Review and photos by John Maxwell - rat-salade@yahoo.com

The chair shattered under the weight of the inter-racial dry-humping being dispensed with unbridled passion in the center of room 36-211 of the Venetian. The two strippers and the lucky male recipient collapsed to the floor, and after a quick zamboni-like clearing of the playing field, the show picked up where it left off.

Over on the sofa, another Hustler beauty busied herself with any number of men, while . . .

Whoops!

Looks like I’m getting a little ahead of myself. You clicked on this link looking for a review of the David Lee Roth concert on January 10, and here I just jumped right into the sexual escapades of the after-show party. What was I thinking?

Let me go back to the beginning then. Don’t worry. We’ll get back to the ladies.

Several months ago, a friend of mine named Eric Zimmermann (who some of you might remember was rumored to be Dave’s new guitarist over a year ago) told me that he was going to a private party for the pornography industry in January in Las Vegas. The featured entertainment for the evening was David Lee Roth. I never actually believed him, thinking that he was just trying to screw around with me, so I forgot about it.

Then about ten days before the supposed event, Eric called to say that the other person with whom he was going to attend had bailed out, and he asked if I would like to go.

It turns out that a friend of Eric’s, Roy, recently joined a friend of his in an internet porn company. You can find their primary web site at www.Xpleasures.com. Not all the links are functional yet, but they’ve got some pretty good stuff.

Anyway, their company was bringing David Lee Roth in to perform at this private party as part of some kind of internet pornography convention. Who knew they had these things?

As Eric further explained the evenings events, I began to consider the proposition. Hmmmmmmm. Let me see. One of my favorite rock stars of all time is playing at a private party where there will be scores of members of the porn industry who have few if any inhibitions, free booze, free food, free place to stay . . . Fuck yes I’ll go!

The trick then was trying to get a plane ticket out to Los Angeles to meet up with Eric. My hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina is a major USAir hub. Given the fact that I was trying to get a ticket less than three weeks from my date of departure, if I wanted to fly round trip from Charlotte, it was going to run me in excess of $1300.

No chance. Mr. VISA and Mr. Checking Account were not gonna be able to support that. Plus, I’ve already seen Dave eight times on his headlining tour. It’s a great show, but even with the addition of naked women, it isn’t a $1300 show.

So I looked into flying out of Raleigh, which is a two-and-a-half hour drive from Charlotte. Flying from Raleigh to Los Angeles could be done for just $282 with just one connecting flight. The irony? The connection is in Charlotte. That makes sense. Take an extra flight and save $1000. Whatever.

Anyway, $282 was at least manageable, but still not a great situation, since Christmas was particularly harsh on my financial picture this year.

However, the deity of your choice was smiling on our hero that day. You know the feeling you get when you find $20 in the pocket of a pair of jeans that you haven’t worn in months? Multiply that times 17. My savings account statement came in the mail containing $345.22 of pocket change. I had actually forgotten that the count existed. It’s sort of an emergency thing, and I only get a statement once every three months. It seemed to me that this constituted an emergency.

Needless to say, the account was quickly closed, and the electronic plane ticket was purchased.

There was still one obstacle to be hurdled. The concert was on a Monday evening, which meant the earliest I could fly out of Los Angeles after driving back from Vegas was late Tuesday. And having done this before, barely making an 11:50 p.m. red-eye flight in the process, I knew the Tuesday night red-eye was my only option.

That particular flight gets into Charlotte at 7 a.m. which gives me just enough time to drive home, shower, change and head back to work. But if I took off from Raleigh, then my car would be in Raleigh, and I would have to take the flight to Raleigh and drive back, killing the better part of another day. A day which my vacation time wouldn’t permit me.

No problem. We’ll just rent a car and go one-way. I called Thrifty first, and they don’t let people go one-way from Charlotte to Raleigh. Fuck you guys! Hertz was much more accommodating, and they hooked me up with a mid-size something-or-other.

So the drive to Raleigh was a pain in the ass, but it saved me a ton of dough. I got to the airport way too early, but a Dean Koontz book kept me company, as did the NFL Wildcard Games.

The flights were thankfully uneventful, and I landed in Los Angeles at about 7:30 p.m. West Coast time. The plan for that evening was to work on a recording project that Eric and I have been trying to finish up for the better part of two years now. But whenever we get together, we always end up at a place called the Snake Pit, which is a bar right across from where his offices are. Once again, we trashed our plans and stayed at the Snake Pit until closing time.

