Las Vegas: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
The Good: Oh Beats, where are thou?
A quick history about the Pup. The Pup used to be a club/rave kid. At least in my mind I tried to be. I think I started a bit too late to actually be a full blown one, but I think I got the gist of the lifestyle. During the height of this phase, I had full blown radioactive red hair (btw, that’s VERY looked down on in grad school). Because of a stupid thing call responsibility I had to cut back on this type of activity for a while. When I was finally finished with getting my learn on, and finally ready to get my freak on again, a certain attorney general and some legislatures decided to ban Raves. They place these events in the same venue as crack houses (really they did). Now they are no more, or at least rare and much harder to find. Along with it, good beats became much harder to find. I’ll get you attorney general man….

Anyway, that’s another long ranty post, which is neither here nor there. Here is about the good in Vegas, and the good was beats. Lots of them. With cowbells.

We were at The Palms hotel looking forward to a good night at Rain. Even though we were on the VIP list, the line was long (yea, there was a long VIP line, but it’s better than the 3 hour wait in the regular line. If you REALLY wanted to get in, there’s a guy you can pay $50 a head to get you in right away. Gotta love Vegas.).

Since the place was already mad crowded, we decided to head for this other place in the hotel called “The Lounge”. The lounge was smaller and much darker with a small stage in the middle. The DJ booth was off to stage left, and there were plenty of couches and tables still available. There was a very scantily dressed dancer by the door to entice people to come in and hang out. We were enticed, so we went in.

When I walked in, I was instantly mesmerized. Not by the mostly naked girl dancing, not by the cute little Asian girl behind the turntables, it was the beats. Pure and simple. The repeating rhythms, the builds, the loud peaks… the DJ instantly owned my soul with her music.

The DJ’s name was DJ Miss Joy. She was rocking that little club with exactly my style of dance music (Hard Trance/Hard House - in case you didn’t know, there are many types, and I’m pretty picky when it comes to that). We sat in a corner booth just going nuts over the music. I would’ve danced, but I would’ve been the only one besides the girls that were working (another story about that later).

After being trapped in Kansas for these last 10 months (eek, almost a year), without beats, or anything even remotely close to resembling beats, this was heaven. I’m not just saying that lightly. A lot of people have their own perceptions of heaven, but when I was in this lounge, that was it for me. A nice cool room with awesome people everywhere and a DJ dropping some sick beats for hours. That's where I wanted to go after I'm dead.

There was almost nothing that could’ve made things better in there. Almost.

Moving on. Besides Miss Joy, there were 2 very cool guys working a variety of hand drums. This was really great in rounding out the sound with the beats that Miss Joy was laying down. During one part of the night, the 2 guys started a little cowbell showdown. If you’ve ever seen the skit with Christopher Walken and Will Farell on SNL, you’ll know why is the funniest fun macktacularly delicious thing I’ve seen in a long time.

We stayed with Miss Joy till she finished her set at around 4am. I went up to talk to her and tell her how great a set she did. She was really cool about it. For someone laying down those big thumping beats, she was a bit shy and giggly (She had just found out she was mentioned in a magazine). I met a few of her friends that were there hanging out with her and she said that she’s playing at another after hour club afterwards. I was excited and left to join up with the other guys.

Sadly, the guys I was with didn’t want to go. I was ok with that though. I think it would’ve been really hard for it to get any better than the last few hours I’ve spent in the lounge. I was in a good place. A place with lots of beats.

Other good things during the trip:
Famous people I saw: James Carville
Steve Harvey

Dinner at Nobu. Good god that was great food. If someone took me there on a date I would’ve SO put out.

Best Dish: New Style Sashimi – Very lightly seared Salmon (or whitefish, we went with salmon) with sesame seed. The dish adds a light sesame and seared taste without losing the fish flavor. Mmmmm…. Drool…

Next time: Las Vegas: The Bad