Speaker 1: Hi, This is Bobby Brown and welcome to another fucking podcast.
Speaker 2: Troy A sight, don't be a a oh man bab
not once great champ, now sunny and mopishness no longer
the factory hungry still wait right, so many times payful
by a pathetic wash up age ax Champion.
Speaker 3: All right, let's go.
Speaker 1: I think you know the guy, and I.
Speaker 3: Think you know what, pretty dear? WHOA? His name is
he Presley?
Speaker 2: He Press Presley? What's my name?
Speaker 1: Say my name, bitch?
Speaker 2: My good friend?
Speaker 3: Is he Presley?
Speaker 1: Is he Presley? Is Presley Couch? Is he Presley?
Speaker 2: WHOA?
Speaker 1: That sounds a little weird?
Speaker 3: Is he President?
Speaker 2: Is he Presley?
Speaker 3: Is he Presley?
Speaker 2: The heaviest, gurthiest rocky j around?
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Jeffer. You listen to Izzy Presley.
Speaker 3: Those aren't pillow, Jeff Maybe they are pillows. I don't know. Hello,
Las Vegas, Hello world, Hello, my loyal minions. It is
good to see you. It's always good to be seen.
I'm Mizzey Presley. I'm the host of the program. It's
called Another Refin Podcast. I have a great show lined
up for you. And before we get to our guests,
just want to remind you hit that Patreon. It's only
five dollars a month. Patreon dot com slash Real Lizzy Presley,
this show is gonna come out Mitch on the twenty
fourth and twenty fifth. Today's the fifteenth. You know what's
happening tonight. This is going on the Patreon. This is
going on the Patreon tonight.
Speaker 1: Wonderful so people can hear it tonight. And if the
world doesn't exist on October twenty fourth.
Speaker 3: Then that's right, they will have heard it. That's right.
That's right. And it's ad free. Patreon's ad free, completely
ad free. That's what you want, that's what you need,
just really quick. If you are in Vegas tonight, tonight,
Friday the twenty fourth, come down to the Tuscany and
One Last Kiss is playing and I'm hosting the show.
It's gonna be great. Halloween contest is going to be great.
And November thirteenth, One Last Kiss the Bones at the
Dive Bar the official unofficial pre party for the Kiss
Fest that is going on, and I will also be
hosting that. A lot of great stuff going on. DJ
Noise is coming in, We Got Yo Dog is coming out,
hanging out in the parking lot and selling some chili
dogs and kind of good stuff like that. But without
further ado, I'm very excited about this one, Ladies and gentlemen.
This man is an icon in the PR world. He's
a former journalist, which I really want to get into
is especially because you did in the seventies, which is
really really freaking cool. He is from the Schneider Rondon Organization,
also formerly the MSO Mitch Schneider Organization, among a couple others.
Mitch Schneider, is it you for Mitch or Mitchell? Mitch Mitch?
I like it. I like it because I had I
interviewed Brian Slago this afternoon and he was tell Mitchell.
I said, hi, okay, and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we worked briefly with Guar on the fleet
when they first came out, and it was just yeah,
it was perfectly insane, and something like that always will
attract me. Yeah, that's you know, like when I was
when I was sixteen years old, I used to read
The Village Voice, and that was nineteen seventy two. I
saw an ad and a story about the New York Dolls.
So I went down to Mercer Art Center with my
friend who was sixteen years old and it was three
dollars to get in. The opening act was Ruby and
the Rednecks. Their debut album wouldn't come out until the
following June, and we had our heads blown off because
you have to think nineteen seventy two, it's like me
and my friends are listening to The Grateful Dead, the
Almond Brothers, Deep Purple Sabbath, Poco, New Roja's the Purple
Stage because you could be all over the map because
radio would play everything. Yeah, so we went down and
just the visual aspect was just really galvanizing for me.
And of course, you know the New York Dolls are
and has set the stage for Kiss.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And there was some early rivalry there, of course,
because you know one of my clients, David Bowie, who
I worked with for twenty two years, he used to
tell me it's not who does it first, it's who
does it second, which is really amazing that he said it.
He will tell you that he followed Lou Reed, he
followed Mark Bolin, and you know he would just say
I'm a culture vulture and he would just that was
his thing. And so yeah, so that was a really
exciting time in rock and roll, and I cherish it.
You know, it's obviously before the Internet, so a lot
of stuff is playing in your mind and then you
have to ask yourself, was I really there? In my case,
I'm very lucky. I was writing for Good Times, a
Long Island weekly bi weekly, then it's now a monthly
and it's still publishes. Oh wow, So I have a
record of shows I went to that I don't even
remember going to. Wow, there aren't There's some that I
scratched my head and go was I there? Whether it
was like a Savoy Brown show or just something I
was like, Wow, I didn't know I was there, but
I know I was there because my bylinees on it.
Speaker 3: Well, I have to ask you this because of the era.
Did you ever get to see Elvis?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: And you know, you know in my age group, you know,
Elvis was not a cultural hero.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's understandable.