Since neither of us was in any condition to drive, and we needed every dollar we had for Vegas, we crashed in his office for the night.

The next morning we drove back to Eric’s apartment and crashed for a few more hours before heading off to Las Vegas. We arrived at the Venetian at about 6 p.m. and made contact with everybody we knew in Vegas, including Roy, leaving messages all the way.

After a quick change of shirts, we went up to the Warner Brothers bar and grabbed a couple of drinks. Janice and Steve Greenberg from the DLRML joined us for dinner a little while later and we swapped stories over some rather oddly prepared food. Thanks to the Greenberg’s for picking up the check. I’ve got the next one.

We finally got the call from Roy saying that he was back in his hotel room. We went upstairs and walked in, and the first thing we saw was a beautiful blonde bombshell wearing a tube top and some other skin-tight thing. Turns out her name is Sky, and she’s a Vivid Video girl. She has a web site at www.skysvibe.com, but it hasn’t been updated in a while. I’ve never seen any of her work, but I plan on checking it out soon.

After we met Sky, Roy gave us our VIP passes for the next evening as well as our special silver stickers that would get us in to the post-concert party.

However, the party that night was at the hotel bar called C2K. Plenty of disco-ball, light-flashing, base-pumping grooves were pounding out of the four-level bar.

Roy introduced us to some of the other women who were with him. Off the top of my head, the only name I remember was Chelsea. She’s a dominatrix, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at her. You could take her home to meet mom and dad real easily, but be careful about leaving her alone with dad.

She told me that I’d make a good slave. Unfortunately we never got the chance to find out. Eric and I aren’t exactly the dancing type, so we spent most of the evening watching the action and talking to the other non-dancing types. Those non-dancing types were scantily clad females though, so fuck dancing.

There was a really good cat fight late in the evening. Two women were really going at each other, fists and hair flying. Not sure what started it, but it was entertaining nevertheless. Ice T was at the party. At least I think it was Ice T. Maybe it was Ice Cube? Nah, it was Ice T. The thinner one.

As the festivities died down, Eric and I started trying to figure out where we were going to sleep for the evening. Nobody was answering the door at the room Roy told us we could use, so we headed for the car. Considering we were basically pouring ourselves into the seats at this point due to the alcohol screaming through our bodies, it wasn’t that bad of a night.

We woke up at about 7 a.m. and decided to track down Peter Monroy, the singer for Eric’s Paradigm project which also features Gregg and Matt Bissonette of DLR band fame. Peter moved to Las Vegas about a year ago, and he has an act out there called Kid Hollywood. It’s a great 80’s metal tribute thing. Stuff like RATT, Autograph, etc.

We woke him and his girlfriend up, which kind of sucked for them, but we were sober now and the car wasn’t nearly as appealing as it had been the night before. He pointed each of us to separate rooms where we tried to sleep off the rest of our binge.

When I’m sleeping in a strange place and I wake up, I’m pretty much up for good, so after trying to get back to bed, I went downstairs to watch some television. I had forgotten that Turner and Hooch wasn’t all that bad of a movie. Hard to believe that Tom Hanks did so many classically bad comedies like Volunteers, The ’Burbs, and Joe Vs. The Volcano before he struck Oscar gold.

When noon rolled around, I tried to roust Eric out of bed. There was an actual convention going on at the hotel with booths and hopefully naked women, and I wanted to check it out. Eric still had that stampeded-by-a-herd-of-rabid-iguana look about him and basically told me to go fuck myself.

I finally got him up at about 2 and he, Peter and I headed to a nearby IHOP to throw down some grease. Even after that Eric still felt like an enema warmed over, so when we got back to the hotel he stayed in the car and I went in to check out the convention.

It was a pretty impressive sight. There were probably a hundred booths in the conference hall. Everything from internet sights to lawyers to ISPs was represented. There were a handful of famous people floating around, but the only person I was sure I knew was Ron Jeremy. You would have thought he was the Pope the way people were fawning over him. I know he’s got about thirty pounds of dangling fury between his legs, but I still don’t get the attraction these women have for him.

Hanco and Primextc had the best booth by far. Most people had your typical booth with some pictures on some foam board, some handouts, and maybe an interactive computer with their sights on it. Not these guys.

They built a 25’ by 40’ self-contained structure that was about 20 feet high. When you entered it, it was like being in a strip club. The floor was made of this glittery silver stuff, and there was a circular bar in the center. The bar rotated slowly, and in the middle of the bar was a table that dancer after dancer would hop up on and perform. No nudity was allowed in the booth unfortunately, but it was impressive just the same.

