Day 18: Las Vegas, NV
Nau mai
Yesterday we played at the House of Blues in Las Vegas, Nevada.
I woke up at 1:30pm after one of those bus sleeps that leave you foggy and discombobulated. My internal alarm clock had failed and I had completely missed the morning’s events. Liz had already hit the casino floor and had turned her $10 into $12 at digital craps while Gabe had taken the fight to the slot machines and doubled his $50 investment.
Liz and Annie had been out exploring other areas of the ‘Strip’, riding Las Vegas’ best piece of public transport infrastructure and visiting a medieval castle.
I stepped outside the bus to orientate myself. We were in a gated parking lot surrounded by a tall chain link fence. Through the mesh I could see a tall black pyramid and next to that an obelisk, and past that the feline profile of the Sphinx. A neat line of palm trees brought colour balance and tied the scene together.
With the satisfaction had from my accumulated bearings I headed back aboard to make breakfast. Strawberries, banana, and dragonfruit were prepared and added to my bowl and then topped with Greek yoghurt, granola, and salted pistachios.
The House of Blues is an appendage of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, a ruddy rectangular block grafted onto the side of the otherwise extremely handsome golden trefoil that clearly dominates this section of Las Vegas Boulevard despite its proximity to several other structures of great geometric purity.
To get into the venue as an audience member you must enter the Manbaylay Hotino and make your passage through the many slot machines of the casino floor, a trial of both navigation and temptation. There are no slot machines in the venue itself, just a great number of wall-mounted televisions proclaiming the greatest milk-based cocktail of the day.
The House of Blues is a venue that celebrates the great music tradition from which it takes its name. On display behind the bar is one of the greatest blues guitars ever made, the favourite guitar of one of the great influencers of this music Carlos Santana.
We had a pleasant green room behind the stage and the space was put to good use throughout the afternoon. Here Jon fixes some of the fiddly bits inside his amp that he mistakenly blew up during the last show. As careful as he is with his guitar playing sometimes he just plays too fast and too hight.
Jon was very proud of this tshirt that matched his beer can. We improved his proudness by adding all the other green room items that matched his tshirt.
After soundcheck we decided to brave a nearby VTR (Very Tall Rollercoaster). We caught the city’s premiere public transport offering, the Mandalay Bay Tram, a line that travels between the Manbaylay and the Excalibur Hotel two blocks to the north. The service was both frequent and free and provided a smooth ride with stunning views of the great black pyramid and the Sphinx.
We crossed the Excalibur/New York-New York Pedestrain bridge, this impressive span carrying us over Tropicana avenue and into the chaotic jumble of structures that is the New York-New York Hotel and Casino. Next we had to pass through a food court that only served hot dogs and pretzels, navigate our way across the slot machine wasteland of the casino floor and somehow find our way to an escalator that took us up towards the coaster entrance.
We made a quick stop in the arcade and were surprised to find that many of the benefits that the casino floor enjoyed had been omitted from this entertainment area; things like free drinks, smoking indoors, and cash-accepting machines were sorely missed. We were lucky enough to experience the cutting edge of video game technology though, once we had converted our cash dollars into a video arcade credit card.
There aren’t any games in the casino that allow you to throw this hard.
This game was colourful like a lot of the gambling games.
This game required both courage and athleticism.
Thoroughly warmed up after these video games we did a fine job of riding the Big Apple Coaster. The views from the top of the lift hill were truly spectacular and the barrel rolls were powerful. The coaster’s cars resemble yellow New York taxi cabs and I thought that it did a great job of imitating some of the more aggressive taxi rides we have experienced while on tour.
Liz again demonstrates her true mastery of the selfie format capturing this authentic moment of icecream consumption after the coaster ride.
At precisely 9:12pm the black pyramid powered up and began uploading streams of encrypted data straight into the atmosphere.
After the show we packed down and loaded the trailer out in the hot desert air of the House of Blues carpark. There was some urgency to this task as Tristan needed to get to the casino before the tables closed. Gabe knew a spot in the old part of town that still had $1 Blackjack hands and our fair drummer was looking for a cheap way into the thrill of a lifetime-long gambling habit.
It was great to see the old neon lights in this part of Vegas and hear the crackle and sizzle as you walked underneath them.
That was a joke about the tables closing. They don’t close. Tristan was able to gamble right up until we left at 3:30am and could have gone right up until breakfast had he had the stamina. We ended up at the famed Golden Nugget, a lively spot with several friendly-looking games of $5 Blackjack happening (it turned the $1 game was a thing of the past, sadly). This is one of Vegas’ oldest casinos and had I known of its fame and stature I certainly would have traveled to the hotel lobby to view the twenty seven kilogram golden nugget on display or tried to ride the waterslide that descends through the middle of a shark tank.
Tristan came out of his first game of Blackjack pumped, adrenaline coursing through his veins, having survived an hour-long encounter with the house and coming out one dollar on top. While this was going on I wanted to watch a master at work. Gabe has a soft touch on slot machines that perhaps comes from the hours he spends every day carefully manipulating the faders of his mixing console. One of his favourite slots is called Buffalo Mega Stampede, a complex guessing challenge that lets you try and achieve multiple instances of the buffalo picture on screen at the same time. Gabe didn’t just make it into the bonus during this round of Buffalo Mega Stampede, he managed to get two levels of bonus deeper inside his first bonus. The results speak for themselves. I sped this gif up but it took several minutes for the golden coins to finish richocheting around the screen.
There is a narrative to be gleaned from these descriptions of points awarded yesterday and rather than explain it I will leave it with the reader to use their imagination.
