Bleeding Neon

Another week, another local music story for the Las Vegas Weekly. This time around, I hung out with Left Standing before their CD release show at Wasted Space inside the Hard Rock Hotel. Sadly, the Weekly’s space dedicated to local music coverage is limited, so I had all of 450 to 500 words in which to work. That may seem like a lot, but it’s not. After compiling my notes, I struggled to come up with a decent angle for the article, which had to be a combination interview/show review/CD preview — not something easily done in such a small space.

After letting the story “cool” overnight, I awoke on deadline day with the revelation that the article might best be served by a Gonzo-style, experiential trip through the night at the Hard Rock. I described the gyrating go-go dancers, the wobbling, drunken tourist frat boys, the individual band members and their particular tics, the basketball fans glued to the flat screens … you name it, I threw it in there. Problem was, that put me over my word count before I even finished the second paragraph.

Sigh. Such is freelance journalism.

So I ended up with a serviceable piece that hopefully did the band justice, if not the overall experience. After finding ways to squeeze stories into 200-word boxes for Six Degrees, I’ve gotten pretty good at compressing a whole lot of content into not much space. But it still doesn’t mean I like it.

What may not be entirely obvious to readers of my weekly webcomic, The Utopian, is that I’ve pretty much drawn entirely on my own high school as the model for the setting of the strip. A few things have been changed, but from the brown-and-gold colors to this week’s outdoor quad, The Utopian owes quite a debt to Bonanza High School.

That being said, Part 002 of the comic comes to a conclusion today. In the next chapter, “Special Interests,” we’ll start to see both the consequences of The Utopian’s activities as well as some of the ugly politics going on behind closed doors at Sagebrush High. And then you’ll want to sit tight for Part 004, “Out of the Closet,” in which we go off-campus for some face-smashing action. You won’t be disappointed. I hope.

I should be able to keep up the pace, but I’m also working on tweaking the first 16 pages of The Utopian for a print sampler I’ll be publishing in a limited run and giving away at San Diego Comic-Con in July. As I posted over on The Utopian blog, I’m looking for cover artists for these upcoming print editions, and I have to move pretty quickly on the sampler, so if you know a good artist who may be interested, send him or her my way.

In other comic-related news, um, I sent out another proposal this week for the “big” series I’ve been hinting at for a few months now, and am wrapping up the plot of a potential Zuda entry with a new artist to be announced. Yes, I know, I am being vague again. You know how it is, kids, no specifics on projects until they are done deals.

But I did finish off another article for the Las Vegas Weekly, so look for that in tomorrow’s paper. Or when I go on about it here.

Before I decided to bang on the skins in an entirely awesome rock band, I played other instruments, including the xylophone, lute, panflute, marimba and, as evidenced by this photo above, the guitar. Specifically, I played wicked rad spooky guitar in Las Vegas’ most successful Gothic rock band, Morgana Athena. The photo above is from a show we played in fall 1998 (?) at the Boston, which was Las Vegas’ version of, um, a crummy Sunset Strip rock bar that for some reason people loved.

Let’s note a few things from that photo: 1. Pj at 145 lbs. Huh. 2. My Hamer archtop. This was a sweet guitar I specifically bought (for $600 no less) for play in Morgana as, um, it was black. Sadly, I wasn’t independently wealthy back in my early ’20s, so I ended up pawning the guitar … for $100. 3. I’m wearing basically the same outfit I wear to almost every As Yet Unbroken gig: White shirt, vest, black pants. I guess it’s a step up from the leather-and-fishnet look of Rahne.

Thanks for the reminder, Plaxo! Sadly, it’s not THIS Frank Richards:

Sigh …

In February 1993, my first published piece of quasi-journalism ran in Scope Magazine, the then-monthly alternative newsmagazine that would go on to morph into the Las Vegas Weekly, Greenspun Media’s gloss-covered, nightclub ad-filled alt-weekly. While working for Greenspun from 2004 to 2006, I was a regular contributor to the Weekly, covering everything from nightlife and music to business and education, but my crutch was always local music. I helped launch the bi-weekly “Loud!” column, which exclusively covered the Vegas music scene (I co-created a similar monthly feature for the CityLife a few years earlier).

So I suppose it isn’t too surprising that I’ve returned to the pages of the Weekly in this week’s issue with an article about the return of 1990s doom groove maker A Pig Named Jodi to the Vegas scene. It’s a story about the band’s homecoming that is as much a homecoming for me. To be honest, I haven’t spent that much time thinking about the local music scene outside of how to get my band, As Yet Unbroken, pushed to the top of it (Speaking of which, our new song “Almost Gone” maintained its spot as the most downloaded song on the Weekly’s website AGAIN this week). But when arts and entertainment editor Spencer Patterson — with whom I worked previously at the paper before running off to launch Racket magazine — approached me about again covering local music for the Weekly, I quickly fell into a familiar place. I mean, sure, interviewing big rock stars is nice and all, but I feel much more like I’m doing something worthwhile by giving my scene brethren a little love in print.

So look for another story in (I believe) next week’s issue as well, and so long as I don’t get terribly distracted, there should be plenty more coming. And if you have any story ideas about Vegas-based bands, venues, producers, studios, etc., feel free to fling ‘em my way.