Las Vegas Review

Posted by Devil Woman Michelle With some input from Rockin' Robin

Hmmm where to begin? I guess I could start with Wednesday evening. Robin and I were carpooling from the LA area to Vegas. We got off to a late start and got to the hotel we were staying at in Primm at about 11ish. I thought I'd dies and gone to cowboy heaven. There was I kid you not wall paper to make 3 out of the 4 walls in our room look like a log cabin. Oh well, what can you expect for $18 a night. Thursday morning we woke up earlier than either of us expected so after breakfast we headed off to Mandalay bay. When we got there we went to the wrong entrance of the hotel so we didn't get any bellboys to help us with our heavy bags and we had to walk through the casino to the hotel. Once at the front desk we discovered it was too early to check in. So we left our bags with the bellpeople and went to check out the HOB. While sitting in the restaurant and sipping our drinks we had a great informational chat with whom I was soon to discover was one of the very few helpful HOB Vegas employees. We then returned to the front desk and got checked in. We tried to get a hold of either Jeryl or Linda but had no luck so we went to pick up our tickets. There we discovered that we couldn't pick up our tickets until after the 1pm check in list got to them. So, we went exploring. We found our way out to the wave pool and who should we see wandering around checking the place but Silvertone's own Kenney Dale Johnson. We didn't go up to him at that time because we felt it would be rude. Robin headed over to the counter to get our tickets while I tried yet again to get a message to Jeryl. Finally Robin and I were able to get our tickets so we headed up to our room to relax and begin getting ready.

I'm going to now skip up to where we arrived for the concert. Now I am going to have a few negative comments in here but NONE of them are directed at the band or any of their people. In fact all of them are directed at the employees of the House of Blues Las Vegas only. Anyway, that said Robin and I were the second people in line a group of four women were in front of us. We arrived at 4:00ish. We of course had people come after us and for about 5 or 6 groups we warned them that we had a rather large group joining us just to be nice. No one seemed to mind. So at 5 I went to the restaurant and tried to figure out if Jeryl or anyone else was there... No such luck but after walking between there and the line about 3 times I did meet Ette. We decided to have something to eat and got a table. Well, about that time Jeryl and Chris A arrived. So, we decided to hang with them. To make a long story short we ended up in the bar as Jeryl said and I had to bug a bartender to get him to order me a bowl of French fries to eat in the bar. I can't believe it but the HOB was having some painting finished up on their walls so they had a scaffolding set up on the customer side of the bar... Talk about just inviting a personal injury lawsuit. Well, Jeryl and I went out to the line to take our turn at line holding. When what should happen the scaffolding fell. No one was hurt but talk about weird timing. Oh I forgot to mention our group was sitting near the scaffolding. Anyway, in line we discover that people are having trouble with their tickets at the will call window so all through the evening we had people stepping in and out of line to check on their tickets. Well, apparently this made a group behind us mad. They complained to HOB management who promptly moved them ahead of us without even discussing the matter with us then they proceeded to inform us that if anyone else got into our group they would move us to the BACK OF THE LINE!! Again without asking us what was going on!! Talk about the rudest bunch of people I have ever dealt with at a concert. My advice is to stay away from the HOB in Vegas. Needless to say their behavior put me in a bad mood. I wasn't really mad for our group I was upset for the people behind us because they were being hurt more than us by these people. Anyway, on to the concert.

As many have said it was a great show. After the opening act Jeryl and I went to go buy stuff. I ended up getting a cropped T-shirt. When the guys came out Chris looked wonderful in the black suit. I had never seen it before. We saw the belly dancer and I personally was not impressed. I guess I just missed the appeal. Her outfit was cool though. I actually missed the stories and jokes. I use them to kind of gauge the show by and not having them I was completely lost... Not that that's a bad thing. The Alligator Blue Darlin' gave Hershel made an appearance during his Diddley Daddy solo but fell off and some drunk woman caught it. While the guys were back stage waiting for Chris to change a roadie came out and started asking about the gator. The woman who had it lied and said it had ended up somewhere else but the roadie was tenacious and got the gator back. The drunk lady was part of a whole group that about 5 songs in were PLASTERED. They moved from the middle and slowly worked their way across to us shoving Jeryl and Robin out of the front row. I was the only one of our group who managed to keep the drunks at bay. It was yet another reminder to me why I enjoy venues where drinking is limited. Also in spite of the NO picture taking crazy security people I managed a picture or two. The HOB security people need to get their priorities straight. I mean rude people can shove people out of their places and someone can smoke an illegal substance and they don't complain but take a photo of a band that doesn't seem to mind and they go ... pardon my French ape shit. I know it sounds like I'm doing a heck of a lot of complaining now but looking back on the whole thing I've discovered the whole thing was so absurd I would have not believed it had I not lived it.

Okay on to the autograph crush. Literally that's what is was. You had to crush your way to the table and get Chris to sign your stuff then you had to fight people trying to get your space. I had Chris sign my SOTD CD and T-shirt because the people putting the stuff down for him to sign said "No tickets". I also gave Chris a lovely lei made of blue silk flowers and told him it was a thank you gift for the great music and show. He thanked me put it on and shook my hand. It wasn't a normal hand shake and I can't really describe it here so I won't try... Sorry. He then proceeded to draw a broken heart with an arrow through it on my shirt and then moved on. I fought my way out of the crush and found a place to sit. When I finally caught up with Robin we decided to head up to our room as both out feet were killing us. At about 1am Jeryl called and invited us up to her suite for an after concert party. So, Robin Homer (my laptop) and I all made the trip to Jeryl's room. We gabbed, all wrote although I typed the group review and shared pictures till about 4am. It was the highlight of the evening.

On Friday morning Robin and I left and thus ended our Vegas adventure. I hope it wasn't too negative. Like I said as I wrote it I was laughing because the whole thing was just too bizarre to believe. Until next time I remain....

Wickedly Yours,
~Devil Woman Michelle~

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