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To Vegas After only 2.5 hours of sleep, I was up at 5 am thanks to planning of a 3 week trip with daily itineraries, sightseeing, routing, locating venues, hotel, flight, car and train reservations, as well as the usual packing. I got a one-way from Newark to Vegas of $134 from Expedia one week before. Tip: the prices usually double or more a week before the flight. But as I was working on getting the flight directly off of Continental’s website (for the extra bonus points), the price doubled. But it was still low at Expedia. I figure the time zones of these companies are different, so keep that in mind when ordering tix. This time I decided to complicate the usual pre-flight activities by buying a new digital SLR camera. I’d been thinking of it for a few weeks, and last week having taken an Epson photography seminar, and having met an environmentalist photographer, I got a lot of advice and so the day before my trip, bought a Pentax 10 megapixel job with image stabilization built into the camera and a 18-55mm zoom (28-75mm equivalent for 35 mm camera). There always seems to be some drama in leaving on these trips. A friend suggested that it would be a happy medium to get a cab down to Port Authority then take the bus to Newark airport since my flight was to leave at 7:30am. A cab would cost more than $50 to get there. I thought that getting to the airport an hour in advance was good enough. Wrong! I got there 55 minutes before the flight, but one of three security screening areas were unstaffed so the lines were hideous. After the checker wanted to open my bag, I realized they wanted the yogurt (gee, I never thought of yogurt as a gel or liquid..), and was very lucky to hitch a ride on the old people’s cart. Thankfully, it was an uneventful and restful flight. I put my Pentax together and read some of the manual so I’d be ready to take pix later in the day. I got my bag and headed straight to the Hertz counter. The plan was to go to Utah and take as many scenic pix as possible. The last Moodies tour ended at Vegas, so I went to Grand, Bryce and Zion canyons. This time I thought of going to Cedar Breaks (the pix looked interesting) and maybe also Bryce and Zion if I could pack them in. It’s a three hour drive to the area. But the lady at Hertz counter first ridiculed me for choosing a sub-compact and then strongarmed me into buying extra insurance. I knew my platinum card would cover some of it, but I never rent enough to have it all memorized. What crystallized it this time, and maybe I now will remember, is that the original quote for the first rental (2 weeks, to drop off in Salinas, CA, and pick up another for a week to drop in Denver) was about $360. After insurance taxes and fees she gave me an estimate of like $960. I was absolutely nonplussed by this, but tired and needing to get going so figured I’d sort it later. (I did and found that the card did cover $50,000 in collision and loss of use as well, so had to schedule in time the next day to bring the car in and get the rate reduced by about $200.)
I don’t drive that often. But when I do it’s a lot and in unfamiliar terrain. Last time was in the south of England on the “wrong” side of the road. Getting out of Vegas was a bit harrowing. The car rental folks send you around in a big circle with lots of heavy duty freeway driving, lots of weaving, and at 75 mph. Yes, the speed limit “in town” is 55 or 65, but since it’s 75 out of town, and they travel 80 or 90 there, they slow down to 70 in town. It was pretty smooth sailing to Utah. On the way, the Virgin River gorge is always gorgeous --- ;-) The Virgin flows through Zion National Park and the town of Virgin. A lot of the features of SW Utah were named by the Mormons. The lady at the Utah tourist office at the border reminded me I had lost an hour coming into Arizona from Nevada, so sunset would be early as well, so my hope to drive up to Cedar Breaks was dashed. She suggested I go to Kolub canyon, which is the upper end of Zion and just off Interstate 15, which is the one that takes you from Vegas to Utah. It was lovely and I gave the new camera a workout.
Back to Hurricane, Utah, I checked into the Travelodge (with Free Wifi!), called Mom, who’s still having her troubles adjusting to the latest new place to live, and caught up on email. I should have thought to write this installment, but I guess my brain was just too tired to even think of this. Tomorrow I do some photography in Utah, go back to Vegas and see the Beatles’ Cirque de Soleil show.
Zion Canyon to Vegas, Moodies and Love I figured this day would be spend partly at Zion, and if lucky, also at another park like Bryce Canyon, then back to Vegas for the JL fan gathering at the Monte Carlo pub and brewery, then hopefully some respite in the hotel room before going to the Beatles “Love” show at the Mirage at 10. That was the plan and there was a lot to do. The weather was again great, partly cloudy, and once I got to Zion Canyon, the ranger suggested I not try to do Bryce since it’s 2 hours there and back, and that the other nearby park, the Coral Pink Sand Dunes, wasn’t as pretty as spending the time at Zion. I’d been to Zion before and had thought it was probably the prettiest with Bryce a close second and Grand Canyon a distant third. So, till about 2, I drove through the Virgin valley and took a hike and got some great shots over the valley.
