Posts Tagged ‘photos’

This one comes courtesy of a crappy scanner. This artifact is from the year 1995, on the day Jason Feinberg and I moved into our first apartment near UNLV. Jason was attending the university at the time, while I merely hung out around the campus and, more specifically, its adjacent coffee shops. We had almost no furniture; I had a bed in my bedroom and a drafting table in the “dining room” that became a computer desk. Jason had bedroom furniture, but also only a computer desk in the “living room.” At some point, a TV appeared, and it may have been located on the floor or a crate. Not sure.

That was the life back then, though. I mean, it’s not like we did a lot of entertaining (that is a lie), but when we did, it was like 20 goth kids at once, and half of them were smoking on the balcony (as was I, above) anyway. Actually, the apartment was nonsmoking until after we started holding weekly meetings of our music collective/record label at the apartment that fall/winter, and eventually frustrated that everyone kept leaving in the middle of the meetings to smoke outside, Jason just said “f*ck it” and declared smoking inside was OK. Which, for me at the time, was just fine.

We paid $600 a month for a two-bedroom, two-bath, 1,000-square-foot apartment back then. Split between two people. Hoo-boy. Try finding a deal like that now.

A classic.

Five-sixths of Theory of Flight with The Fist. Photo by Michael Gaskell / MG Studio

My assault on the local music scene continued last week with a Las Vegas Weekly article about up-and-coming sextet Theory of Flight, whose Dishwalla-meets-30 Second to Mars sound is propelling the band to the next level.

We met for an interview in the green room at the House of Blues before a local music showcase featuring Theory of Flight. The guys were super-accommodating, very honest, earnest and passionate about their music and continued to reinforce just how great most of our local bands can be. In the last month or so, I’ve interviewed a number of groups — all male-dominated, sorry to say, which might be a topic for a future article — and surprisingly, there hasn’t been a douchebag among them. For the most part, these guys get along fabulously, work harder than they play and actually support other bands. I’ve been looking for some drama, but honestly, it’s hard to come by.

I’m optioning a few local acts to profile next for the Weekly, but I’ll be taking a brief detour for my next assignment; however, I’m not telling you about it until the story’s done. I know, I’m such a tease. In the meantime, you have been keeping up with The Utopian webcomic, right? Shit’s about to get heavy.

Photo by Botielus

Today’s random-ass photo comes courtesy avant-garde mixed media artist Cybele, pictured to the left of me in the home-made playing cards dress. You gotta love that kind of creativity. Or fear it. Whatever. This was taken at some sort of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy-sponsored party at Ghostbar atop the Palms in 2006. I don’t know who the other middle-aged ladies are, but they were obviously drawn to my platinum smile. Or something.

We’ll be getting around to talking about my stint as guitarist with Morgana Athena in a few weeks here on the ol’ Bleeding Neon, but in the meantime, here’s a photo from 1998 of the band chilling on a couch inside dearly departed Cafe Espresso Roma on Maryland Parkway in Las Vegas. That skinny goateed mofo on the left is, of course, me, followed left to right by Dru Broils (bass), Chris Naser (vocals), Ryan Couevas (keyboards) and Brian Pfiefer (drums). I think this was the last show we played together, a weird hodgepodge gig where we started to explore different sounds. If I recall, we did a sit-down acoustic set, a full-on electric set and a few experimental tunes in which I switched off from guitar to bass and then drums. So I guess that was my public debut as a drummer, more than 10 years ago. Huh.

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.

This is a much more recent image than the ones featured previously, snapped a month or so back (was it REALLY cool enough for all of us to be wearing jackets?!) inside the Griffin on Fremont Street. That’s Geoff Carter, officially one of the most badass writers and photographers on the planet. And that’s me rocking the cash money, because you know that’s how I roll when I’m up in da club.

Ah, gentler (and thinner) times. That’s yours truly with “Gonzo” Greg and Nicole at the Hard Rock Hotel in 2006 for the Gumball 3000 road rally Las Vegas visit. It was my first time hanging out with the pair, who at that time hosted Area 107.9′s morning show. We waited forever on the red carpet for alleged celebrities to show up (I was covering the event for the Las Vegas Weekly), and had to entertain ourselves somehow.

Bonus: Here’s audio of my appearance on Greg and Nicole’s radio show a year or so later, after I became the editor of Racket magazine.

Before The Fist, there was The Finger. This was taken by pal Scott in the parking lot of a Baja Fresh outside of San Diego on my 30th birthday. We were down there for Street Scene, a big, two-day, annual outdoor music festival. I have like 700 photos from that weekend in which I am giving the bird. Turning 30 did not mellow me out at all.

I’m in the process of downloading photos from my old LiveJournal account — which is about 900 images deep — and figured, hey, while I’m at it, why not post random photos from those galleries up here for all you lovely people to see?

This was snapped via my old Samsung camerphone on the balcony at Planet Hollywood’s Curve, where my buddy Scott and I were attending the official Miss America pageant afterparty in 2006. Curve’s long-gone, its space now occupied by Miami import Privé.

Also: This was the night Scott and I developed our long-held distaste and enmity for Ron Futrell. If you see him out, punch that drunk old pervert in the foot, would you?