My grandma and I, unintentionally matching in the 90's.
My grandmother, Mary Rodriguez, passed away yesterday. She was the mother of seven children and grandmother of six...including myself. After a lifetime of living and working in Los Angeles, she retired to Las Vegas not long after the riots. I was about 8 or 9 when she moved away. Sure, I loved our visits during spring and summer time, but nothing beats the memories I have roaming the halls of her old house in Boyle Heights. I close my eyes and I'm playing on her old hardwood floors again. I see the giant tree where the pinatas from my birthday parties would taunt me. I'm sitting in her rocking chair watching TV, fighting the throes of that pesky afternoon nap. Something in my premie-south paw brain prohibited me from ever calling her "grandma." I literally couldn't say the words. Instead, she was "Ama," and growing up, she was better than Santa Claus.
She bought me clothes, toys, games, ice cream, anything I wanted but best of all, she showered me with her undivided attention. Apparently, I'm a bit of a motor mouth and have a tendency to babble when I talk. Ama would not only sit and listen to my juvenile rants, she hung on my every word. She learned about Ghostbusters and X-MEN, not because she cared about cartoons, but because I did. She never yelled or raised her voice at me because I never acted up with her. She said I was her "little pal," which implied notions of respect and companionship even a 4 year old could grasp. She was my mom's mom, my boss's boss, and she had MY back. I wasn't some kid she had to babysit or some genetic obligation, I was her friend. Ama made me feel safe and important. This means the world to someone when you can't tie your own shoes.
I visited Ama in the hospital two weeks ago and although I didn't know it at the time, said my last goodbye in person. Seeing her in that bed, so sick and frail was beyond heartbreaking. She used to help me buckle my seat belt and now I was pouring her water. It was upsetting to see such a strong and active person (a yoga enthusiast of 40+ years) succumb to the inevitable ravages of time. It was worse to stand in front of my old pal as a grown adult, utterly powerless and unable to reciprocate the feelings of comfort and security she had once provided me. We talked about her old house and naturally...X-MEN. Turns out one of her physicians looked like Hugh Jackman she said. This from the woman who bought me my first Wolverine action figure...I couldn't help but smile.
My grandmother Mary lived a long and fruitful life. She was raised during The Great Depression and saw more world changing events in her lifetime than I can fully comprehend. I'm not sad because an elderly person died in their sleep surrounded by loved ones. We should all be so fortunate. I'm sad because even though she moved away close to twenty years ago, it's only now that my old pal is truly gone. I love and miss my Ama tremendously, and will always cherish my memories of her. Maybe one day I'll leave a similar impact on others when I'm gone. I should be so lucky.
A brief family visit out of town quickly turned into a full blown rock
'n' roll expedition thanks to this well placed billboard in the middle
of the desert.
QOSTA and Chelsea Wolfe? Together...on the same
day we were in town. It was a sign (literally) that this show could not be
missed. I'd never been to The Joint before, but heard good things about
the venue. This totally made up for their sold out show at the Gibson
(R.I.P.) that I missed last fall.
I was curious how Chelsea Wolfe's dark and ominous music/vibe would fit such a huge venue (approx 4000 seat capacity), but Ms. Wolfe and co.'s stellar musicianship and total atmospheric assault on the senses made the large concert hall feel like a intimately dank cave of despair...and it was bloody awesome. New tracks off Pain Is Beauty such as "We Hit a Wall" and "House of Metal" sounded so much more hypnotic live and blended in perfectly alongside the brooding jams we all know and love from Apokalypsis ("Mer" "Demons" "Pale on Pale").
After this, only my second time seeing Chelsea Wolfe live, I'm ready to declare her voice a national treasure. It's an ethereal, haunting, and amazingly powerful tool in Ms.Wolfe's arsenal; along with her remarkable songwriting skills and the talented musicians she surrounds herself with, you simply can'y go wrong catching Chelsea Wolfe in concert. Aside from a handful of frat boys dying to start a mosh pit, I'd say most everyone inside The Joint was squarely under Chelsea's spell.
A giant screen counted down the moments before QOSTA took the stage. The band's new superhuman drummer, Jon Theodore pummeled his floor tom as he counted off the intro to "...Millionaire," and the crowd inside the venue went nuts. With the opening salvo of "Millionaire" "No One Knows" "Avon" and "My God Is the Sun," Josh Homme and his merry men certainly made the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino live up to it's namesake. The monstrous guitar riffs and the subsequent wall of sound that followed during "Avon" was awe inspiring and sparked memories from my very first Queens show back in 2003.