Made stops first at the Dairy Queen in Hurricane, wanting something fast to quell the hunger. Ordered a salad and a sundae. But since they took forever making the salad, ate the sundae on the spot and stashed the salad for later. I decided to make a special stop in St. George, Utah a sprawling town in a valley between some buttes – it looks butt ugly from the highway against the beautiful backdrop of the craggy red hills. Hertz was at the airport, right on top of a butte (mesa) overlooking town. Got the refund for the overcharge on collision insurance, immediately got stuck in traffic, so was late getting back to Vegas (normally a three hour drive) and had no time to get to parking for the Monte Carlo pub and brewery gathering. One of the great things about Vegas is that most of the places you want to go are huge and marked in neon at the top. The Monte Carlo reminded me a bit of the architecture in Monaco (I’m sure not a coincidence). Getting onto the “Strip” aka Las Vegas Blvd., I thought I’d found the entrance for the Monte Carlo, and after parking in the garage realized I was in New York New York, the casino next door. Ha. It was half an hour by the time I parked and had walked the distance from the opposite side of NY NY to the opposite side of the Monte Carlo. They design these places so that you almost have to walk through a torturously designed casino to get anywhere (almost like the way they design department stores in Manhattan… so that you will get lost and spend more time there). At the pub everyone was eating already so I was offered and gladly took some of Crispy’s crispy cheese balls with marinara. I’d brought some 5x7s and 8x10s of mostly new (UK) pix for viewing and we all shared stories. Leaving the Monte Carlo/ NYNY, I thought I should try to avoid the Strip. It is by far the most congested part of town. So when given the choice of exiting the parking garage to the Strip or Tropicana ave, I took the latter, but it sent me off west, away from where I needed to go (which was north and east). It was quite a challenge getting to the Hilton what with one-way traffic flow patterns, the highway (Interstate 15) limiting east-west travel, and the airport in the middle of it all. Got good, and again free parking at Hilton garage, and on my way in saw Betsy and Caroline at the fast food joint just inside the door. Since I was still hungry, I sat with them a short while, ate some of my salad from the DQ and headed in. I took some of my luggage, bare necessities, to search for my roommates, first in the long line at the box office, and failing that elsewhere. Meantime, thankfully, I found Deb H with my ticket for “Love” in the box office line and was offered a reasonably good and reasonably priced tic for that night’s Moodies show as well by Yvonne, so broke down and bought it, knowing I’d have to bolt for the other show part way through. I was a bit frantic though still bearing half my luggage with nowhere to put it. Kind Samaritans, Yvonne and Vickey offered up some room for my stuff and a place to change, and while I was doping out the huge Hilton with three wings, multiple elevator shafts, large casino, stores, the usual, managed to get to the show on time. Around the Hilton there are signs for them everywhere, some more than life size. Many lit from behind. The huge ostentatious sign out front had their photo and name even larger, and the constant chatter from Radio Hilton, piped in everywhere (elevators, hallways – almost feels like being in China!) advertised the Moodies shows. They did the same for the other acts coming, and Manilow has his own store.
