[Day One is
here.]
Hot on the trail of Sectarian Violence, I stocked up my Chevy with snack-sized bags of honey roasted peanuts and followed the band out I-15 toward Primm, Nevada. But I felt vaguely nervous as I crossed the state line.
Sure, I didn’t have any illegal drugs or underage women with me -- yet. But rock ‘n’roll reporters get nervous about boundaries: like the boundaries between sober and drunk, easy listening and adult contemporary, state court and federal court. And we get especially nervous about the boundary between the Las Vegas Strip and its Outskirts.
The Las Vegas Strip, for all its commercialized dangers, is a known quantity. If you heard live music on the Strip, you probably heard it someplace anesthetic like the House of Blues, where your weak vodka tonic boasted an alcohol-to-tonic proportion scientifically proven to get you just drunk enough to think the Boogie Knights sound great, but not so drunk that you realized while ogling the go-go dancers that you’d rather be at one of those “off the Strip” nightclubs with an ATM at every table. Or whatever. Point is, someone is in charge on the Vegas Strip. There are cameras. And chemists. You’re in good hands.
The Outskirts are an entirely different story. The Outskirts are where you wind up after drunkenly but emphatically extolling the cab driver to “Tlake me to your fwavorwite place” and then passing out in the backseat with your wallet fallen open on your chest. The Outskirts are where you wake up alone in a sticky vinyl booth, surrounded by half-empty Jello pudding cups and drained Mai Thai glasses, watching Screamin’ Jay Hawkins strut it out on stage -- but Christ, isn’t he dead? Did he ever play Vegas? Are you still in Vegas? And where’s your wallet? That, my friends, is the Outskirts.
So while I was unimpressed that Sectarian Violence hadn’t booked a venue at Caesars, I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt to any band that had the nerve to play the Outskirts. Even the semi-commercial ones like Primm.
After a few hours of the uneventful desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, I finally saw on the horizon the glimmer of neon lights that meant Primm -- in all of its $4.95 Prime Rib glory. Fresh out of peanuts and craving a stiff one, I examined the two sides of Primm’s one freeway exit for the hippest joint in the place -- the kind of venue that Sectarian Violence would use as their platform for rock’n’roll domination.
Primm wasn’t exactly jumping. Family-style casinos and gas stations, mostly -- I couldn’t see any of the dark, side-alley rock clubs that an up-and-coming musical sensation would frequent. Finally, I spotted some fading, fly-specked neon that looked like my best bet, and I steered my trusty Chevy off the freeway and into the parking lot of a little place called Rumsfeld’s Rumble Room. As I veered my tired wagon into an empty space, I spotted the Sectarian Violence Corolla -- an even sorrier vehicle than my furry friend had described, and sporting at least one flat tire. The elaborately carved head of what looked like a fertility goddess statue was poking out the passenger side window. I had hit the jackpot.
Inside of Rumsfeld’s Rumble Room, I needed a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the dim light. I heard Patsy Cline floating from a speaker somewhere, and the occasional soft clink of silverware on a plate. The joint’s customers were socked into booths or tucked into tables in small groups of two or three. They all looked strangely like White House staff, except for one guy alone at a table in the middle, nursing a bottle of Jack -- he just looked like Scott McClellan. In the back of the restaurant was a small stage with a couple of mic stands, but it was dark. No rocking and rolling yet. I doubted if this crowd could handle it anyway.
I made my way to the bar and sat down. I felt like I was being watched. That’s when I noticed an enormous gray cat was staring at me from its perch on top of the bar, in the corner nearest the door.
The bartender moseyed over and started polishing the surface in front of me with a bright white cloth. “What’ll it be?”
“What’s with the cat?” I asked, never looking away from the hulking gray beast. It glared back with eerie yellow eyes. I started to get the willies. A cat on the bar like that is just unsanitary.
“That’s Rumsfeld,” the bartender said.
“He pour the drinks?”
“No.” The bartender gave me a hard stare.
“He rumble?”
“He might.”
The bartender was still staring. So was the cat. On the jukebox, Patsy Cline started to smooth her way through the chorus of “Crazy.” I knew how she felt. But I shook it off. No cat was going to intimidate this reporter.
“Scotch rocks. Single malt.”
The bartender dropped the white cloth. “You’re not another one of those connoisseurs, are you? I just had one in here made me open every bottle of wine we stock so he could taste ‘em. All those bottles are gonna go to vinegar now. I don’t get that much goddamn call for Muscat around here.”
