Posts tagged ‘maryland parkway’

Booze, music and mystery writers: ‘Las Vegas Noir’ launches tonight

May 8th, 2008

Las Vegas Noir coverIf there’s ever a match made in heaven – well, we guess more like purgatory or something more hellish – it’s liquor and writers. So it’s fully appropriate that tonight, May 8, at 7 p.m., the launch party for Las Vegas Noir is being held at the Freakin’ Frog (4700 Maryland Parkway).

Las Vegas Noir is the latest in Akashic Books’ series of city-specific, original noir anthologies, edited by Jarret Keene and Todd James Pierce. A number of contributing authors will be on hand for tonight’s party, including Pablo Medina, Christine McKellar, Bliss Esposito, Lori Kozlowski, Felicia Campbell, Jaq Greenspon, and Vu Tran. Following the reading and signing, local space-rock band Love Pentagon will perform.

Drown your IRS woes in free beer at Freakin’ Frog on Tax Day

April 14th, 2008

Freakin\' Frog

Feeling the pinch of the impending deadline for filing your 2007 tax return? Adam Carmer, owner of Freakin’ Frog and the forthcoming Adam’s Ribs, wants to help take off the edge a bit — with free beer and barbecue tomorrow, Tuesday, April 15, starting at noon at the Frog (4700 Maryland Parkway).

“Freakin’ Frog can’t do anything about income taxes,” Carmer says, “but we can do something to soften the blow: a free beer to cry into when you realize just how big a chunk the government took out of your paycheck.”

Those taking advantage of the Tax Day freebies are also getting a sampling of the offerings from Adam’s Ribs, which is slated to finally open this month, more than a year after Carmer took over the former Moose’s Beach House location. The always-confident restaurateur and UNLV professor boasts Adam’s Ribs’ offerings are “the best barbecue in town.” We shall see …

The Last Gallery Au Go-Go Story Ever Told

November 27th, 2005

I wrote the first news story about Gallery Au Go-Go, Dirk Vermin’s three-year experiment as a semi-permanent gallery curator. He took the half of his Maryland Parkway tattoo parlor, Pussykat Tattoos, which was being leased by a photographer as her studio, and turned it into an honest-to-Sid Vicious art gallery.

It was a labour of love for the local punk rock legend and tattoo artist, something borne of a genuine desire to provide an artistic outlet for other artists that felt estranged from the increasingly insular Arts District scene happening downtown. He expected to make no real profit from the gallery, asking only a minimal commission from his featured artists to help cover things like free beer and bologna sandwiches.

“If we do OK, I’ll be happy,” Vermin told me before the gallery opened in May 2002, “it will have been a successful venture.”


Familiar names in the local art scene today – Mark T. Zeilman, Iceberg Slick, Dray, Carrie McCutcheon – all had early showings at Vermin’s gallery, often when other venues would refuse to show an artist. Dray was one of those, who ran into friction with an early showing at the Winchester Community Center. The first show of his arts collective, Five Finger Miscount, at Gallery Au Go-Go also featured the work of urban muralist and underground comic creator Vezun, who told me he had difficulty getting his work into stores because of the negative image many people hold of graffiti artists.

“People don’t want to touch that kind of stuff,” he said.

I owe as much to Gallery Au Go-Go as the artists whose careers were jump-started by Vermin’s flexibility and resolve to go against the grain. I was writing mostly about local music and nightlife for the CityLife before the gallery opened. But I’d known Vermin for years, both from the music scene (where he appears irregularly with his self-named punk band) and from sitting on the receiving end of his tattoo gun. That, and I’m pretty sure he was at my wedding. So I had an inside track on the forthcoming gallery, which gave me an opportunity to write my first “art” column for the weekly paper.

From there, Gallery Au Go-Go and underground art became somewhat of my “beat.” From May 2002 until Dec. 2003, I reported on a subject about which I knew little to start, but I learned a lot quickly. While the CityLife’s official art writer covered mainstream venues, new artists, new galleries and mainly new shows at Gallery Au Go-Go were my domain, sometimes to his chagrin.