Josh Homme- Stone Age King
The band took things down a notch, devoting the mid portion of their set primarily to tracks off their latest album, ...Like Clockwork. These are largely medium to slow paced songs, which found heads bobbing in unison and offered a respite from the frat boy moshing that opened, and would bookend the band's set. I'm not the biggest fan of QOTSA's last record (it's good, but I was hoping for something epic) but I'll be damned if songs like "If I Had a Tail" and "I Sat by the Ocean" don't sound groovy as hell live. The band sprinkled in fan favorites like "Little Sister" and "Make It Wit Chu" in between the ...Like Clockwork section which was fine with me. Something about hearing "Make It Wit Chu" in Vegas/Sin City made the sultry song sound even sexier. "Better Living Though Chemistry" was the biggest surprise of the night. I've never head the song live before and it was great to see Josh shredding his guitar again, especially after spending a good portion of the set crooning/smoking on stage.
The night's ending is a little blurry for me, I was busy deflecting elbows from the raucous mosh pit that erupted during the encore. Playing "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" and "Song for the Dead" back to back just has that effect on people. When I wasn't dodging staggeringly drunk bros at every turn, I tried my best to watch Jon Theodore slay his kit during the final song. As much as I loved Joey Castillo's playing (re: bashing) in QOTSA, I think Theodore brings the perfect blend of power and finesse to the table and is the perfect dude, who isn't Dave Grohl, to sit on the throne. This was probably the best Queens of the Stone Age lineup I've seen since Nick Oliveri left ages ago. Looks like I started the year off right, my first concert of 2014 was a doozy. Thanks random billboard on the I-15fwy, I owe you one.
Yours truly and the girlfriend getting photobombed by a herd of wild Australians. We were in town for the Jimmy Eat World concert and decided to do some touristy stuff when...well you see.
Also, this was not planned....at all. I set the timer on my camera and ran back to check the shots: they bombed everyone. Cool dudes, or blokes rather.
My love of Jimmy Eat World is well documented on this here bloggy blog. Well, the band just released a rocking new album this past spring called Damage, their best work since 2004's Futures in my humble opinion, so I was uber excited to catch them on tour this fall. Of course life would find a way to interfere with my JEW dreams (get it? get it?) and I would be unable to attend their show at The Palladium in Hollywood. There's only one thing to do in situations like this: trek through the desert and see them in Vegas.
The House of Blues in Las Vegas is a weird venue. It's actually inside the Mandalay Bay casino so right off the bat, you know there's some kind of spacial limitations going on. The venue/musical hall is below the restaurant in a large hallowed out bat cave that somehow is actually bigger than the House of Blues Anaheim. Yeah, weird. I've seen Lamb of God demolish a near sold out house, and Mastodon perform to like a handful of people inside this same venue and tonight's Jimmy Eat World gig was a mix of the two. People tend to think of Las Vegas as some kind of huge metropolis but in reality, it's not that big of a town. The turn out was good but not as large as a show in LA.
The crowd filtered in as opening actMatt Pond (and friends) played some upbeat indie/folk rock. Not too shabby, it was hardly amazing either but I did enjoy a few of their songs. The loyal JEW fans, and a small group of Jersey Shore dudes visiting The Strip who must have gotten lost, waited eagerly for Jim and co. to take the stage. Luckily, we didn't have to wait long. Despite being in Sin City, this was a super early show and the band begin their headlining set around 8 pm!
Jimmy Eat World are such a solid band. I know, their music isn't overtly complex with crazy time signatures and jazz breaks thrown in but still, they're just really tight and locked in. I guess being a band for 20 years well do that to you. They played new stuff off Damage which sounded just as good as on the album but with Jim making some crazy faces and contorting his body around before your eyes, making it extra cool. We made our way to the very front of floor, about second row right before the stage. That would have never happened if we went to their gig at The Palladium. Watching the band crank out hit after hit ("Pain," "Big Casino," "Sweetness") from such proximity was almost surreal. Like my iPod merged with a 3D printer and brought them to life just for me. I'd say "Authority Song" and "23" were my favorite songs of the night. One being the very definition of good time pop-rock and the other, the most heartfelt shit you'll ever here. Good times with Jimmy Eat World. They do not disappoint live...ever.