The bar was serving free drinks too. Since I’m a big believer in the if-you-fall-off-the-bike, you-get-right-back-on-it theory, I immediately ordered a Jack and coke and started taking in the sights. Eric finally materialized at about 5:30 p.m. as the convention was closing up shop for the day. The doors at the Dave show were scheduled to open at 7 p.m., so we drove over to the Hard Rock and grabbed a bite to eat before entering The Joint.

The VIP stuff was a buffet and free drinks in the upper portion of the Hard Rock concert venue. Getting there proved to be the biggest obstacle in the entire trip. Talk about your grade-A clusterfucks. They made everybody ride up in an elevator that held about six people comfortably, and there must have been 80 of us trying to go up. Finally, the uneducated staff of the Hard Rock put their collective brains together and took everybody up via some back stairs.

Eric and I grabbed a couple of drinks and sat down at a table in the upper deck. An older couple sat down next to us shortly there after and we started talking to them. It turns out that they’re the parents of Mitch Perry who some of you might remember from his work with Billy Sheehan in Talas, the Michael Shenker Group and Heaven, just to namedrop a few of the artists on his resume. He did some writing with Dave at some point as well.

Mitch came by a little while later, and both he and his parents were incredibly cool. I can’t imagine taking my parents to a David Lee Roth concert, let alone one for the porn industry. That’s one special kind of parent-child relationship.

Mitch has a web site at www.mitchperry.8m.com if you want to see what he’s been up to recently.

After downing several beers and other assorted beverages, Eric and I made our way downstairs to the stage. An amazingly punctual David Lee Roth took the stage at 8:45 p.m. and he proceeded to tear through the set list like the band’s tour busses were double-parked outside the casino. Dave kept the between-song banter to a minimum, and there was no ten-minute Bob Marley intro to Ice Cream Man. He pretty much just played the songs.

Some of the time when he threw out his one-liners, he stepped on the band while doing it. Like they weren’t expecting him to be talking when he was. He even used the “you’re so sweet, you must shit sugar” line twice, because he figured people didn’t hear it the first time.

One of the highlights of the show for me came when I realized that the rather attractive woman standing next to me had her top completely unbuttoned. It was kind of tough concentrating on the show after that.

We were pretty much second row center down in the pit in front of the stage, so I knew we’d have a prime view of Dave’s Jack Daniels jack-off in the middle of Mean Street. Apparently nobody else knew it was coming, because when Dave started gyrating, the first several rows of people pushed back about ten feet.

The damage was already done at that point of course, but everybody ran for cover anyway. Everybody but me that is. I was right there, mouth open wide, getting much more Jack on my sport coat then in my liver. As the bottle emptied, it occurred to me that there was something a little gay about the site of me standing mouth agape in front of Dave while he poured Jack Daniels in my mouth from his crotch. But what the hell. Free booze right?

The woman who was next to me got plenty of liquor on her bare chest, but the rather large gentleman who was with her didn’t seem to appreciate my offer to lick it off. So she declined the offer.

The worst part of the concert was Dave’s fixation with his dick. He couldn’t keep his hands off of it. He was grabbing it. He was sticking his hands down his pants. He was sticking the microphone all the way down his pants. He poured Jack Daniels down his pants. He spit down his pants. He spit on the microphone and the microphone stand like he was Ron Jeremy lubing up for his next feature film. It was like it was on fire or something. For Christ’s sake Dave, stop, drop and roll and get on to the next tune. Let some groupies tug on your crank after the show.

You know, there’s a fine line between being a rock star with a sexual stage persona and being a wino diddling himself on 42nd street between alternating shots of Mad Dog and White Rocket. Come to think of it, that really isn’t that fine a line, is it? And Dave was way too much like the wino for my taste.

We also got to see way too much of Dave’s ass as he mooned the audience repeatedly. While doing this, we also had the privilege of seeing Dave’s tiny little day-glow neon green and pink nuthugger that he wears underneath his suits. Very classy.

A little while later, Dave announced “This is the last sooooooooong!” I looked at my watch. Sixty minutes. Sixty fucking minutes! One freaking hour! By the time they finished the encore it was in the 70-75 minute neighborhood, but damn. It’s amazing how fast a concert can be when Dave isn’t yapping his gums.

