Road Trip: The National at The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas, 1.20.18

Over the weekend I took a road trip to Vegas with my friend Jeff to see The National at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. It's been awhile since he and I have done a road trip show but knowing he bought the tickets months ago and who am I to argue? It was a quick trip, just 30 hours away from my family...We left San Diego early Saturday morning, arrived in the afternoon and checked in to the hotel, gambled a little, had an amazing fancy steak dinner at MB, then caught the show. I had a photo pass to the band's show in San Diego back in October so I reached out to the publicists again, and after some back and forth, I was still holding out hope for a photo pass in Vegas. It never happened, but fortunately we chatted with the box office before the show and they seemed to have an open policy so long as there's no "detachable lens", so I decided to take my Samsung point and shoot into the venue. I was afraid I wouldn't pass the metal detectors, but clearly cameras aren't what they were looking for, and despite the massive line to get into the show, getting in took very little time at all.

The show was incredible. There was no opener but before they came to the stage, the lights dimmed and the house music went to Big Thief's "Shark Smile", probably because the band will be opening some 2018 tour dates in the Southeast, and then, because it was the day of the Women's March, played "Women of the World Take Over".

So let me say something about my pictures...I'm 5'3" and was about 6-10 rows of people from the stage, depending on how many people tried to shove in front of us. Several people had their phones out and above their heads almost the entirety of the show, so I'm trying to focus my camera over the shoulder of the guy in front of me, working around cell phones, trying to not be obnoxious myself. The band members are barely lit with the exception of Matt. I think it's intentional, but I really tried to get pics of the others, especially Bryce and Aaron, who are also up front, but nothing decent came out. It would definitely appear I'm trained just on Matt, but I think that's kind of the way the band prefers it.

Life Is Beautiful (Las Vegas) Tickets On Sale Thursday, April 26

Now in it's fifth year, Life Is Beautiful is another annual music festival competing for big festival names that takes place in downtown Las Vegas. Calling Las Vegas "our region" may be a stretch, but considering you can get there in 4-6 hours in a car from here, it's definitely close enough if you've got the scratch for the tickets. Check out all the details and get your tickets here starting Thursday at 10am.

Other Lives "Tamer Animals"

I went to Vegas last week and I promised a whole bunch of videos of Other Lives but they're taking much longer to upload than I planned. I wish I had more to say about my trip other than it being awesome, but mostly I just want YOU to love Other Lives like I do. This is probably one of the better video clips because it doesn't have a bartender's head in my view, but those ones are coming, too. It's true, you may love Bon Iver, but you will be blown away when Other Lives opens at Spreckels next month. I filmed the greater part of the four sets I caught, so I'll put those in a playlist, but until then, please enjoy.

Video: D/Wolves "Buzz Lightyear"

Remember when I went to Vegas with D/Wolves for The Rumble? Well, Patrick was vlogging the whole time, and when I went downstairs to work using the hotel's free lobby wi-fi, the boys were upstairs in the room. And what do four guys in a free hotel do when nobody else is there? They challenge themselves to food eating competitions. Patrick stacked 8 crackers with EZ Cheez and then choked as one of the crackers lodged into his throat sideways. When I got back to the room they were all, "Rosey! Patrick almost died! It was hilarious! You totally missed it!" Fortunately, the camera was rolling. They posted this a while ago, but I finally remembered to get the link, so here's some aerosol cheese antics soundtracked by their song, "Buzz Lightyear".

Roadtrip: D/Wolves Face The Rumble in Las Vegas

I realize I never posted about my last roadtrip to Vegas to see Transfer; somehow my post disappeared, but I'll recover it and post this week. In the meantime, I'm sitting in the car with D/Wolves and we have a couple hours to go and everyone is feverishly texting or facebooking, so I might as well join 'em.

As you know, sd:dialed in is one of The Rumble partners for the San Diego, which D/Wolves played on Saturday night along with Vanaprasta and New Mexico. That night was pretty awesome, especially after spending time at CityBeat's festival of beer, Revolver to catch Josh Damigo, and Analog to visit A-Fresh.

After D/Wolves finished and loaded their gear, we went to Brian & Patrick's for a few hours (we should've slept) and then hit the road to Vegas, where they were scheduled to play The Rumble again with Vanaprasta and a Vegas band called A Crowd of Small Adventures. The Vegas Rumble was at The Royal Resort for the first time and closer to the Strip than the previous location, near Wynn's Encore. The show was billed as a daytime pool party but there was a permit issue, so it was still a daytime show but moved inside into their cool living room- feeling lounge and bar, complete with a cool pool table and shuffleboard.

We arrived around 9 am Sunday morning and the hotel let us check in early where we tried to relax and nap (didn't really happen). When it was time for load-in, we were notified that Vanaprasta wasn't gonna make it, but the bands played on anyway with D/Wolves "headlining" to a small crowd of Small Adventures' fans, random hotel guests, and a few bloggers and Rumble supporters.

Though I'm not the band's manager, I've been helping them out with some things and after the show, when the boys clogged then subsequently overflowed the toilet and didn't know what to do, I kinda adopted the term 'momager', fixing the toilet to stop running, and getting things taken care of. The hotel decided the carpet was too wet and moved us to another room. Fortunately the toilet was actually broken and we were actually not the cause of the great flood.