Speaker 1: You know, at that point, it's like, you know, you're
going after Hendrix, Cream the Doors, that's kind of what's
going to light your world up. Elvis was not, you know,
despite his greatness, he was not counterculture. And if you
were somebody who was, you know, glued to FM radio
Elvis was not going to really be in your wheelhouse.
Although in my house, you know, there was from my
older brother, there was Jael House Rock, all those singles
were there, so you're aware of his of his importance.
But for a kid who wanted to know about counterculture,
I didn't. I didn't run to it.
Speaker 3: Oh that makes sense. So you like, as a journalist,
you never you didn't write anything when he died. No,
there was no inkling whatsoever. No, I had no effect
on you whatsoever.
Speaker 1: It just didn't. It was sort of like, Wow, this
is really intensely sad. Yeah, now, and it's obviously following
the earlier depths of Jim Morrison, Hendrix and Joplin. And
you know his story. You know, obviously he got heavy,
there was drugs and you know what, no T shirt.
I have a war tonight. I have a T shirt
that says culture and there's a picture of Nixon and
Elvis Presley shaking hands.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Well, it's such a great T shirt to wear out
because people can't figure what side of the aisle you're on, right,
because it's just like an image of chaos.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, that's wild.
Speaker 1: Get it out one night. You didn't just watch people
start to unravel in front of my eyes. It's one
of those great T shirts. If you were, you know,
in an airport, you have a million eyes on you
and people just don't They don't know what to make
of it, which is exciting.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean for me, it's just like, dude, that's badass.
Where do I get one of those? It's just bad ass?
So you brought up Kiss. Do you remember when you
first came first? Kiss? Kiss first came on your radar?
Michael Bramble told me to say hi to by the way.
Speaker 1: Big hoload of Michael. So yeah, Kiss comes on my
radar because you see that they're playing. Because if you
had seen the New York Dolls, then you start to
be very keenly aware of the scene that's happening in
New York City and the Kiss is playing at the
Hotel Diplomat and interesting venues, and they just didn't get
on my radar then. And I think because there was
that rivalry between the Dolls and Kiss that in my
mind I didn't I took sides because I had seen
the Dolls first. And you know, look, they were anointed
by the rock critic intelligentsia and Kiss were certainly not
not to get too far ahead of the story. I
would go on to handle Kiss during the non makeup
era when Bruce Cullick was in the group, and it's
so happy that I had a chance to reunite and yeah,
versus now a friend here in Las Vegas. So that
that was an interesting time because we had great press
for them in all of those magazines, whether it's Hit,
Parade or Faces. But and although they had some MTV hits,
they weren't cracking the mainstream like they were obviously when
they wore the makeup. As a journalist I did, I
wrote about Love Gun. It was a lead review for Circus,
and I didn't like it. And I think I told
this to Gene and Paul when I first started working
with them. My position was, I was a fan of
the sex pistols, and okay, so sex pistols and now
you're telling me Love Gun. So it immediately and immediately
put me on the other side of the fence, right
that this is not as you know. I mean, I
liked the anarchy that was being served up by the sea,
so love Gun, you know the same thing. I reviewed
Ted Nugent's Weekend Warriors for Rolling Stone, and I remember
taking the position that this is really a fine sounding
record and it's perfect for people who are only into
the into anarchy on the weekends, because you know, they're
blue collar workers, and you know, I was, I was
somebody who worked to I wasn't an anarchist. You can
only sort of like let go, you know, kind of
on the weekends sort of, So I like I would
do that. You know, in being a rock critic, it's
really important to have a point of view and to
know how to express it. And the great rock critic
Robert Chris Scalp Village Voice, he used to say that
a great way to write a story is like build
an argument. What is your position and start drawing on
examples from the album. Is this living up to sort
of maybe the boast of the title. Do the lyrics
fall short? Are they write on it? Is it matched
with the music? And so on and so forth. So
I used to sit in the bronx in my parents' house.
I was at that point eighteen nineteen when I started writing.
And you have to remember here I am. An album
comes in by David Bowie called Blow and this is
like one of the great rock singers, and one side
of it is virtual. Well, first of all, one side
is all instrumental then and there's one side that has vocals,
so you have to think about this. Okay, so this
is coming to you. This is like rock's one of
rock's greatest stars and he's basically taken his vocals off
virtually a whole side of an elbow. And you're sitting
there and you know the Internet is not really happening,
so you're kind of going to yourself, what are other
people thinking about this record at Rolling Stone or wherever?
Who are going to write about it? The record had
a pedigree because obviously Brian Eno produced it, so you
knew that was coming in from a highly artistic place
and you could get with that mindset, and but it
was shocking just to sit there and go, I couldn't
refer to like what the what's the growing buzz on
this record? People digging it? Or are they being alienated
by it? So that was really exciting to like call
the shots. And you have to remember test pressing, so
there's no artwork given to you. Once in a while
you'd get somehow you'd get the artwork. They would maybe
mail you the lyrics or something if I asked for
it or it came in the package, you know, I
just forget.
