Last week I had teacher training at my school across town every morning. On my commute Tuesday morning, I heard the DJ from my favorite radio station announce, "Caller 10 wins Death Cab for Cutie tickets." So I called. And I won!! I put a few of Death Cab for Cutie's songs on my sidebar in case some of you aren't familiar with them.
As part of winning the concert tickets, I won a tour of the Neon Boneyard with the bass player from the band. The Neon Boneyard is a place where they have a lot of old Las Vegas signs that used to be on the Strip and downtown. I've really wanted to go to the Neon Boneyard since it opened, so between the concert and the Neon Boneyard tour, I was doubly excited!
Here are some signs from the Las Vegas of my childhood:
This is me with the other winners and the bass player. At the concert, we picked a place to stand, and we randomly ended up right next to the winner in the white hat and also by my friend Halli from high school.
The Showboat was right off the 95 freeway by my house. It was later bought by a family we know, and they renamed it Castaways. It didn't do well and was eventually imploded.
I'm not sure what hotel this hat went with, but I remember it spinning in the air at one of the downtown hotels. Fitzgerald's, maybe?
This is the face from the Treasure Island back before they changed it into the stupid TI. I hate the new Sirens show and everything else that came with the new TI.
The Flamingo's old sign
I wanted a candid with the bass player, and this is the one I got. He's the bearded guy. He took tons of pictures while we were at the Neon Boneyard. I was reading the insert of Death Cab's new CD, and he was the photographer for the cover art and some other pictures in the album.
Caesar's Palace's old sign
another Binion's Horseshoe sign
This is Mr. Nick Harmer, the bass player for Death Cab for Cutie.
Here he is with me and my guest Harley. Harley is one of my former students. She loves music more than I do, which is saying a lot, and she's also an amazing musician. She plays the guitar and bass, among other instruments, so she was really excited to meet him.
I love Harley because even though she was born in 1993, she listens to all of the awesome 90s music that I listened to in high school. She also likes all of the same pop music that I like. Our musical tastes are almost identical. I promised her at the end of the school year that we would go to a concert together over the summer, so when I won these tickets, she was the first person I called.
The concert was at the Cosmopolitan hotel. They drained the pool and built a stage at the end of it, and that's where the band played. The lead singer said that it was the weirdest place he'd ever done a concert. The music wasn't super loud because we were outside, and because the pool is on the 4th floor, we had a fun view of the Planet Hollywood and Paris hotels.
Adele was also doing a concert inside the hotel, so the place was a mess with traffic and people, but the Death Cab concert was amazing. There are some bands that I love more after seeing them live, and this band is definitely one of them. The lead singer played the guitar, piano, and drums, the guitar player played the guitar, piano, and the bass, and the bass player took a turn playing the guitar. The only member of the band that didn't switch instruments was the drummer. It was fun to watch them all trade instruments, and they put on a really great show. I would love to see them again sometime. Next time I'll try to convince my anti-concert husband to go with me!