The Concerts I must admit that my mind was rather distracted and tired, and now a day later, writing this, many details are gone, but I’ll tell you this. John looks absolutely stunning when he walks on stage now. Though I didn’t notice it the first night, he’s let his hair go back to straight to slightly wavy, and I like it. The black jacket over the white shirt with small frills, black pants and very dressy black leather shoes, made him look very natty, indeed. He’s maintained his weight loss and I must say I’m envious and glad for him. He was his usual smiling self, and I was glad for that too. It was quite a nice sight for sore eyes. Justin seemed a little distant, and his voice cracked a little. I was back in row H behind a tall person, so my view wasn’t what it could have been. The set list was unchanged from the UK except for the omission of Forever Autumn, as usual for the U.S. shows. To tell you the truth, my mind was too distracted to be dissecting special issues regarding sound this evening. Nothing sounded terribly unusual, so I guess that was good. The other thing I found remarkable the first night is that the venue was not six sections wide, as I’d seen on the Hilton’s website’s seating chart, but only 3, so the M-1 tickets were not nearly so far away and M-2 were center, not way right. I’ll have to sort that one out later. I noticed there was no security going in and no security near the stage, so both cameras will be brought in tomorrow. Deb H and I decided to bolt at 9:30, which turned out to be just before Are You sitting comfortably. She had scoped out the modern Monorail, for which one of the few stations was located at the Hilton, and which we would only need to take 2 stops to get to Harrahs, the closest to the Mirage. I was amazed at how deftly I was led through the intricate and lengthy maze through the casino at the Harrahs (the only way to get from the Monorail to the Strip, natch) to get to the Mirage and “Love” by 10, and we did it with some time to spare. I was still hungry, and the only things available were the usual expensive, and non-nutritious show fare, so got a Moonpie (I kid you not) and some juice and water for just under $10, yes, I know.. The show was amazing and I’m glad I went. There was too much to see in one sitting, and having already been a bit tired and on sensory overload from Zion, the drive, the gathering, weaving through 4 hotel/casinos in a couple of hours, and the Moodies show, and all the rest, I still took in quite a bit (I’m quite the perfectionist, you know, so that I concede missing quite a bit of the show is rather disappointing to me). But it was a cacophony of vignettes, performances of all kinds, many very innovative and unexpected. There was a loose chronology starting in World War II Liverpool and their childhoods through Beatlemania and the late sixties (including everything from a reading of Blackbird which began after some scenes of burning crosses (references to the South and Paul’s original concept for Blackbird which was the trials of a southern black woman), while 4 actors dressed as beaten up blackbirds tried to spread their wings and fly, just to crash to the stage with great sound effect), a performance of extreme roller bladders on halfpipe, a bed in the middle of the stage emitting vast quantities of sheets which extended over the audience, billowing over our heads, then just as quickly retracting back into the bed. There were plenty of acrobats with crazy costumes and acrobatics of course. The music was fantastic. There was For the Benefit of Mr. Kite, of course, with the circus theme. Octopus’ Garden was inventive with actors dressed as jellyfish and other sorts of denizens of the deep, hanging from ropes, and at first Ringo is singing it to the background of “Good Night” (last song on the White Album). I’d heard a lot of the music on the initial broadcast online, so knew what to expect, but there’s a lot more music than what I’d heard online and I expect there’s more than what’s on the CD (still haven’t listened to my copy!). I kept remembering the pix and video that I’d seen of the grand opening of this show, where Paul had said he was choked up by it. I can understand why. There were conversations and snippets of discussion amongst the four Beatles that had probably not been aired before, and it was poignant. The ending was also very nice. They encouraged us all to sing Hey Jude, and the encore was “All you need is love” with dancing actors with “rose petals” of plastic gracefully flying out of their twirling umbrellas, red streamers coming out of the ceiling, etc. Some of the stuff in this production seemed to be reminiscent of some of Paul’s recent tours, where in one, the opening act for him was circus performers wandering around for 45 minutes with colorful, oversized props and costumes, and in at least one other series of shows he ends the concert with giant machines blowing confetti into the air that gets all over the fans. Getting back was pretty smooth. The Monorail runs every 7-9 minutes but costs $5 per trip… ouch! Thanks to various glitches in the room, and the temperature was something like 85 degrees, it took me until 3:30 to get to sleep. Zzzzzz Argh..
Valley of Fire and Vegas Concert 2 Got up at 9 with a migraine, odd since I usually get those from oversleeping, downed the Excedrin, and met up with Vickey, Wendy and Deb H for breakfast, taking off for the Valley of Fire around 11. Now that I’ve finally scoped out the broad outlines of Vegas, this being only my second time there, it was simple getting to The 15 and up to the park. We stopped in at the Indian grocery and deli to get provisions for lunch and headed in. Before doing this trip, I’d downloaded and printed a great image of the Valley of Fire off of Google Earth. Check it out. You can see from space why they call it what they do.
The rocks aren’t all flaming red, but some are various shades of gold as well (that’s the silica – quartz), and the rest is colored by iron. Wendy and I did a short hike in sand to see the Petroglyphs scratched into the walls by the Indians. They were very interested in leaving behind info about the Atlatl, the special spear with a special point on it that they used to kill some animal with big antlers that they drew. You could see the hunting parties going after herds of them. The sand stayed in my shoes and socks for days. It was definitely worth going and I got lots of really wonderful photos.
