Las Vegas, NV-Mitch Harris (Righteous Pigs) House
First stop on the trek was to spend a few days with our friends in the Righteous Pigs (maybe you've heard of them?) before our first show in Salt Lake City,Utah. Mitch and Stephen have been friends with the Cryptic guys for a few years now and were always super cool, hospitable and a laugh riot to hang with. We all knew the next few days were going to be a great time and fun way to start the tour. Don't know for the life of me why we didn't have a show setup while we were staying in Vegas? Cryptic played in Vegas in the past with Wehrmacht and Righteous Pigs, but without Bill (due to a strep throat, so Rob sang and played bass) Hey Les do you know why? So I'm driving with about an hour or less to go until we get to Vegas and I'm the first to get pulled over for speeding. FUCK! A really shitty way to start the tour. I felt like a total asshole. The van was in Les's name so he had the unfortunate pleasure of having to deal with the cop. I'm sorry Les. Rob was the only other person to get a ticket during the tour. Pretty sure he got his ticket somewhere in Kansas, for what, I don't remember and I'm pretty sure he doesn't remember either. Pretty sure we both blew off paying our tickets after we got home since our attitude was pretty much....Fuck It, I doubt I'll ever be coming back through here anytime soon. Also back then everything wasn't on this big cross country DMV computer network either.
Once we rolled up to Mitch's house we started to hit the beer pretty hard, I'm sure there was some weed floating around too. Mitch, Stephen, Caper, Mitch's brother (who I can’t remember his name, but was a really cool guy) and friends were a blast to hangout with. That night, or the next, there was a big party out in the desert somewhere in this huge drainage ditch. Tons of people we didn't know hanging out drinking beers, booze, smoking weed, loud music blasting from cars and boom boxes and everybody having a great time. Car headlights were pretty much our only source of light so if you were already drunk and either behind the cars or off in the distance, it was a little hard to navigate walking around the rocky gravel and down into this drainage ditch. Because of this, Les was the first casualty of the tour. Drunk and probably stoned it's not hard to trip, lose your balance and fall on your arm and use your face as a cushion, basically a full on body plant=not so good for a guitar player. Bloody, bruised and somewhat battered we made it back to Mitch's house all in one piece at who knows what time. Bill wasn't much of a drinker, so maybe he drove us all back?????? Next morning though, wasn't so nice as we were all pretty hungover (luckily at that age, the hangovers don't last as long or hurt as bad as they do now!) After a few goodbye’s and laughs at Les's expense because of the big knot on his forehead and scraped up arms, it was a nice hot sweaty drive to UT. Miserable. Oh yeah, Caper from Righteous Pigs is crazy! I'll just leave it at that and let you dig around to find some of the stories. I also think Vegas may have been the subconscious meaning behind "Hot Rad Chicks"! One of the on going jokes throughout the whole tour was and still to this day was me and my random sleep talking with no explanation. “No You Get On Top” “SHAMROCK!” WTF?
Some OLD Cryptic Slaughter flyers from my collection
for your viewing pleasure! Until PART 4
WARGOD: Gene Hoglan's first band. Prior to Dark Angel also
Michelle Meldrum R.I.P. (ex Phantom Blue & Meldrum)
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