Bleeding Neon

I know I neither am nor look that old, but sometimes, I’m made to feel like it. And an assignment I fulfilled for the Las Vegas Weekly a few weeks ago was one of those times.

I had to cover the CD release party for a young pop-punk-metal band, A Smile From the Trenches, at The Farm, one of Las Vegas’ only all-ages music venues. It was the Thursday before Nevada Day, the day our fine state celebrates its statehood — and it happens to be Oct. 31, so basically, state workers and students get off every year for Halloween. So The Farm saw a decent number of teens for a weeknight, a few hundred by my estimate. Good news for the local music scene, right? Yes. But …

Let me put this into perspective: I am 33 years old. I do not wear skinny jeans. I have significant gray in my beard. I don’t smoke. And I don’t care much for screamo bands whose names do not start and end with “Thursday.” So there I was, either stuck in a room surrounded by kids more than half my age listening to loud, screamy bands, or stuck outside surrounded by underage smokers, being very careful not to look even sideways toward a female patron for fear I’d look like a pedophile. Or more likely, feel like it. And this being an all-ages venue, there was NO LIQUOR IN SIGHT.

The article turned out all right, I think, and the guys from both A Smile From the Trenches and its record label, DC Hardcore, were very nice and accommodating. And the band was definitely far less terrible than its predecessors that night. But in all, it’s not a situation I’d like to repeat anytime soon. Fellow slightly-worn journalist Dave Surrat was there that night to write about the venue itself for the CityLife, and if not for his not-so-young presence and that of promoter pal John “Ducky” Slaughter, I’d likely have gone fully insane.

But I think this can all be summed up by my tweets from that night:

• The Farm has no signage but easy to find: Parking lot full of teens. Ugh.
• has never felt as old as I do at this all-ages venue right now. Oh the things I do for music journalism.
• is finishing my Corona and then heading back to the emo teen hell. Also, I lost $5 at video poker. Think @lasvegasweekly will cover that?
• Either this screamo band has six members or they just have a young girl who appears to play keyboards but really’s just there to look cute.
• Good news: The kids still mosh. Kind of.
• is standing next to the modern equivalent of rock hoes. The bands change but the hoes stay the same.
• Why yes, Virginia, I am watching a screamo band cover Katy Perry’s “Hot & Cold.” Why do you ask?

… and thanks to a little cold I picked up and some car drama, I’m more behind than expected. So a quick update, bullet-point style:

• I had a few CD reviews run in last week’s Las Vegas Weekly, of new discs by local bands Theory of Flight and Onara. Two very different approaches. Check ‘em out.
• I’m meeting a photographer tonight from The Rebel Yell, my alma mater’s newspaper (which I edited for a short time during my undergrad), for an article about my comic book creations that I think is running in tomorrow’s issue. Of course I’ll keep you posted.
• I’m pretty sure I’ve rounded out the line-up for the first issue of Omega Comics Presents, the new comic anthology series I’m starting next year. Should be good. More soon.
• Outside of sitting on the couch watching Smallville (and I have to say, Season 8 is making up for the last few seasons) yesterday, I did manage to sign, pack and mail all the pre-ordered copies of The Utopian #1. This is what the home office looked like last night:

• If you DIDN’T pre-order the first issue, no worries: You can now order both the standard and deluxe editions directly from IndyPlanet — and even get a preview of the new splash page artwork. You just won’t get signed copies or discounts on shipping. Sorry. But if you want ‘em signed, come see me on Nov. 7!
• Some changes are coming for As Yet Unbroken. Don’t want to talk about it too much right now as we have a meeting about it this weekend, but suffice it to say, things are happening.

That’s it. I’ll have a wrap-up on the Florida trip and other goodies soon. Just wanted to check it. Booyah!

It must be October again, because my Google Calendar is reminding me I have a flight to catch to Orlando, Fla. on Wednesday morning. In what appears to be developing into an annual tradition, Sara and I are heading out to the State That F*cked Our Nation For Four More Years for a friend’s wedding, some R&R, and a reminder of why I don’t live in Florida:

Yes, it will be 94 degrees on Wednesday when we arrive and likely raining. If not, it will be 85 percent humid. Either way, it will be hot. And it will be wet. And neither in a good way.

But, all that being said, I’m looking forward to getting away for a few days. It’s been a busy month around these parts, and I worked extra hard the last week to get caught up for this trip. While a portion of the excursion will be spent in Melbourne Beach for wedding-related activities, the rest will be just chilling in O-Town, with no set plans. Well, except for a meet-up with Alert Nerd supreme Matt Springer. That should be fun.

Other than that, there will be the usual Utopian updates on Wednesday and Friday this week, a few CD reviews in the Las Vegas Weekly on Thursday, and I believe the October issue of 944 drops as well, featuring my roundtable discussion with four hot local architects. Keep your eyes open, and don’t break anything while I’m gone.

It’s Thursday, and that means the new issue of Las Vegas Weekly has hit the racks around Vegas (and the ol’ intertubes). It looks like my article about Hal Savar’s Acoustic Soul is in there.  This was another situation where I had to cut a tremendous amount of meat from the story.

The piece was originally pitched as “an acoustic cover band’s struggle to break itself away from the ghetto pigeonhole of coverbandland.” But after starting work on the story, I realized it would never fit into 500 words. Hell, I couldn’t fit a profile of the band framed around one night’s show into 500 words. I had to leave out the story of the man who tipped the band $100 to stop playing Johnny Cash, as well as Hal’s origin story of the song veto process. And everything else: The band’s origins, more comments from the audience, etc.

This happens quite a lot. I did a 20-minute interview with Swedish indie-pop singer Lykke Li just to get one quote for a Coachella preview I wrote for Six Degrees, and never did manage to re-sell the rest of the interview. I probably have hundreds of pages of similarly unused interview notes with bands, artists, writers, architects and other subjects collected from these 15 years in journalism. One day I need to transcribe and organize these scraps and create a comprehensive archive. Who knows? Maybe someone will actually want to read them.

In other journalistic news, I’ve started getting back on track (somewhat) with my fine arts coverage at Examiner.com. If you haven’t subscribed yet, I highly recommend doing so if you have any interest in Las Vegas-spawned arts. If not, um … forget it, I guess.

Another week, another Pj Perez takeover of the Las Vegas Weekly’s “Noise” section. This time it’s the double-punch of a short feature on pop-punk act Air Raid Anthem and a review of the new CD from long-time local hard rock band Slow Children.

Air Raid Anthem is not the type of band I’d normally listen to, falling in line with all those interchangeable, synth-infused, post-emo bands out there, none of whom I’d probably be able to identify on the radio if I heard them. But though I didn’t want to like it at first, the band’s debut EP, Ready to Get Sweaty, isn’t bad. There’s good songwriting, sing-along choruses and even some surprising twists. The second track on the disc, “Unsolved Hystories,” reminds me a little of stuff from The Killers’ first album. That’s a good thing.

Slow Children … well, I don’t want to write too much here, as I actually reviewed the disc already, but I will say that after only tangentially hearing about this three-piece band but never seeing or hearing them before, I now a) want to see them live and b) want As Yet Unbroken to play a show with them. I think our melodic, diverse, hard rock sounds would work well together. Let’s make it happen, guys!