy and the troubadour – got really famous, and now, even though wonderful uninhibited photographs were made there decades ago, and even though far less people care now, they still – like everyone else – find it fun to mess with and shut out photographers for almost no reason.

the point, rambling though it might be, is this: i shot sean scolnick (who calls himself langhorne slim) at the troubadour on santa monica blvd, just east of the famous beverly hills sign that’s been used a thousand times in movies as an establishing shot. the shoot happened before the show, before the club opened doors for the night. there was nobody there, and not much going on, but just for fun the bouncer at the club declared that i could take pictures in there, but i wasn’t allowed to use any of their power outlets. that’s a new request. strobe lights use very little juice, comparatively. it was such an absurd statement that i didn’t even think to argue it, even given that i had been forced to park far away and schlep all my gear in anyhow. either way, i had fifteen minutes to get my shot before slim was whisked away to the next thing, so it’s not really any use arguing with the bouncer.

sean was pleasant as could be, his songs are great, and as a photographer i appreciate anyone who can pull off a good hat and not look foolish. i just can’t help but be a bit irked by arbitrary rules designed to exert influence for no purpose. it’s like a backhanded compliment. something that sounds helpful but isn’t really. go ahead and do whatever you want, just don’t use any of our power or take any pictures inside the actual club. do whatever you want as long as it’s not anything you want.

still, you can only spend so long being pissed at middle management. the job has to get done regardless of the circumstances, and something has to work. and, of course, now you’ve got ten minutes left to set it up. and i firmly believe that i, as a photographer, have an obligation not to take it out on the subject – none of the nitpicking, scheduling snafus, rushing, cutting corners, bitching, and carrying 200 pounds of equipment up three flights of stairs in the middle of summer – none of that is the subject’s fault. and in the rare cases where it is the subject’s fault, it’s my responsibility to make sure that it doesn’t get in the way of the relationship we need to have, however brief, to make the picture work. because in the end, really, every subject gives you a gift. and if as a photographer you’re at all receptive to these things you’ll be able to overlook all the hassles later and just focus on the image, and the possibility given to you, once again, to attempt to make a connection with someone else.

enough has been said about the downsides of photography. this job has its problems, its dead ends and its demoralizations. but look at what we get to do everyday. sometimes it’s anything we want.

last weekend lili haydn played with roger waters at the close of the coachella music festival. i was not in attendance at coachella, but this likely has a lot more to do with my dislike of the great outdoors than it does with music. i like roger waters. i listened to shine on you crazy diamond parts 1 through 14 over and over again when i was fifteen years old and hoped it might make me deep and thoughtful. i watched the wall at home by myself and thought it was a bit messed up. later on i learned that not being on drugs was the problem with my enjoyment of that movie, though i did have a drug-thought-moment when it prompted me to first consider that little children with british accents sound creepy. like little tiny college professors who drool and bite things.

anyway. . . lili haydn is an amazing violinist who i’ve seen all over the place for many years. anytime some rock band needed a violinist who could shred, and also be hip and beautiful at the same time they’d call lili. i was worried initially that this shoot wouldn’t go through due to a nasty publicist-enforced contract, but everything seemed to work out okay ultimately, and things went off without a hitch. lili couldn’t have been more gracious. even gave me an orange for the ride home, which i ate while stuck in traffic on the 5 south. thanks, lili.

this was shot for LA citybeat, and is likely among the last thing i’ll be shooting for them. all of you photographers out there have a publication like this one. that is to say the pay is horrible, the exposure is negligible, the subjects are often great (i.e., not just guys in ties in conference rooms)  and usually you get conned into working for them because you have a buddy who is the editor – or the art director – or the music editor. don’t object, i know you do this. the fact is, everybody knows you do this. and they expect it. yes, all of us photographers have to make a living, pay rent and buy food and CF cards or whatnot, and even though we angst over running a business the truth is that most of us are terrible at it. for myself, i’ve gotten a lot better at turning down obviously bad deals. and now, with some shakedowns that took place at citybeat over the last couple weeks the chains have finally been broken. the last personal connection i have to that mag has been fired and/or resigned. so there is no longer anything obligating me to do a cheapo shoot at the last minute for someone calling in a favor.

truth be told, though. . . i might miss some of the subjects.

thanks, lili, for being my last one for this paper. it was a pleasure.

my buddy denny is many things, most of which make little to no sense to a normal person. mostly he’s king kukulele, ukulele player extraordinaire. his act is almost more vaudeville than musical, and he’s the only professional ukulele player i know who also manages to be a property owner in southern california. for those of you in other parts of the country, please note that these days it is not exceptionally easy to be a property owner in southern california.

anyway, denny had a psychological break and wanted serious pictures. he left his silly hat and grass skirt at home, and was distracted by some very un-tiki-like neuroses that day.

denny has an 18 month old daughter who goes to his shows and dances when he sings. when someone else sings, she cries. this is brilliant: making your own fans, biologically. in fact, there was a post to this end recently on aphotoeditor.com that talked about how photographers should stop chasing a few big time photo editors and ad buyers and should start collecting large numbers of fans through other means, like the internet. i’m not sure that he thought of what denny is doing – making your own fans through reproduction! so now all i have to do is have kids and encourage them to grow up to be hotshot photo editors, right? oh, and hope they don’t also grow up to hate their dad.