Speaker 3: But that's how the world rolled in. It was just
totally different. So when when they sent you something to review,
they sent you a test. Yeah, they didn't set a
promo copy. It was a test pressing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I wish I would have saved all the tests
for things, oh, because I have, Like you know, I
do have some great CDs in my house, advance CDs
before they're truly advanced CDs like Tom Petty's Wildflowers, Alanis
Morrisset's supposed former Infatuation Junkier second record, all people I
work with, so I would get the music right. And
so I did save the key ones, but I should
have saved every I should have even saved all the
advanced CDs that were given to me that were prepared
for me. Yeah yeah, so uh, but then again there's
not room for everything to keep and you can't take it,
which trust you when we get I did save most
of my writings, and as you can see online, like
I will post some stuff once in a while, like
I just posted one about being at an Iggy Pop
ramon show at the Palladium in New York City in
nineteen seventy seven, and it was just one of those
incredible nights because the music scene was and it was
a serious threat to mainstream rockers. And I remember that
show came when the Ramones put out their third record,
which is their greatest record, Rocket to Russia. But when
I first heard their album, the debut, I didn't align
with it because at that point I'd experienced garage rocker
ready and then my tastes had become more bowie roxy,
and I thought when I heard the Ramones record for
my taste, like, why are you going back? I mean,
I had already heard Iggy and the Stooges, so it's
I didn't sort of like so that primitive quality that
they had didn't seem as revolutionary to my ears, So
I went eh. And then the second record came out
very fast, The Ramones Leave Home. It was a bit
more of the same, but on Rocket to Russia, it
just all comes together sound the songs, I mean, Rockaway
Beach is probably one of the greatest rock and roll
tunes ever. So that night I was in connection with
their uh with the release of that record. They were
opening for Iggy and it was just really remarkable. Soupy
Sales introduced Iggy on stage because Hunt and Tony Sales,
Soupy's kids are in the band.
Speaker 3: Oh shit, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: And then you know, you're you're looking around, there's Patty
Smith there. You know, there's the Dead Boys and the Dictators.
I come from the Bronx, The Dictators come from the Bronx. Yeah,
a lot of people don't realize there is a missing
link between the New York Dolls and the Ramones and
it's the Dictators.
Speaker 3: And as wild because the Dictators is still around, yeah,
I think in various forms. Yeah. Yeah, because my good
friend Keith Roth who's on Serious XM, Yeah he's and
he's veteran of this show as well. You know, he's
in the Dictators. So it's just I don't see that
that whole genre it's nothing. I mean not that it's nothing,
it's just like it just like you said, it just
there's just nothing there that grabbed me. So I never
really got into the Ramones. I never really I went
to a Ramones tribute show that they used to do
in Minneapolis every year, and it was like three hours
long and just you know, just different music, Like it
was like a jam night type thing, and I'm just like,
it all sounds the same, you.
Speaker 1: Know, well, you know what it is. I think, Yeah,
there is definitely a sameness. In fact, in that review
that I posted from Good Times of Iggy and the Ramones,
I did say in there, I said, I love the
energy of this band, but the sameness of the sound
is going to hurt them. And then I wrote, but
there are admirers that probably would just tell me to
fuck off, And I was yes, and I was right.
They did ultimately connect. What was really exciting to me
about all of that music was the lyrics, Like the
Dead Boys. I mean, you listen to Sonic Reducer, it
starts to capture that sense of people being really alienated
and growing up in New York City. Rubert Murdoch takes
over the New York Post and the New York Post
blue collar paper, and he turns its sensationalist. So like
when the Son of Sam killings happened. The serial killer,
by the way, Son of Sam went to my high school.
Really he graduated three years before I did. What I
never knew him right and in the same building with him. Yeah,
I guess yeah, you might say I might have been
I might have had his desk get in one of
my classes. I don't know, So you have so like
one of the great crazy headlines of the New York
Post was after they capture uh, David Berkow it's the
son of Sam. There's a picture of him laying in
a jail cell and the headline says Sam sleeps. And
this is like a daily newspaper, and all of a
sudden it was whoa. So the punkers are definitely feeding
off the sensationalism of the newspaper reportage, and you're seeing
the lyrics just sort of capture this sense of like
just crazy anarchy that was happening in New York City
at that point. So that's so like, you know, just
driving are I have a great over it's called Overseas
Punk Gems and that's my playlist on Spotify. Undertones are
on there, Buzzcocks, all of these great bands. I mean,
these are sharp sounding records with really incisive lyrics that
very special. I do miss that era of music. It
really was galvanizing.
Speaker 3: Well, it's I think it goes with the age too.
You know, when you're when you're a certain age and
you're getting exposed to it. Like I heard First Kiss
when I was four years old, you know, but like
in the eighties, I was that was my teenage years,
you know, into the early nineties and once the eighties
glam rock as I call it, I hate that term
hair metal, which I'm sure you've dealt with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's like it never really bothered me.
I thought it was kind of funny and it did
capture I think a sense of humor that those bands had,
true and I handled a lot of them.
Speaker 3: I did well.
Speaker 1: I did Poison, Aerosmith, Whitesnake. Then we can go down
to the the next tier. Shotgun, Messiah Babylon, I d
Electric Boys.