After the show, we went back upstairs to the bar. The band came out a little while later, and we had the chance to talk with Ray Luzier for a long time. I’ve met Ray on a couple of occasions, and he and Eric are friends. I don’t think there’s a nicer guy in the music business than Ray Luzier. Not a single rock-star ego chromosome in his body.

We talked with Todd Jensen for a while too, and tried to say hello to Bart Walsh. But Bart had his arm around two girls and a crack-whore-at-a-methadone-clinic grin on his face. Obviously he couldn’t be bothered. He was trying too hard to get laid.

I talked with Kevin DuBrow of Quiet Riot fame for a quick second, apologizing for my hometown of Charlotte arresting him last year. He allowed as to how he really appreciated the sodomizing he got from Bubba while in the slammer. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but I kept wondering why he would be at a David Lee Roth concert considering Dave made a living off of slamming Quiet Riot on the 1984 tour.

The after-show party was back at the Venetian, and Eric and I caught a ride there at about 11:30 p.m. When we got up to room 36-211, it became apparent that this was not your ordinary party. Not my kind of ordinary party anyway. Maybe the people at Metal Sludge do this kind of thing on a regular basis, but not me.

There was a full open bar in one corner, and we acquainted ourselves with the women behind the bar immediately. There was a DJ with a pretty killer sound system in another corner, and plenty of people milling about. We weren’t there more than five minutes when two topless women ran by us and started dancing with each other on the coffee table. The two topless women became naked women before too long, and several other ladies joined in the fun.

These women didn’t mind a little audience participation either. The best analogy I can draw is that it was like an adult petting zoo.

An hour or so later, I guess there were enough complaints about noise to shut the party down, so they had all the non-Hanco and Primextc people leave. Eric and I were still too wired to go to sleep, so we went downstairs to grab a bite to eat, and to call everybody we knew to tell them what we’d just experienced.

We found some pay phones down in the casino and I called Tom Sorboro, a friend of mine who is an assistant basketball coach at the University of Michigan. As I was in the middle of describing the events of the evening, I heard myself say, “Holly shit! There’s David Lee Roth.”

The Toastmaster General himself was walking through the casino, heading up to the remains of the party. He had a crew of about a half dozen with him including what did not appear to be a particularly attractive woman. She was too short to be Gerri Miller though.

My friend Tom yelled at me through the phone to ‘go get him,’ so I hung up and Eric and I took off after him, not completely sure what we were going to do after we ‘got him.’

Dave and his entourage beat us to the elevator so we got on another one. Somehow, we got to the penthouse level quicker than Dave so we made a bee-line down the hall back to room 36-211 and waited for him.

I’ve always wanted to meet the guy and never had the opportunity. But finally, after seeing Dave in concert ten times this year, after meeting everybody in the band, everybody in the road crew, after meeting Sebastian Bach and Kevin DuBrow and Mitch Perry at shows this year, after meeting Dave’s sister Allison for crying out loud, I was finally going to get to meet Dave. Pretty cool.

The door opened, and Team Dave made its entrance. Dave plopped down in a chair, and I had flashbacks of the scene in that one Elvis life-story movie where The King is watching television and decides to blow a few holes in it with his pistola. Dave looked trashed, but that didn’t stop him from telling his new bodyguard, Jeff Green, to go get him two glasses of Jack from the bar.

Since I work in professional athletics, I know what a pain in the ass it is for famous people to be hassled by autograph seekers, so I followed Jeff to the bar figuring I’d ask him if it was okay to take a picture with Dave. The conversation went something like this.

Me: “Hey Jeff, is there anyway we can take a picture with Dave?”

Jeff: “No! No Pictures!”

And he turned and walked off. Thoughts of Jeff Spicoli and Mr. Hand flashed through my mind. “You dick.” What the fuck? Dave doesn’t have time for a four-second photo? We probably could have cut that in half by dispensing with the obligatory opening handshake, since I really had no interest in touching anything that was intimate with Dave’s dick several hours earlier.

While I was standing there wondering why Dave has such a tool working for him, somebody else pissed Dave off, and he and his hangers-on left the room and headed back towards the elevators.

Eric and I made our way downstairs once more to get some food, and I officially maxed out my credit card paying for our two souped-up cheeseburgers, french fries and two Heinekens. The fun was done.

All in all, a pretty damn good trip. Thanks to Roy and everybody at Hanco and Primextc for hooking us up and for putting up with us. We had a blast. Now how can we weasel our way in to going to this September’s convention in New Orleans?