In the last year or so, buzz has died down surrounding Vermin’s gallery. My guess is that the more defined focus on downtown as the official Arts District for the city has somewhat sucked the air out from beneath Gallery Au Go-Go’s wings. The artists that used to find refuge in the welcoming cinder-block walls of the tattoo parlor-cum-art gallery are now living in and operating their own studios downtown, or filling up space in places like the Art Bar. Once-legendary fire-code-breaking opening receptions at Gallery Au Go-Go became more quiet affairs, the same 25 people or so showing up at every opening.

Vermin did the noble thing – he left on a high note, before the gallery could become completely inconsequential. And judging by the amount of press the gallery’s closing received – major features in the Review-Journal, Sun, CityLife and Weekly – the influence of Gallery Au Go-Go on the local community remained strong to its end.

I attended the closing bash, appropriately named “Gallery Au Go-Go Must Be Destroyed!” Vermin seemed to be genuinely happy, almost relieved. He told me that he plans to claim the gallery space for himself, expanding his office by about 10 feet and creating a completely revamped tattooing studio, complete with custom stone tile and stainless steel fixtures.

“No more of this pink and black stuff,” Vermin said, pointing to his garishly adorned tattooing space.

You can read the papers for details about Vermin’s upcoming book about the 1980s punk scene in Vegas (which we’ve been talking about for three years), or about his plans to curate shows at other galleries downtown. I won’t reiterate. But I will say a last goodbye to the place that gave a proper shove-off to the local arts scene, to many an artist’s career, and to this journalist’s portfolio. Or, in true Vermin form:

“Fuck you, too.”

Gig review: The Vermin, They at The Wet Stop, 2/11/98

April 1st, 1998

Originally presented in Five/One Magazine, Spring 1998

The Vermin are a Las Vegas institution. Back when I returned to this town (for good?) early in this decade, the first bands I ever heard of were Cries & Whispers, Hers Tabula Rasa, Hostage Symphony, and, of course, Vermin From Venus. They were featured on the cover of the first issue of Scope I ever picked up (and back then, Scope was better than sliced bread!). At one point in my life, I had one of their 7-inches hanging from my ceiling. And now, known as just the Vermin, Derrick “Dirk” Wells leads his punk trio into history, as perhaps the world’s greatest bar band. But, before we get into the good sleazy fun of the Vermin, we must first enter the pop universe of They.

They is a band which, to say the least, probably should not have played alongside the Vermin. They pick up the pop-rock flame where Collective Soul, Cheap Trick, and Soul Asylum leave off. It seems that the only reason They opened for the Vermin was because bassist Sterling is such good pals with the Vermin guys (we all love ya, Sterling). Their set framed by unabashedly shimmering pop songs ripe with hyper-obvious emotional content, They play a form of rock and roll which, for better or worse, seems to remain timeless: Upbeat, dancey drums, playful, crunchy guitars, punchy, driving bass lines, and treble-rich vocal melodies. The truth is, They is a pretty good band — but one your mother would dig just too much.

On the other hand, your mother would probably gasp at the antics of the Vermin — but she’d end up putting out anyway. The Vermin deliver old-school punk the way it was meant to be played: fast, ugly, and loud. Jerry pounds on his skins like a toy monkey on crack, Ruckus’ bass isn’t so much punchy as it is explosive, and Dirk tears into his vintage SG with chaotic speed and precision, shout out vocals with a slight Cockney tint. Songs like “Girl Says No” and “Roach” not only knock you over, but they kick you while you’re down with surprisingly catchy hooks. But the Vermin aren’t all about the music. In fact, these boys are like a variety show unto themselves. They’ll jostle the crowd between (and during) songs; tell jokes, stories — and most of all this particular night — rip apart the opening act. 50% comedy, 50% music, but 100% punk, it’s the Vermin versus you … and that’s just the way they like it.