EMAIL HIM

His Philosophy

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1. Immortal Lee County Killers, All Night, The Loners
Supersuckers Country Western Extravaganza, with Jessie Dayton

We got to Sin City in the early morning after driving all night from Los Angeles. We found the Cooler Lounge first and it's a 24/7 bar, and that's one good thing about Vegas is you can drink all the time and out on the street, and the booze is cheap. It was about 10:30 in the morning and there was a guy was in there drinking. The bar was in a shopping center due north of the Strip. Of course none of the flyers we sent were posted (why would they be?) and nothing was on tonight's schedule but a karaoke act. No worries: what else is there to do in Vegas? Drink cheap booze, go to a whore house, gamble - Well screw all that! I'll just go to the Cooler Lounge and hope a band is playing! Who needs flyers?

Our old pal Thuggitto was coming to town all the way from Aspen (where the beer flows like wine and women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano) to see us and get some blackjack and drinking in. Before we met him we had time to kill, so we drove down the Strip and looked at all the Vegas hallucinatory weirdness. First we went down to the Disneyland part of the Strip where all the money and kids and hot cocktail girls are and drove past the MGM Grand, Circus Circus, Treasure Island, The Bellagio, The Mirage, The Excalibur. Everything in that drive is in your face and HUGE and you're in some weird, evil Wonderland in the middle of the mind of America.

I'd been to Vegas before, for about two and a half weeks during Christmas and New Years of 98/99. Joann's Mom was a cocktail waitress at the Riviera, and we stayed at her place. We got there by Greyhound, because it was so fucking cheap, and we were so fucking crazy. It took 54 hours each way. Even though I'd been there before, I didn't know where the fuck we were and I got us lost. First I took us all the way down the wrong end of the Strip, where the old famous "Welcome to Las Vegas" (cut and paste http://www.angelfire.com/band/buzzsawyer/summertourpics/vegassign.JPG) sign was, and we did a U-turn right there and went back around, I got us more lost and so we stopped at a gas station to ask. It was a nice, clean Sunoco station and a dusty bum with desert sand all over him floated over and started to dig in the garbage can for food. Inside, the cashier was so numb and shaky from coke she could barely point the way to where we wanted to go, but we finally got there after driving through the cheap strip club district with the $5 lap dances and whatnot.

Old Vegas is the Vegas you see mostly in the movies, when the cars drive by and there's the hitchhiking cowboy. The casinos there are like the cocktail waitresses: past their prime, proud, and you get the feeling the high rollers and the stars used to spend a lot of time in them. We were on Fremont Street where somebody had the bright idea of putting a roof over two or three blocks that acts as a screen for laser cartoons at night, to try to make old Vegas cater to tourists and their fat kids. I don't think it worked. We hit a casino called Fitzgerald's and did some nickel slots just to amuse ourselves, and I got a free Jack and Coke from an old cocktail waitress with that once pretty but worn out look who I tipped a dollar. I guess she took it as demeaning and I didn't realize it and she said "Thank you, thank you very much, that was very nice of you" like I was a little kid that just gave her a picture I drew. Old folks and their pride.

Then we met Thuggito and his pal, and it was good to see old Thuggito, the crazy motherfucker and he told us about his latest near death drunk driving experience, and we walked around trying to find a cheap buffet but they were all like $10, and I was the leader and it sucked because I didn't know where the fuck to go. And Thuggito told me he was going to kill me if he didn't get a drink in him and I felt the same way, and so we drove back down to where the action was on the Strip and parked at the parking lot of the Frontier. We went into the casino and the buffet there was $10 so we just said fuck it and ate at the Panda, you know the Chinese fast food place you always see in food courts at the mall. We walked around in the Mirage for a while and then went to Casino Royale which is a small casino with a bar-like atmosphere. There was this bartender working there giving out free margaritas with a really bad attitude like a pissed off bobcat in a cage. She was viscous and jaded and probably been somewhere down the line. I guess you gotta be that way sometimes to survive out in the fucking desert. A razor-clawed bobcat.

Thuggito hit the blackjack pits and we sipped at the weak but free margaritas and hit the slots where you can put a buck in and bet as low as a penny, and think damn this town really gets you for every penny you got. I gave up after I lost about $3 in two minutes and bought a beer and took in some NFL, opening Sunday.

Then we went up to the Stratosphere where Thuggito was staying. The Stratosphere is that big needle with a roller coaster on the top owned, I think, by Bob Stupeck. Stupeck is the guy from Pittsburgh who'd made it big in Vegas, bought a bunch of casinos, was King for a while. He'd since been usurped by his polar opposite, Steve Wynn, the current Vicar of Vegas who's bent on turning it into a family entertainment oasis with rides and arcade games for the kids while mom and dad get drunk and gamble away the college fund. Stupeck is old school, and is of the opinion that Vegas should stay a place for adults, where people can come in and raise hell and swear and get drunk and blow their money and fuck whores, you know, generally get their Kicks, and not have to worry about offending the kiddies. I tend to agree with Bob, but Vegas in 2002 is just a little model of America in 2002. All the naughty stuff, the rock n roll, is out in the open, in the living room for the kids to see and the adults to enjoy, because the controls switched hands from the outlaw to the Man. The Man has no shame. And, as we all know, the Man will fuck you 100 times worse, and smile while he's doing it, and feel remorseless and justified.

