Long ago, in a land called Las Vegas, the music scene was rum­bling. Feet would stam­pede the floors of the Huntridge The­atre to catch the who’s hot of the Las Vegas local music scene. The floors were sticky, and the archi­tec­tural struc­ture was an aged one, with char­ac­ter. Smelly, ghetto tex­tured char­ac­ter.  one-colored flyers cov­ered the walls, and obvi­ously no one cleaned the bath­rooms. It was a real venue, and the bands brought hun­dreds of kids out, a decent number of local shows sold the place out. I felt lucky that i was able to wit­ness the lineup head­lined with Attaboy Skip and Pro­fes­sor Punn. It was a ska night. and i never even cared for ska. i wasn’t what the kids called ‘a skanker’.

I was intern­ing for Shoe­string Pro­mo­tions and Black­jack Records at the time. It was an honor to serve warm water to kids who dared to go to the Pre­sidio Shows. That old ware­house. I was hon­ored to help the drum­mer from Attaboy Skip take his drums up the stairs to their rehearsal space. Because to me, the scene was my new family, whether i gen­uinely liked the music or not. There was ska every­where. There really was. I was not a lover of the Ska. Frankly, i still don’t get it. But i car­ried their drums, I sup­plied them with water, and even pro­moted the thing. Why? ….

20 venues later, was the open­ing of the Boston. That place was rough. One night, there was a band, who will remain name­less (because i haven’t any inter­est in sup­ply­ing them with a shout out) threat­ened the other bands, knife in hand ‘Were play­ing 2^nd and there is noth­ing you can do about it, grrrr’). That same night, the first band, after they played, packed into a small car and screamed like The Out­siders as they drove off into the night thru the savon park­ing lot, not stay­ing for the show. For some reason the word ‘gangs’ come to mind.   The place held maybe 200 people, yet in some­way became the modern huntridge. What? Where did every­one else go? The Huntridge held much closer to 1000 or likely more.  Most of the music, sounded like ….local music. That should have maybe never left that bar. And it didnt. Hooray.

Then a couple local bands went against the grain, got signed and con­quered the world when no one was look­ing. it was like fire­works. and then…..maybe a year later….

Trans­form­ers (aka more folks who under­stood the value of a warm/hot bot­tled water) emerged from the dark­ness. Their heads spin­ning around flick­er­ing like disco balls. Neon lights, Fre­mont Street, down­town straight up took the scene into their own hands. Straight Up!  Suddenly music is for the masses. Do you have any idea how excited I was to know that folks like Geor­gia Ann Muldrow were play­ing the Beauty Bar!!! http://www.myspace.com/georgiaannemuldrow and it was only like $5!!! To me, that was the sign. That was when i real­ized that music from else­where, that is actu­ally in my pod, was both­er­ing to give vegas a chance.

People have always con­demned the spirit of this local music scene. But I am con­vinced its because they are derailed by the unusual charm. Incon­sis­tancy is a charmer. It’s like a scav­enger hunt.  People always pro­claim “this scene is ter­ri­ble”, but I don’t listen to them. a gen­er­ous number of modern con­sumers aren’t trained to be hunters. Because they just rely on things that are thrown at them. And no, shop­ping in bar­gain bins doesn’t count as hunting.

And while all ya’ll want to go on about how ter­ri­ble the scene is,  I will just con­tinue to make Gold Rekidz. I will con­tinue to take up the drums up that flight of stairs, i will con­tinue to serve you warm water. because i happen to love it here.

Chances are, if you made it this far, you care enough. Be a Transformer.