Speaker 3: Who was the biggest pain in the ass? And why
was it?
Speaker 1: X y Z?
Speaker 3: What do you well?
Speaker 1: Are you talking about Pat?
Speaker 3: Pat fun Page?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so x y Z is one of the bands
that we handle. I only have good memories of them
that we reunited here in Las Vegas, and he came
to one of my mixers because I do these people
need people mixers where I just love to invite people
and they can all vibe with each other. And uh,
Pat reintroduced himself to me and I said, wow, x
y Z you know, uh so that was great. So
we did all of that. One of them, I have
to tell you, I did RAT. God, you know, it's
one of the great things I did with Rat for PR.
I got the m key to the city Mayor Bradley
and Los Angeles gave it to them, and I asked
if he could write the proclamation. I have to find
it somewhere that he would give the group a key
to the city's sewers. Oh my god, there's gold which
ripped off you know, Rat. Yeah, absolutely, And I have
the proclamation exists, I may I think I have it
in the house somewhere, and maybe it exists somewhere online.
So I would do crazy PR stuff like that, and
I relish what I do, and I handle lots of
great artists. Now, I think the time was just different
than that. It was the hairt you know, the hair
metal bands or glam rock what you know, the post
eighties glamrock. Yeah, those guys had so much ambition that
it was really remarkable to me, and that by the
time grunge comes around, it starts to get really depressing.
I would tell people, there's nothing more exciting than being
backstage at a Poison show. Right before they go on,
they have their pool, you know, filled up with beer. Yeah,
there's great music. By the way, one of the great
backstage scenes is the Black Crows some mad and I
handled them for many, many years. And I remember this
one time. I was at Radio City when Oasis, whose
career was not taking off even though they had hits,
couldn't really grant they couldn't resonate in America, so they
took a tour with the Black Crows. It was co headline.
Speaker 3: But what year was this about.
Speaker 1: Was maybe a late nineties late night.
Speaker 3: I think I saw that show at Excel Energy Center
in St. Paul. If it would have been early, that
was early two thousands. Maybe they had did it before that.
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I guess there was one, and
it was called the Tour of Brotherly Love, which was
playing off the you know, the fights that all the
brothers would have in both bands. And I was at
Radio City Music Hall. Oasis comes off stage. They co
into the Black Crows backstage area, and the Black Crows
have the greatest music playing. You know, they're going into
Terry Reid, They're going deep into Rocks back pages for
their music and Oasis were just vibing with them. And
then all of a sudden, the road manager says too.
He screams out to the Black Rows, You're on stage
in three minutes. So I was just so having such
a great time being amidst these great people enjoying themselves
and enjoying the great music. Then I had a run
downstairs and by the time I got into the front
area where my seat was, they were already the Black
Crows were into their first song. And what I thought
was great because you know, we're living in an era now,
and not to really put anybody down, there are people
doing prayer circles before they go on stage. The Black
Crows there was no end. I mean, it was a
different kind of prayer circle, I might say. It was
just about getting loose in many different ways, including the music.
And they took that energy of their party backstage right
on to the stage and I got to experience it
both and I just it was one of the it's
one of my most indelible nights of being in the
music business because it was no bullshit. It was it
was real, uh, and it was just it was funny,
like you're on stage, your party has to stop. There's
like five thousand people at Radio City Music.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well that's just well, it's so funny
that you talk about the party and then into the
depression of grunge because I always say that people can
shit on eighties hard eighties rock all they want, But
for me, it was an escape from reality because it
was about the drugs, it was about the chicks, it
was about the party. And then you get to the
Seattle scene where the drug of choice was different. You
go from that cocaine which is the upper to the
downer of the heroine, and all of a sudden they're
saying about how bad their life is. It's like, dude,
I know how bad my life sucks me?
Speaker 1: So what's really interesting about the grunge era? And lyrically
for some of those bands, they're talking about being the
kids of post of divorced parents. Now that was not
a topic, right, that was really in popular music then.
So grunge brought a real thinking person's attitude, philosophy outlook
to music, which was really important. But there is just
you can't deny when you when you turn the radio
on and you hear poisons ain't nothing but a good time.
It just makes you feel like you're alive and maybe
the world's not as messed up as it is and
so on, and those guys like C. C. Deville. He
loved me the second I told him I saw the
New York Dolls because his guitar style is right off
of Johnny Thunder. Absolutely, you know, it's a more metal
version of right, but at its core it's like you're
you know, you listen to some of those you know
CC guitar runs, they're right out of the Thunder you
know style book, And so he just he was like,
tell me about it. Got such a funny poison story.
I remember I go out to meet them at a
state fair in Michigan, and because I was the group
was going to meet me for the first time, management
kind of hired me already, but they said, you really
should meet the group, but they sign off on you,
and I said, well, that's great because I would like
to have that sign off so they you know, so
I feel like they'll be confident in me. And I remember,
you know, one of the things I'd like to do
with musicians, I like to interview them or if I'm
not getting to the interview part. Yet just have conversations like, Hey,
what band's inspired you? And I remember I asked Bobby Doll, like,
which band you know really had an influence on you?