But we didn't have the cash to enjoy Las Vegas. And when you're broke you can see that the place is just a mirage in the middle of the desert with lonely old ghosts of once-human show girls and dealers and fun-seekers floating slowly down the sidewalk dressed in colorless, dusty cloth, and lifeless, and there's an underlying (or maybe not-so underlying) Misery to the whole place. And if you stay in the desert too long it's gonna suck you dry, mirage or no.

I went at it fuck-the-world and I was drinking all day - 99 cent margaritas at the Frontier, free Jack and Cokes at the slots, $1 Becks at Casino Royale. I wanted to try to have fun with Thuggito who came all this way but it just wasn't happening because of our poor situation. I took a nap outside the Cooler Lounge in the van while the karaoke guy was going on. They woke me up as the guy was tearing down his stuff and I crawled out of the van, tired, mussed hair, and the karaoke guy wished me luck. The Cooler Lounge patrons weren't exactly the singalong type.

The kid that opened for us was this California dreamer that called himself "Elves". But it was only one kid. He had it written on the side of his van, "Elves". He was fucking horrible. This was possible the worst musical act I have ever seen in my life. It was just him and his guitar plugged into two loud shitty amps and beats he made with his drum machine. He played horribly and sang horribly, and the songs he wrote were horrible to begin with. The horrors… the horrors… Most of the time if a band that plays with us sucks you at least watch them for politeness and etiquette concerns. He was so bad he nearly killed an old man, and that's where Gil comes into the picture.

We were standing outside in the parking lot and drinking since we were getting free drafts and you can drink in Vegas in the parking lot and the kid was so horrible. We bullshitted with a couple of punk rock-type dudes that showed up. An old guy that was drinking in the bar came out and stood there with this weird look on his face and just stared. Meanwhile the bartender was trying to tell the kid he had one more song. The kid did three more. I went inside to get another beer and the bartender says "If I shut the sound off will it blow up or anything?" (Oh yeah the sound guy didn't show and Nick Peterson, a fine roadie indeed, was running sound) - I said "No, shut him off. This is horrible." Then I go back outside. The kid finally stops. We turn to walk in to get our shit set up and all I hear is SMACK!!! We turn around and the old dude is laying on his back with his arm stretched out. There's all kinds of odd Vegas life standing around him gawking and shouting ill-advised instructions and blood's pouring out of the old man's ears, like invisible demons in the desert evaporated through the pavement and attempted to suck the life out of the poor old guy . People are saying "Don't touch him!" and Thuggito's in there like George Clooney asking the guy his name and how many fingers he has up and about to do CPR and shit. Then the guy starts snoring real loud and I say he's fine. He's breathing. The dudes we were talking to tell us his name is Gil and he's a veteran of Vietnam AND Korea and he drinks constantly. Well, fuck, I need another beer so I walk in and the bartender is on the phone all calm and casual and talking to 911. "Yeah he's one of these hate-the-world kinda guys" EMS gets there and jokingly someone says - hey let's take a picture, so the kid with the mohawk grabs one of our disposables and starts taking pictures of this guy who's passed out with his ears bleeding and EMS around him. I still got the camera on the table, undeveloped. The bartender's all calm like he's seen all this before and not surprisingly in a town where you can drink 24/7. "Yeah this happened before," said the bartender while we're wondering if we should even play, "where he had the blood coming out of his ears."

With that we set up and play. The crowd consists of Dave (Thuggito), his buddy Cal, a couple of rocker dudes with their bandanas and faded black concert T-shirts and chain wallets and drunk girlfriends playing pool, the bartender, those punk dudes, and one of those old smoking froggish slot machine ladies with the big tinted glasses you see all over Vegas. "Alright. This looks like a Buzzsawyer crowd if I ever saw one!" says Vee into the microphone. "Las Vegas - we are Buzzsawyer from North Carolina, and we sound something like this:" and we rocked that motherfucker like it was the Civic Arena.

Later on in the middle of the set, Vee says "This one's dedicated to Gil. It's called 'Life Sucks For Everyone But Me'". We high-fived each other and cheered for ourselves after some of the songs. It was all from being road worn and weary and Vegas wasn't helping much - but we love ya, baby. We even got the slot machine lady to dance toward the end.

One of the dudes offered to sell us some speed when we were looking for weed but Nick Peterson, a fine roadie indeed, was at the wheel and he don't do that shit. So we got some beer at a gas station that had slot machines in it and got the fuck out of Vegas.

Down the road we were lifting the beers and we saw a huge cat jump across the highway. Nick Peterson, a fine roadie indeed, had to slow down. I don't know what the fuck it was - a bobcat or a cougar - but it was definitely a big wild feline of some sort. I'd never seen a wild cat before - I didn't know shit like that existed in American anymore.

It could have been a mirage. Las Vegas can do that to ya.

next time: land sailing in the Rocky Mountain swells, Mile High Wasted, Kansas and Rockabilly Oz, Whiskey on My Steak