Vegas, the long version.
11pm I land in Vegas it is still 102. I take a cab to Bob’s (BBK) boss bachelor pad change in to my “club clothes” and we head for the Strip to listen to bad music and talk to shallow uninteresting girls. The Vegas dress code cracks me up. Here we are in the tackiest place on earth and these club owners would rather have me roll up in pants, goofy shoes and a shirt with a collar drenched in sweat from walking from the cab to the door in 100+ heat at midnight than arrive cool and comfortable in shorts, flip flops and a t-shirt. Yeah would not want to give the place a bad image. Anyway we meet these two boring (but hot) girls from Canada. BBK has mad skills and is doing pretty well with the blonde. Her friend is a completely different story. I try several times to get her into a conversation, every time I say anything she gives me a one word answer and then turns her back on me. Yeah I am gonna put up with that. So I bail and assume my usual post of holding up the wall. After a while BBK gives up and we hit another place. BBK uses his stroke gets us past the line of moussed up frat boys and waitresses from Fresno. This place is massive. They have two levels and some kind of showgirls on trapeze act going on over the dance floor. The music is unlistenable. A few 9 dollar drinks later and we are on our way back to the first club. We get there and see the two Canadian girls have hooked up with a couple of Guido’s. You know the type, $200 gay as hell Euro jeans, white long sleeve shirt unbuttoned to show some equally gay bling, and the kind of shoes Cipo would wear(and only Cipo should wear). Well done, should make for a good story for the gals back at the call center. So that is pretty much it for my first night in Vegas.
Sunday BBK scores us passes to Rehab at the Hard Rock. It is basically a daytime rave at the Hard Rock Pool. They bring in some “famous” DJ’s and charge the general public $40 to get sunburn and listen to the same beat all day. It was great people watching. It was like a big add for plastic surgery. Everywhere you look insecure women with fake boobs, botox smiles, dyed hair, tattoo’s above their ass. Too bad they can’t buy interesting personalities. (so I could buy one too) Most of the guy’s are equally brain dead based on the need to tattoo their names across their stomachs. Believe it or not I actually had a good time. It was nice to be in the water since it was 114 that day and despite the phony factor the view was (mostly) good.
So after 2 days of listening to the same beat I was now very ready for the big show. I meet up with Swill at the Hard Rock and we made our way to The Orleans. We soon hooked up with Mistress Nikki and we were ready to rock. Swill was able to get us all tickets compete with back stage passes so big props to him. We got there right as Mastodon started their set. Wow I was impressed. I knew they had really complicated riffs and time changes that sounded great on record, but sometimes it is really hard for bands like this to pull it off live. Not these guys. The timing was perfect and the 2 guitar players were amazing. Next up was Lamb of God. I have seen them before and I knew that it was going to be a great unbelievably heavy show. The level of musicianship in this band is off the charts. I don’t think the guitarists play a single bar chord. The drummer and bassist are virtually locked together. Just perfect. The power and energy their music has is really incredible. Live these guys hold nothing back. Later we were talking to the singer Randy and he said it was their 11th straight night and he was so tired he could hardly stand. Based on the performance you would have thought it was the first night of the tour. Success is no accident for these guys. Thanks to some world class schmoozing and name dropping from Swill we were able to get back stage. As soon as we get there Nikki spots Kerry King and we get a great photo of the two of them. He was in his pre game mode so we did not bug him for long besides LoG was still playing so we went back out to the stage. We finished out the LoG set away from the unwashed masses watching from the side of the stage. After a performance like that it was hard to believe that we still had Slayer to go. Their music is so powerful and has meant so much to me over the years that it is hard to describe my level of excitement. Every time I see these guys I am inspired. They opened with “South of Heaven” and it was game on. These guys have been around for 25 years now and it is easy to see why they are so well respected. They did not play like a bunch of 40 something’s doing it for the check. They played like guys who absolutely love what they are doing and doing it for the last time. During Slayer Randy from LoG comes out and it is photo time again. I was wearing a shirt that said “Kill the DJ”, which he said was cool. (All the validation I will ever need). He also said something else but all I heard was DJ and lame. After all Slayer was playing! After the Slayer set we went back stage and are kind of milling around outside their green room. A lady inside asks what we are waiting for and we tell here we are here to meet Slayer. She invites us in and says they should be right out. Cool. Pretty soon Dave Lombardo (unreal drummer) comes out and is having some kind of heated discussion with security for giving the wrong passes to some friends of his. He gets off the phone and you could see he is still pretty pissed so we were kind of laying low not wanting to upset him. Then the lady who invited us in (turns out she is Dave’s wife) introduces us. Whatever he was pissed about was over and he was super gracious and cool. He asked us if we liked the show (um, yeah) and thanked us for coming out. Unreal. We waited a while longer but it seemed the rest of the band went out another way so we left.
We head into the casino to meet up with Nikki’s husband for a drink. While we are walking around we see Willie (guitar) and Chris(drums) from Lamb of God. They are doing the same thing we are, playing slots and wandering around like tourists. Yeah partying like rock stars! What a great end to a great weekend. Again thanks to Bob, Swill, and Nikki for such a great time