For half the band, it was their first time in Vegas, so after more failed nap attempts, we explored Vegas- grabbing buffet at Main Street Station (our first meal since 6 am), walking Fremont, then driving the length of The Strip. We were wiped after being awake 35+ hours, though we still ended up staying awake in the room till about 3 am. At one point I was downstairs working on wi-fi, and when I came back up, they told me how Patrick had choked. He was vlogging the whole time, so I'll link to those when he uploads, and you'll see all of their silliness and how aerosol Easy Cheese could've killed him.

We slept solid, checked out around 1, went to the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop (of Pawn Stars fame), had a late lunch, and now it's nearly 9 pm and we're rolling through San Jacinto.

It's been a really fun trip, and what I really love is getting to know these creatures a little more deeply- Joel and his hot/cold moods (do NOT mess with him when he's hungry/tired or if he thinks he's getting sick, which is almost always)- Patrick and his constant goofball antics- Jessie, the conservative one, always a bit more collected and serious- and Brian, the sensitive one who takes the brunt of their pranks, is the first to apologize or take the blame when something goes wrong, and who doesn't have much, but will share whatever he's got. I love these kids and hope next time they hit the road that they might still have room for a momager.

More pics later when I can upload.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Vacation Time: Las Vegas

Yesterday I packed up my bags and am now in lovely Las Vegas. It has been a great trip so far. My dad drove my mom, my god-sister Claudia and me, and my sister, Billy, and my niece Johanna followed in their car. We have two rooms at Main Street Station in downtown, and also a spare room at the Flamingo on the Strip, where I think I'll probably stay tonight only because there's a huge flatscreen and an amazing surround stereo system is calling for my iPod and some chill time. I'm writing now from the wi-fi cafe at the Main Street, enjoying a $2 beer and listening to a security guard sing along to the piped in Christmas songs.

It's crazy here because it snowed last week for the first time in a very long time. On the Strip. The storm also had snow in some unusual places along the way, at much lower elevations than is typical. I took some pictures from the road (mind you, these were taken from a moving car through the windshield and passenger window):









Anyway, I'd just thought I'd post a quick hello. I captured a video of my niece at FAO Schwartz, after the jump if you wanna check it out.

Johanna meets Wage, and Ugly Doll, at FAO Schwartz.


Also, the Flamingo is hosting Donny and Marie soon and I CANNOT STAND THEM. There are signs, posters, pictures, and window clings EVERYWHERE. Here's my mom hanging with them.

Vegas is out it's damn mind...

This is a post that Ray Suen started a couple weeks ago but never managed to post. I thought it was incomplete, but maybe he just never clicked the 'post' button. Nonetheless, I thought I'd post it tonight since I'm not writing...

So, I've found it increasingly difficult to find motivation (and material with which) to blog about since I've been in Vegas. It is hot. Unbearingly so. It's currently 89 degrees and it's veritably cool compared to the average of 107 we've had for the last ten days since I've been here.

The sleepless lifestyle of the city must be catching up to me as I'm watching the sun rise for no particular reason. The bars and casinos are open for 24 hours around here and there are people partying all the time. This includes my gracious host, Mark, bassist of the Killers, who even now is probably out and about, if I heard correctly, carousing with the likes of Perry Farrell and Slash. I've been pretty good about being in bed before 2 and up before 10, but now, in my sleepless state, I blog. For you.

Other than my ever growing dependence on air conditioning and cigarettes, there's little to report. I'll be writing more about this giant touring machine called the Killers in the coming months, but the most interesting tidbit I have for you is the incident that went down Saturday night when Coldplay was in town playing at the MGM Grand. They invited the Killers to come see the show and while I thought this was a must-see situation, but rehearsal dragged on to the point that we were willing to waffle a bit. After deliberation, we decided to try and make it before the encores. We were told to park next to Coldplay's tour buses in the loading area of the MGM Grand.

This is where things get interesting.

As we arrived in an un-eco-friendly caravan of five cars, an old security guard with a diet coke in his hand met us, anxious to get his rocks off by exercising his privileges as a security guard. Cue much yelling, screaming.

"You can't be here! This isn't right! No! Who told you could be here?"

Coldplay Production.

"This isn't right! You can't stay here!"

At this point, we're on the phone with Coldplay's production trying to figure out if there's any parking in a non-hysterical security guard zone. We get back in our cars to get back to the next parking lot, which would hopefully be more controversy-free. No such luck. As we left, Dave, our esteemed guitar player, flipped the bird and said a lot of other things that start with the letter "F."

Turns out the next parking lot was about 50 feet away, so the offended security official came tumbling after us screaming, waving his diet coke about willy nilly. Like a baseball umpire he screamed, "you're gone! You're gone!" gesticulating with his diet coke much the way an umpire would with his index finger. Hotel security came out to deal with the ruckus that was brewing. Dave left sheepishly, thinking as we all did that we'd be getting a little farther away. However, at this point the gauntlet was down and hotel security turned into hotel managers into metro police. Meanwhile, poor little Coldplay production assistants are running around trying to make things right while certain Killers are taking up Dave's fallen antagonistic standard. I'm going to leave out the embarrassing details about what may or may not have been said, but the point is I didn't get to see Coldplay, and that's a bummer.