And he said Fog had and to me was utterly shocking,
like out of all the bands. And that is not
to put Bobby down, or I think if you hear
Slow Ride Full for the City, there is this arena rock,
big positive feeling and if you hear it at a
certain age, it's going to impact you. And I get it.
But I just remember scratching my head going, wow, that's
I mean so much so that I can just remember
it right now.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's so wild. It's so funny. Because so I
work on the Monsters of Rock Cruise, Cruise of the
Edge and on the Larry Moran who I'm sure you know,
and we do these charity auctions and on the last
years on the Blue Cruise, one of the one of
the items that was up for auction was a fog
hat hat but all it said was fog, So it
was a fog hat. It was like the most brilliant
thing ever.
Speaker 1: You know. That's fun Yeah, it captures the sense of
humor of that time. I mean, I remember going to
a Black Sabbath party up in a hotel with an
indoor pool, and I forget which hotel it was, and
it was celebrating I forget which Sabbath album, and the
cake went in the pool that they presented the group with.
It was just all these kind of like hijinks. One
of the great things about being a rock critic in
New York City in the seventies, it was record company
big budgets. Every group that came through New York City
were given an after party.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember for ten Cec I went to a Jamaican restaurant.
Was Jamaican Holiday one of their songs. Yeah, So there
was always like a tie in. One of the craziest
parties I went to was the Leonard skinnerd party, And
this is definitely when you know Ronnie's them, and it
was held at Nathan's on like fifty sixth Street in
the downstairs well. Because there were various locations from that night,
you can find a picture. And my friend Jim Farber,
who's a very acclaimed journalist rock journalist who still writes,
we hung out to the end. And Richard Aaron, the
photographer who photographed a lot of amazing stuff. They brought.
Two monkeys were brought to this party, so Richard Aaron
had the idea to sort of place the monkeys next
to Leonard Skinnyard two of them and put a cigarette
so like I have to send you it's on the end.
You can find it. Yeah, and like the monkey like
holding a cigarette, And it was just like one of
those crazy things because we were hanging. We stayed at
the end of party and I looked over and I
went and years later I asked my friend Jim, because
I don't know that's I think that picture probably appeared
in the random notes section of Rolling Stone, but I
don't remember. But I asked Jim, were we really there?
And he goes, Mitch, yes, Because so much of it
is because the Internet didn't exist right right, and a
lot of it is pulled from your mind. So I
was in many situations that I was going to I'm
going to post a story in November because I looked
nineteen seventy five, I had a disco column in Good
Times aside from running it out Rock, I love disco. Wow,
you grow up in New York City, you knew especially
nineteen seventy three, before disco is reaching critical mass. It's
a combination of Latin rock and R and B. You
mix it together and you're gonna get disco. And so,
you know, listen, think of the OJ song I Love Music.
It starts out with congas, yeah, and it's just that's
nineteen seventy five. So I write about in this column
that I was invited as a press person to come
to the unveiling of Donna Summer at a at a
at a posh Manhattan disco, where she performed, probably to
a backing track love to Love You Baby, which of
course is one of the most you know, famous and
controversial songs because the way she you know, she impersonates orgasm.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's I mean, that song and its day
was really super controversial. Yeah, and then she performed it.
And I'm like going through my articles, going wow, fifty
years ago in November nineteen seventy five, here I was watching,
you know, Donna Summer's unveiling as that song is starting
to become a hit before it goes the whole away.
So I had like great moments like that, And again,
my stories are my stories. Are my Internet. It's kind
of like a day like like the database, like, oh yeah,
I was there at that show. I remember going to
see like Rufus at the Felt Form, which was the
smaller adjoining place to the Madison Square Garden, and I
remember like Chaka Khan she was on stage and she
would kind of like tease the guys in the front,
like to try to like, you know, touch your legs because.
Speaker 2: It was not.
Speaker 1: Those shows really didn't have barriers then like they do now,
and as they would grab like for her feet, she'd
kick them and it was great, and I wrote I
have to find that review, and I know I wrote
about it because I thought, wow, that's great. It's you know,
she was definitely into sort of like the burlesque of
the moment.
Speaker 3: She was great.
Speaker 1: So I went to all these great shows and were
you seeing so were you seeing like Blondie?
Speaker 3: Yeah? What were your what were your thoughts of blonde then?
And compared to what they turned into when they the
radio success.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the first time I go to CBGB's it's
a great story there. I'm writing for good Times. I
think it's seventy five, and my friends down the street
said their friend is going to be over their house
and you should come over. His name is Walter Lore.
So I go over there and Walter says, oh, I'm
in a band called Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers and
we're playing at CBGB's and he knew I was writing
for good times. He goes, you should come. So I
went to the show and that was incredible because that's
before CBGB's reached his critical mess and that show and
I'll send you that review that I wrote that night.
I was very naive, but I could definitely feel that
glitter rock which the New York Dolls just made so glorious.
It was changing. And then the heroine entered the scene.
