Posts Tagged ‘photos’

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?