Concert The highlight of this night’s show was human error on Higher and Higher. Graeme didn’t say his usual hair brown teeth white shtick, but said they’ve been playing the song since before he could get work as a part time Santa. And when Graeme said that and they started the song, Justin had this cute, wry smile on his face which lasted there quite some time. I got a snap of it. Justin played his solo a bit too long, I saw Paul smile, I could tell things were a bit off kilter, Nobody sang the chorus except Graeme, who surprisingly did not sound so bad. Was that your lap I was sitting on? Justin said afterwards. I didn’t get that at first, but realized later it was both a reference to how he had mucked up the song and Graeme’s Santa reference. We went up to the very short stage at Singer and stayed till the end. Not really wanting to go back to my seat, and knowing there was no security, I kneeled then sat at the stage with a few others for Nights and my hand nearly got trod on before Nights was over as the traditional stampede began. Justin had more smiles tonight and John beamed a lot. The new SLR was very happy getting such close-ups of the Jays! Afterwards, I was evaluating the venue and I like it for 4 reasons – no security, no security!, a nice low stage, and No Security! Kevin was there with his rig.. This night I spent some après concert time in the bar, drinking nothing, but chatting about Moodies, and I’ve been writing this well into the late night.
Red Rock Canyon and Las Vegas 3 This day I went out to Red Rocks Canyon. That’s a very popular name, what with Red Rocks being in Colorado, and I just ran across one in California as well as the one in Nevada west of Las Vegas. Red rocks are common since all you need is 1 part per million of iron to color rocks reddish. For future reference, there are two different ways to get to Red Rocks Canyon, the short way takes forever (Charleston St) and the long way takes much less time (15 S to 215 north). Once out there it’s a 15-20 mile drive – a very beautiful one at that. I didn’t have time for long hikes, but did get some swell pix. At the far end the elevation had gone up considerably past 4,000 feet I think.
Concert This time, since it was clear there was No Security, I brought both cameras. In the meantime I’d figured out how to increase the ISO setting on the brand new digital SLR and of course, that helped the exposures quite a bit. But the lens is only about 80mm equivalent at max, so not the best unless you’re in or close to the front row. But I figured that for Question and See-Saw it would be ideal. An older security fellow did come down the aisle at one point (my seat was on the aisle) and asked if I was taking video. I had both of my cameras on my lap at that point… not exactly in position to be shooting video! I assured him they were still cameras and he went away. This was the best of the three, I think all will agree. There were a number of us online fans who knew each other sitting in the H-J rows (probably bought via MoodyBluesToday). So when, during Story in your eyes, the wiring on Justin’s guitar failed, and he was playing with the amp when he was supposed to be playing the long ending solo, and the guitar tech finally came up onstage to help, we took the opportunity to come down to the front. I’m not sure why, but it seemed like the right thing to do. We had a great time with John, who came to the front to entertain while he, Paul, Gordy and Graeme carried on holding the song together. The stage is pretty low, so when John comes to the front here, you can reach out and well… you can finish that sentence ;-) Finally, the tech helped Justin and he launched into his ending solo. But the fix didn’t last more than half of the solo, and he was wandering around, helpless again. The tech came up again, and though I didn’t see him do it, others saw him attach a regular cord to his amp and guitar and he again launched into the solo from the beginning. They did a dino shuffle, but the cord got taut and things got a bit dicey. Norda typically steps out of the way with her guitar, but with a cord stretching across, that prevented her movement. Anyway, a good time was had by all. We thought about kneeling at the stage for the rest of the show, but the folks in the first row had a different idea, so we went back. But we were back for Higher & Higher. I got a whole bunch of closeup shots of Graeme on this with the new digital SLR that requires no time between shots. Then at the end of that we went back to the seats. I predicted we’d be back for Singer, and that was the case, and again shortly before Justin even finished singing Nights, the fourth stampede of the night began, so I joined. That’s a record number from my experience. Unfortunately, Kevin only got part of that show, though he did get TSIYE. Afterwards there were lots of goodbyes and safe journey wishes since many (most?) were going home. After the show the number of large paper posters with the Moodies on them on stands in the long hallways had already been replaced by upcoming acts. There were still plenty of lifesize mylar posters backlit under lock and key. I got to bed reasonably early, but I didn’t immediately copy all the photos I’d taken to my computer because roommates had lights out already.
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