And then at that point, Richard Hell was in Johnny
Thunders and the Heartbreakers. They might have even just been
called the Heartbreakers then. And there was a song he
had that he would use on his solo career when
he did that after he leaves the Heartbreakers, called the
Blank Generation. And here it is seventy five, and this
is before punk really happen, and I'm watching for the
first time, never having heard a record because it wasn't recorded.
I belonged to the Blank Generation. I could take it
or leave it each time, and right away it's like, wait,
that's a big attitude to have. That was so different
from what glam rock was. Glamrock was about a lot
of things, and I mean everything from having a good
time to the craziness of New York City going out
in the early drugs and all of that. And now
it turns darker. So I don't get to see Blondie
at CBGB's, but I see them open for Iggy at
the Palladium, and that Iggy show precedes the one that
I would see him with later. And that's the tour
where David Bowie is the keyboardist and background vocalist, so
Blandy is the opening act. So that must be that's
early seventy seven, and that's another great night in New
York City because you could feel that these bands who
had been simmering, they were starting to gain a ground
and that was wonderful and they were you know, when
you put on Blondie's greatest hits, every song sounds different.
I mean, think about the tide is high to call me,
you know, to their original early punk roots with that
great song ex Offender. They then you have the rap, Yes,
you have the rap and then she puts out kind
of a rap album too. It was called I think
Kru something like that. But anyway, yeah, so that was great.
I remember seeing the Talking Heads at CBGB's when they
were a three piece before they add Jerry Harrison and
just experiencing it was really remarkable too, because you know,
aside from CBGB's, there was Maxis Kansas City, and I
saw Patty Smith there, and then there was a club
called Hurrah. I saw x X God, one of my
favorite bands. So I see them in November nineteen seventy
eight and they don't even put their debut album out
until nineteen eighty and everybody's in front of the stage
going like punk from Los Angeles? Is that even possible?
They drive cars? How could it be punk? Because everybody
in New York City it was like you roll up
in cabs, yeah, or you get out of the subway
and you try not to be seen getting out of
the subway because then people would think your bridge and
tunnel was supposed to be like living on the island itself.
And so there was Max's. There was even before I
guess maybe when Max's was happening, but they weren't booking Rocket.
There was a place called Club eighty two. It was
a downstairs basement club. The Dolls played there, and you
would go there when they didn't have live music, just
to dance to the glam rock of the era. And
also you have to remember that, you know, the New
York Dolls definitely introduced this concept of men dressing as women.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: And as you're going into the glam rock world, then
I see Wayne County and Wayne County is the first
rock transvestite who ultimately becomes transsexual. And I was there
the night at CBGB's were handsome Dick Manitoba from the Dictators.
He's in front of the stage and there was rivalry
between a lot of bands and he was making and
as the story is told that Wayne County thought that
he was goading him for being gay. And so because
there was no barrier at CBGB's between the stage and
the audience, it was and it's kind of the stage
was like a platform almost, and it really wasn't like
a stage. Remember, and the story that Dick Manitoba says
that he went up after goading him and like there
could have been some spitting going on I forget that
he needs to go to the bathroom, and sometimes you
have to. You had to step on the stage to
get to the bathroom in the back, and Wayne County
perceived it that handsome dick Manitoba was going to attack him.
So Wayne County takes his microphone stamp and cracks them
over and breaks his his show, his collar bone. And
at that time, the York the New York scene splits
between people who liked the Dictators and people who liked
Wayne County, and so it became like a Maxi's Kansas
City versus CBGB's because it just rolled that way. And
then so that was like a division in that. It's
just like I think back and I go, it's crazy.
I saw the Dead Boys first show, and I've told
this to Cheea Chrome when I've seen him out in
about here. I saw their very first show and they
were just incredible and it felt like New York was
I mean, they were from Ohio, but it was like, Wow,
America is going to have its own sex pistols because
they had they had that, you know, with songs like
Sonic Producer and everything, you know, you know, I mean,
their first record was called Young loud and snotty. They
seemed really threatening. Great show. So these were these were
all these great elements, and you know, you could read
about it in the Village Voice. Lisa Robinson, the great
rock critic. She was also the editor of Rock Scene magazine,
and although they to sell copies, they obviously had to
put the rock starts of the day kind of on
the cover. But she would slide in all of these
groovy new bands from New York City. And that's how
some of those bands were gaining national attention, is that
she would put stories on them in her national magazine.
It was great.
Speaker 3: What was it so watching all those bands come up
in New York What was that like compared to watching
all those bands come up in LA after you had
made the move.
Speaker 1: Well, I feel very lucky. I'll start by saying, because
I got to see the renaissance of music in New
York City. Yeah, it would be again, you know Ramon's
Talking Heads television, yea, Donnie thunders. Then I moved to
LA in seventy nine and one of the first shows
I see, of course, is ex having loved them because
I didn't finish, I could take the start. I just
fell in love with them because I thought, wow, punk rhythm,
a rockabilly guitarist, a male female vocal dynamic, that to
my mind was like suggesting Jefferson Airplane. And I thought,
this is all in one band. And although they hadn't
put out recordings yet, you could feel from the songs,
you know, Johnny Hit and Run, Pauline Sex and Dying
in High Society. It was like, Wow, this is really thrilling.