It took some time before I came to embrace The Strokes. I was a snotty teenage metal head when their debut album came out in 2001. All the girls at my high school gushed over these five scruffy lads from New York and MTV tried oh so hard to convince me how buzzworthy their video for "Last Nite" was but at this time, if it wasn't Slayer I didn't care. All those trips to Tower Records when I should have been in class at ye olde community college helped me warm up to several tracks from Room On Fire but I still wasn't a confirmed fan. It was First Impressions of Earth that convinced me that The Strokes were for real. The album was darker, slightly heavier and more up my (contaminated by heavy metal) alley. I caught them live in 2006 and was thoroughly impressed. I could now safely say I was a fan of The Strokes. Then they went on a five year hiatus. Great.
So now the band I used to love to hate is back and I had to make amends. I snatched up tickets for their special one off show at the brand spankin' new hotel, The Cosmopolitan, in Las Vegas and prepared to rock out like it was the mid 00's all over again.
First, The Cosmopolitan is a siiiiiiiiiick hotel/casino. From the high tech underground parking garage, to outdoor pool alongside The Strip, and that giant fucking chandelier with a bar/lounge inside it, this place was pretty awesome. Too bad I probably couldn't afford to stay there until I'm old enough to collect Social Security (lol @ no hope/future for my generation!).
The show took place in the Chelsea, a giant ballroom on the 4th floor. It's a pretty large rectangular space, like the Hollywood Palladium, but 1000x fancier. We arrived around 7:30pm, The Strokes didn't come out until almost 11:00pm =/. The first opening band didn't show and or canceled for some reason and the next act, hipster folk lord Devendra Banhart didn't go on until 9:00pm and was done by 10:00pm. So yes, that equals about 2 1/2 hours of standing in a sold out/over capacity venue. It was the best of times, it was the BLurst of times...
Devendra "The dude who used to nail Natalie Portman" Banhart was alright. I think under normal circumstances I might have said he sucked but given the boredom induced dementia I was fighting I actually kind of enjoyed some of his tunes. His band was tight and hell and sort of sounded like a Doors tribute band, his over the top vocals are what killed it for me though. Funny stuff happened during the massive wait for The Strokes. Some girl repeatedly passed out in front of us after taking hits from some really foul smelling joints. My girlfriend ran into some girl from her high school that she hadn't seen in almost 10 years, and we meet some funny Michael Cera looking dudes from UNLV.
Finally, after waiting for an eternity, The Strokes hit the stage. They opened with "I Can't Win" off Room On Fire ( a song title that perfectly describes my exploits with Roulette the next day) and the crowd exploded. Between the rabid movement of the audience and Nikolai's at times over powering bass lines, I quickly realized it would be impossible to take any decent footage of their set at this point and put my video camera down, enjoying every beat of classic jams like "Reptilia" and "The Modern Age" instead. I was really pleased with how the new songs off their, then upcoming but now just released, album Angles sounded live. I was already familiar with "Undercover of Darkness" but man, the new track "Gratisfacion" they played during the encore was damn awesome. Anyways, back to the main set. Coolest slow jam of the night goes to "Under Control." It really felt like we were watching the Rat Pack onstage during this song, everyone in the crowd swaying and singing along as Julian crooned extra Sinatra-y (Vegas man, Vegas...). "New York City Cops" gets the award for wildest crowd response. I was afraid the floor in the brand new Chelsea might collapse from the combined weight of the audience, and the chubby hedgehog looking dude in front of us dancing/jumping like madmen.
It wasn't until the band come out for their encore did the energy level drop just enough for me to get some quality video. And what an encore they did. "Automatic Stop" and "You Only Live Once" back to back?! Good stuff friends. Good stuff. They ended the show with "Last Nite" and the crowd responded with one last final burst of explosive energy to see their heroes off the stage. The lights came back on and we all stood in this majestic new ballroom, in a swanky new hotel surrounded by some serious ballers on Saturday night in Vegas, completely covered in sweat, dehydrated and totally loving The Strokes. All the grumbles about the insane weight time seemed to vanish and quickly turned to "I can't wait for that new album." All in all, twas a great show and a nice little Vegas weekend getaway as well. Too bad traffic sucked heading back home Sunday night. Yes, I endured even MORE waiting...
