This past weekend was the first Vegoose festival in Las Vegas. Some highlights:
Beans w/Holy Fuck: A rapper who used to be in the anti-pop consortium, getting down with two electro knob tweakers, a bassist, and a drummer. Totally impressive.
Beck: A fantastic performance from a fantastic performer. It's always great to see the dude, but when he busts out the large-scale ghettoblaster and gets down with some dance moves, well, that's the way to rck it.
Trey Anastasio: Trey's new band sounds great, almost surprising since his second guitarist is way more Jared-Youngesque than jamband rocking. Still, his late night set was nearly phoned-in, at least until First Tube, which I got to bust the first tube dance moves to. Yeah baby!
Onyx: Covers have never sounded better than out of this band, who played the brew-pub at Monte Carlo on Sunday night. Wait. Covers have never sounded WORSE!
Moe. late night: A reminder of why I love this band. THey dressed in costumes -- first set good, second set evil. Darth Vader sang "Dirty Deeds (Done Dirt Cheap.)" Fantastic. I didn't think I'd be into it at all, but moe. reminded me of what's so great about a band that jams -- you don't know what's coming next.
The Flaming Lips: I have now been onstage with them twice. This time there were 30, 000 people in front of me. Holy Fuck, indeed. I've never experienced anything so close to my teen dream of rockin'. As far as the eye can see putting their hands in the air and waving them like they just didn't care? Whoa.
Vegas: Gotta give it up for Vegas. Though the debauchery wasn't as intense as, say, my January trip there (no nudity at all this time), I did get married. Yes, it was fake, and one of the strangest experiences of my life (to say 'I will' to a woman you've never met and never will see again? Um, yeah, totally strange.) But elvis was involved, so that was cool.
