OK. Something personal.
I was supposed to see Prince awhile back. He played four straight nights in a small venue where we would have actually seen Prince. Not far away. Really seeing him.
To top it off, Carlos Santana jumped on stage and jammed several songs with him.
Imagine, seeing two Guitar Gods performing on the same night.
Then, a few months later, Prince died. We never bought this tickets.
Very sad. Not just for us, but for the whole music world. You can’t replace Prince. You just can’t.
Prince was one of those once in a lifetime people. Good at everything. Purple Rain to this day is one of my favorite albums of all-time.
So we decided after Prince’s death to not miss bands.
Iron Maiden
So when Iron Maiden came to town, no way we weren’t going to see Iron Maiden. I loved their first five albums. Hopefully this isn’t sacrilege, but I stopped following them after Live After Death. I got heavily into Classical music and didn’t really listen to modern music that much from that time period on. Nothing against Maiden. More my own personal musical transformation.
That said, I still listen to all five of those first five albums. And when Iron Maiden came into town. they played only their 80s stuff. Which was great. It was mostly the stuff I liked.
Billy Idol
And, got to keep the Mrs happy. Her second favorite singer is Billy Idol. Her first is Frank Sinatra but I don’t have a time machine.
Billy Idol played locally. We decided instead to go nuts and rather than seeing him locally, fly into Vegas and spend the weekend doing really cool stuff.
Billy Idol put on a heck of a show. Steve Stevens did a lot of guitar solos, including one with a Flamenco guitar.
The band was tight and the crowd really got into it. Everyone danced when Rebel Yell came on. We all just got up and danced.
See those shows, my friends. Bands break up. People die. You might not get that chance again.
You got to keep scratching things off your bucketlist.
Any excuse to go to Vegas
Yeah, I get it. Vegas isn’t everyone’s thing.
The funny thing is, I don’t gamble. I just don’t. Not like it’s a religious or moral thing for me. I don’t gamble because I don’t like losing money. And like it or not, the house almost always wins.
But everything else? Great place to see live bands. We absolutely loved the venue, inside the Palms hotel.
We could have had a 7′ tall man sitting in front of us and we still would have seen the show. Absolutely loved how they managed to make the seats so you could actually see.
And of course, you always meet neat people along the Strip. These two girls were pretty cool. They were both having a pretty bad day because some drunk ladies took out their frustrations on them, just because they were there.
We had fantastic bartenders everywhere we went. Killed a bottle of wine in the Luxor. We also had quite a few whiskeys in the Sands. The bartenders were fascinating people. I was most impressed by the bartender at the Sands. Under 30 and really had her future cut out well for her.
Anyways, not every blog post is going to be a watercolor lesson. I wanted to share some of my human side with you.
And I strongly believe that whether you believe in an afterlife, reincarnation, or this is all we get, you got to scratch things off your bucketlist in this life. See those bands you need to see!