So I come to LA and Rodney Bingenheimer is my
guide to Los Angeles every Sunday night, Rodney on the
he would tell you what to listen to, where to go.
That was the whole thing. If you want to become
part of any music scene, you have to go to
the gigs. And I got to see one of the
great unrecorded bands. There is something on Spotify called The Screamers.
Their demos. The Screamers were an electronic punk band. In
some ways, they sounded a little bit like Devo. They
were just in a wild, wild charisma. Tomato to Plenty
was the lead singer, very a very iggy styled a
lead singer in front Man and then the Go Gos
Blasters and all of this is just happening and then
there's a lot of great groups that you know, didn't
achieve success, Alley Cats, The Bags, and my favorite Castration Squad.
It's one of the great names, great names.
Speaker 3: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: That's like one of those things I don't even need
to know what your music sounds like. I will tell
everybody I know that this is my favorite new band,
just simply because the name is just so outrageous.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, uh, that was great. And that's what I always
thought was great about the punk scene because even though
like some people perceive the negativity of it, I thought
the humor was just great and one of the great
things about the punk thing, I have to say. You know,
the New York Times used to they would never say,
like if they were describing these expistols and they were
talking about Johnny Rotten, they have to put mister Rotten.
And then for the Damned it was mister Scabies, and
so on and so forth. So it was really funny
in that era of like when these bands start getting
attention that the traditional mainstream papers are writing about them
and they have to use their format of mister Rotten.
It was wonderful. Those were like the greatest days, you know,
I do keep my head into like what's new and
coming up? And I mean, I think it's really hard
for any musician right now because in some ways, I
I think everything may have been done, and I try
to tell myself, no, there's got to be another way.
Sometimes I put on Roxy Music's debut album. There you
have a psychedelic, progressive glam rock band with Brian Eno
in it on synth This is seventy seventy one, seventy two,
maybe a glamorrock singer Brian Ferry, And nobody has ever
sounded like them ever. Again, that's how timeless and how
unique they were, and I long for something like that.
I think these days, I think the economics of having
a band, you can't have too many members because the
clubs are only going to pay a certain amount of
money if they pay it all, right, if they play it, yeah,
if they can pay it all So you have that.
So for whatever reason, they were unique. They had a
record company behind them, and they were able to really
explore all of their creative ambition. That was a wonderful thing.
So I look for what's new and fresh. You know,
there'll always be somebody who puts a kind of news
spin on it. I do miss the virtuosity of the
first few eras of rock and roll. Yeah, I think
one of the problems of music is that I think
it's very easy now that people can make recordings in
their bedrooms or wherever, and the technology is such that
you can sound very good. But there's a big difference
between very good and great, and you can fool yourself
into thinking you sound very good yea, but it may
not be good enough.
Speaker 3: Right. But I think though sometimes the bad is sometimes
good though, you know what, you know what I mean though,
I mean it's like rock and roll is not supposed
to be perfect, right, you know, you know, so I
think there's a I think there's kind of a gray area.
Speaker 1: I think there is. But you know, again, if you
just listen to the Sex pistols and Steve Jones guitar,
that's just incredible. And here, you know, their image tended
to be of like you know, they were just you know,
just rebel rousers or whatever. Yeah, but like Steve Jones,
that's a virtuostic guitar sound. And I believe that people
honed their skills more by playing out live or oh
before they went into the studio. Now, it just seems
like you can record and put something up on Spotify
and then get gigs. But I really felt in the
earlier days that when you see it, when you saw
a band come out on stage, even a new band,
you knew that they had been sort of work shopping
as a live act for maybe once two years. And
you know, and I do like, you know, an anarchy
aspect of rock and roll, but I also like a
dynamite fucking great bass player, right, going to hold the
sound together, right, so it doesn't you know, it's not
all over the place.
Speaker 3: I think another thing too, is I think people are
too comfortable now because you don't have six guys living
in a studio apartment together just trying to scrape by.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: You know, there's that story of you know, genr was
living in a fucking a storage unit.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like that to me, that helps create greatness because
that is hunger, you know, and once you lose the
hunger boom, you know, you lose the you lose the edge.
Speaker 1: I totally agree. It's really difficult, especially now the way
the economy is. I mean, back then, people could afford
a lot of the rock stars who became rock stars.
They could afford to live in Manhattan, you know, in
you know, alphabet city of Lower New York City wherever,
and it was, you can you could exist like Blondie
they had, you know, they had a place. It's before
they had any money. And then now if you're a
new band coming up, you cannot live in Manhattan. So
of course, you know there's Brooklyn, which is hip, but
Brooklyn is now also overpriced, so it is really difficult.
I think the economy is different. Things are obviously much
more expensive, and I think that there's such a gulf
between rent and people's salaries. The golf is so wide.
It never used to be as wide.
Speaker 3: Right then.
