Gig 20030330 Journal

Source: Shihad.com (circa 03)

Date Published: Unsure

Who: Shihad.

Where: Las Vegas, NV, USA

When: 30 March 2003

Reviewed by: Shihad (Jon Toogood) & (Phil Knight)

Viva Las Vegas. it's hot today so I spend the afternoon in the car park of the Huntington playing my guitar and getting some sun. I haven't seen it for so long, I'm white and pastey. luckily I play in a rock band and that's considered a good thing. I love Las Vegas. I know it's totally screwed up but I always have a great time here. Disneyland for adults. we're staying at the Hard Rock Hotel which has a casino downstairs with shitloads of awesome rock'n'roll memorabilia to gawk at while you (usually) lose all your money. but not me - after the show I won $100 playing Blackjack. oh yeah. the Huntington is a good show for us. We all played with fire in our bellies and a whole bunch of people who don't didn't know or give a fuck who we were before the show are fully rocked by the end and there are metal salutes a-plenty to be seen around the venue. it's 30 Seconds to Mars' last show with us so we trade emails and all that and get a big group photo afterwards. bummer to see them go. Everyone's staying at the Hard Rock so we all meet in the casino after the show and proceed to get blind. from what I can remember there was so many people on our bus at one stage dancing to 'Highway to Hell' it was shaking. Celine Dion had just started a 3 year stint at the Ceasers Hotel the day we arrived. she's getting paid something like $35,000,000 and gets her own store erected in their mall. shame I didn't get to go. to busy living in the real world.

-Jon.X

Will lets see, my afternoon started of with Jared(singer from '30 seconds to mars')driving his S.U.V at me in the car park and swerving at the last minute.He had me going for a second. I then surveyed the surrounding area for food establishments and settled on the mexican place across the road. I was the only non mexican in there and everything was in Spanish. Doe's Lengua mean bean? I'll have to ask Marco our Ecuadorian drum tech. I went back there after we played and there was a drunk guy in there dancing to the crazy ompah lumpah mexican music blasting from the jukebox. He shouted at some guy "I don't come here for the food. I only come here for the musica. Muscia! He was smelly. It was Fingertights last show with us and they got 'haised' on stage by Trust Co. big time. Old favourites like replacing water with vodka in there water bottles and spraying sticky shit all over them. Seeing as we were in Sin city, everybody decided to go out and get wrecked and gamble. I'm not drinking at the moment and seeing as Vegas gives the willies when I'm straight, I elected to make the most of my once a week hotel room. I ended up falling asleep watching 'Dead Calm' and sleeping for 13 hours.

P.S.Marco told me that Lengua means tongue. Lucky I ordered Carne Asada.

Phil.