What happens in Vegas goes on CNN

Part one of two featuring the exploits of Three Ring and Yours Truly.

Last week I had the opportunity to go to Las Vegas for a trade show. There were a mere 100,000 attendees and it took us several days just to walk the entire show floor. My business associate, henceforth known as Three Ring, and I learned a great deal and came away from the show confident that our new venture will be successful.


Vegas has never been on my list of desired destinations, though I had a secondary incentive to go there. Selmer has recently set up five Selmer Pro Shops in the USA and all of them are on the East Coast except for Kessler Music in Vegas. They stock a full line of Selmer instruments and accessories.


I had phoned them in advance of my trip and I learned that they had a lot of Selmer's special series of sax necks. Getting a new neck for my bari made a huge difference. I highly recommend Phil Barone's line of bari necks. But for my tenor, I wanted to try out Selmer's sterling silver necks and their special booster neck that has interior spiral grooves designed to focus the air column inside the horn. Dave Kesseler told me that they had lots of choices in stock.


When I had a gap in my schedule, I grabbed my tenor from my hotel and hopped a cab to their shop, fairly far away from The Strip. They presented me with a Selmer alto case that had the interior modified to hold more than a dozen various necks. I had at them until the store closed. In the end, I was satisfied that the original neck for my horn was the best match. The sterling silver necks were good and had a brighter, somewhat thinner sound, not what I was looking for. The booster neck was a dud. So in the end, I bought nothing, which was fine with me. Nevertheless, one of the family members, Mark Kessler, insisted on driving me back to my hotel, something way above the call of duty. I was totally impressed with this offer and we had a very enjoyable drive back. This was the first time I had met a person in Vegas who showed a real quality of openness and generousity. It was not to be the last.


For more on Kessler Music and their Selmer Pro Shop, check out their website. They have my highest recommendation.


My initial impressions of The Strip in Vegas were not good. Everything is on a huge scale, all manufactured in a phony manner. Massive theme hotels. Smoke-filled casinos. Overpriced shows. Nothing was free, other than crappy drinks served in the casinos. The cheap buffet is non-existent these days.


There was a seedy sexual undercurrent everywhere. In a country where fundamentalist fanatics continue to spread their own special brand of oppression, this is a city where people come to let loose. Suburban housewives dress like tramps and become indistinguishable from the numerous hookers. Breast implants are the norm, with varying degrees of aesthetic success. Guys strutting around with whores or wannabe whores on their arms, smoking big dog-turd cigars, as if that made them special. Latinos standing on every available space on the sidewalk, handing out cards for an escort service (girls to your room in 20 minutes). They'd give the cards to kids, asking them to pass them to their dad. They'd snap the cards as you walk past, creating a growing irritation with each snap. There were huge video billboards promoting strip shows, newspaper boxes full of ads for escort services.


I could not see how they could have the gall to market this city as a family destination. How could I ever bring my daughter here? We spoke with lots of locals - cabbies, waitresses, hotel workers. They all said Las Vegas was not a good place to bring up a family.


That said, 6,000 people move to the city every month, now with a permanent population of more that 2 million. Millions more visit each month. Construction in Vegas puts Vancouver's Olympic boom to shame. There was a $7 billion development immediately beside our massive hotel, actually surrounding it on two sides. Construction went on round the clock, and they had built their own cement batching plant across the street to service its requirements.


Our hotel had a dismal interior, despite its huge faux-neoclassical exterior. The front doors were too small in comparison to the facade, betraying the low ceiling of the casino inside. It was not one of the happening places on the strip. The casino was usually pretty empty, with sullen gamblers affixed to their slots or blackjack tables. There were none of the Beautiful People that populate TV and movie depictions of this city. A creepy magician had a permanent show in the hotel. The food was overpriced and unsatisfying. The room that Three Ring and I shared was quite satisfactory - we simply disliked the rest of the hotel.


I won a tidy amount on just my third pull ever on a slot machine. Once I determined that there was no new tenor neck in my future, that was my gambling money. I don't think that it's a coincidence that spending a dollar or less on a slot is the only cheap thing on The Strip. They get you in the end. I broke even on the trip.


With everything going on, I figured I'd be able to hear some decent jazz on The Strip. I was wrong. I saw a piano/bass duo at a bar in The Bellagio. They told me that real jazz is long gone from Las Vegas. There was only one lone jazz club in town well off the beaten path. I never maded it there.


Three Ring and I made ever-expanding forays trying to find some place we would like. He couldn't get around too well, especially after walking the trade show for at least 6 hours each day. On his previous trip, in Mexico last Christmas, he fell down a hole and cracked a vertebra in his lower back. The trip before that, to the Maritimes in August, he had a heart attack. Hence the name Three Ring, as in Circus. Two weeks ago we had joked that he shouldn't take another trip.


Here's a shot I took of our hotel on what was supposed to have been our last day there. Our room is in the lower left hand corner.



Seriously.


I only had time to get dressed and grab one thing, my saxophone.