“I’m looking for a band, I think they might be playing here. Sectarian Violence?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. That’s what I was trying to tell you. That lead singer fellow had me pour him a glass of everything on the wine list, and he sits down and he sips them all, and he’s making notes on a legal pad and shaking his head the whole time. And then he tells me they’re not going to play here because the wine is ‘sub par.’ That fellow had 30 glasses lined up in a row right here. I can tell you, the rest of these good people thought he was crazy.” The bartender made a sweeping gesture towards his Department of Defense-looking clientele and went back to furiously scrubbing at the surface of the bar. “Co-president of the wine club…” he muttered.
Shit. Sectarian Violence was headed for the road again. And I hadn’t even gotten that scotch. “Did they say where they were going?”
The bartender frowned and began attacking an imaginary spot of gunk on the gleaming wood. “I can tell you, we’ve had plenty of classy acts in here. We had the Platters. We had Yakov Smirnoff. The Platters never asked to see the wine list, I can tell you that.”
“Seriously man. I gotta find that band. Did they say where they were going?”
The cat got up and stretched over on its corner of the bar. Amazingly, the beast looked even bigger all elongated like that. The bartender glanced at the cat and then back at me. “Band’s still probably in the green room, back that way.” He gestured toward a dim hallway near the stage.
“Thanks,” I said, and dropped a $20 on the bar. Let my Editrix pay for some of that wasted Muscat.
I bounded down the hall and through a banged up door marked “storage.” Behind it was a shabby little room that looked like a high school teacher’s lounge, complete with 20-year old carpet and a cracked vinyl sofa with stuffing bursting from the cushions. The whole place smelled like fried eggs. A signed poster of Yakov’s smiling face hung on one wall.
But mostly, I noticed the hot groupie was sprawled on the sofa, one foot propped up on the armrest. She had rings on her toes, and a whole lotta leg. I made a mental note to bring a camera on future assignments.
She stretched, and yawned, and turned to look at me. I got the distinct impression that I had woken her up. But I had no time for niceties. If I didn’t hurry, I might never catch the band. And God only knew where a tour that started on the Vegas Outskirts was going to wind up.
“I’m looking for the band,” I stammered at the groupie.
“The Jack Abramoff band?” she asked.
“What?”
“Jack Abramoff. He was just here. He said he was here with some kind of band.” She stretched again and wiggled her hips, settling in on the worn-out sofa.
“How do you know it was Jack Abramoff?”
She glared. “I read the papers, douche bag. He looked just like the pictures.”
“Did he say he was Jack Abramoff?”
“No,” said the groupie, running her fingers through her hair. “But he sure did lobby me.”
I pulled out my tape recorder and snapped down the record button. “Really? Tell me more.”
She sighed, and gave me the kind of disdainful look you hope never to get from a woman -- especially a hot, half-naked groupie. “Utah,” she said. “They were talking about Utah a lot. And that chick who was with them was bitching about some kind of fertility goddess, threatening to throw her out the window. She looked pissed.” The groupie’s fingers had located a knot in the hair at the back of her head, and she began to untangle it. “Do you mind? I was taking a nap.”
I left Rumsfeld’s Rumble Room through the back door -- Listen, I may have faced down Keith Richards’ Chocodile-deprived rage, but I wasn’t about to let that cat take a snipe at me. I jogged round the building to the parking lot, hoping the rock ‘n’ roll gods would bless me and the Corolla would still be there.
Alas, it was not. The band must have escaped while I was talking to the groupie. But they had left me a souvenir -- the fertility goddess, who stood in all of her five feet of carved wooden glory right next to the passenger door of my trusty Chevy. A calling card? A warning?
I was going to have to call the Editrix soon, but I decided to postpone the unpleasant task of telling her that I had not yet tracked down the band I was profiling. What can I say: I don’t have insurance right now, so I don’t take unwarranted chances with my health.
As I drove around Primm looking for a place to buy a map of Utah, I pondered my assignment. What the hell kind of rock ‘n’ roll band books a gig in a saggy steak joint like Rumsfeld’s? And then won’t play because of the wine list? What the hell kind of band even drinks wine? Is their high-falutin taste how they managed to recruit a Washington lobbyist? And what the hell were they planning to do in Utah?
I was about to find out.