Speaker 1: So to say that we're going to put a really
unique five to six piece rock and roll band together,
that's really difficult to pull off because people have lives
and all of that. So yeah, so just getting back,
so coming to Los Angeles was incredible. So by day
at this point I become I'm a publicist. Yes, so
you did move into pr Yeah, so I got a job.
I couldn't find one in New York City back then
the industry was small.
Speaker 3: You know, well, what let me ask you this, what
Drew you to the publicity game.
Speaker 1: Even though I was writing for Rolling Stones, Circus, Crawdaddy,
Good Times, High Fidelity, the editors would keep changing, and
every time an editor changed, you might find yourself not
writing for that magazine anymore because they're bringing in who
they want now. That worked to my advantage. I was
writing for Circus, and the great original rock critic Paul
Nelson said, Hey, Mitch, I'm gonna be editing Rolling Stone's
record review section. Would you like to write for Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to ask me, I just do it.
So that's when I began writing for Rolling Stone. But
I started to I started to feel that my options
could be limited. I had the forethought of, like, my
future is being dependent on a few people who are
changing roles. So I said I should become a publicist.
I was dealing with publicists. They gave me tickets to shows,
they sent me records, and I thought, I think I
could do this, and I could. You know, I could
having been a journalist. I could put myself in the
mindset of a journalist and describe music to them in
a way that would not be overhyped. And so I
get a job and I moved to Los Angeles. I
was a junior publicist Salters Roskin Friedman. The company was
led by the very great Lee Soldiers who handled Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 3: Wow do you ever get to meet Frank?
Speaker 1: No Dolly parton Arbor Streisen, And there was a music department.
We handled Melissa Manchester, Leith Garrett, Daryl Hall, and John Oates,
Alice Cooper. So I was so during the day, I
was handling those kind of people. But I lived right
off Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, and there was
that great club, the Starwood, before it was knocked down
because there were complaints from the residents because one of
the things about La if you put a club on
a boulevard, there are residential homes behind the boulevard, and
of course, you know, people are young, and they're going
to piss on people's lawns, etc. And they the neighbors
got together and said, we don't want this anymore, and
so off went the Starwood. But I lived two and
a half blocks from the Starwood, so I saw go
Gos Blasters, ex Grace Jones, Plimsuls twenty twenty. You know,
aside from the punk bands of LA, there were the
you know, the power pop bands, not kind of like
how harm metal doesn't really tell you the story. Power
pop doesn't give you the full thing because like a
band like the Primsuls, they were kind of like more
garage rock inspired. And so I would see all this
great stuff. Were you seeing?
Speaker 3: No, were you seeing like Billy Ver and the Beaters?
Yes they were.
Speaker 1: I wasn't a fan, but that's not say they weren't good.
They weren't. They weren't in my space. Yeah, but they
would play the Star War because they were all you know.
And of course at this time you're starting to see
these interesting bands coming up that are more in the
heavy metal world. Yeah, so Riot, Yeah, So what happens
for me is I'm working at Soldiers in Roskin for
three and a half years and then I get laid off.
There was a recession in nineteen eighty two, so I
get laid off and I go back to writing, and
I help. I was one of the writers on the
Rolling Stones, like the PDIA Rock first Edition, and then
I was doing bios for Epic and something came in
Quiet Riot and I know, you know, I know Rudy Yeah,
and so I had to write the bio for it,
and I remember I dealt with Carol Peters May she
Rest in Peace, Spencer Prawford. That was Pasha Records, and
and I took note, wow, cover of Slades come on
Feel the Noise, and I thought, oh, this is kind
of interesting, like here's a glam rock band that's being
you know that they're famous songs being covered.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 1: I remember, uh, then I started. Then I start to
work in Michael Levine Public Relations in eighty three, and
I was definitely aware that metal was coming up. So
one of my first clients there when I start in
eighty four, actually I start there, I think Danny Goldberg,
great record executive, calls me and says, I got this
band called Keel so I So I go out and
I see them, and I just I adored those guys.
Their album The Right to Rock. Yeah, yeah, and I
and I rebonded with him when they played. He played
the last Keel Ron Keel show. I know he has
like a solo thing, but yeah, it was the last,
the last time I'm playing Las Vegas in this configuration.
I went thought it was great. They just didn't if
they were on an Epic Records or on Warner Brothers,
and that's no disrespect to Danny Goldberg's gold Now, I
just think they only had so many resources.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think there's a there's a couple of
labels that just didn't know what to do with rock banks.
Because there was this band out of Minneapolis called Slave
Raider and they were on r c RCA, but they
were on Jive and Jiva is where everybody went to
die pretty much because they had no idea what they
were because they were they were handling a lot of
rap stuff. So all of a sudden you get Slave Raider,
Slave Raider, you know, and it went nowhere.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it just depends like where you are, what's
the label, what's the way it works. I was kind
of amazed that here's like metal, Yeah, and I mean,
obviously at this point, Ozzie's happening in the eighties, in
the early eighties with all those classic albums. Yeah, and
that that's a good jumping off point for us to
get to my next thing. Right, So, nineteen eighty seven,
I'm working at Michael Levine Public Relations, and at this
point I'm handling Seeney easton Oreo Speedwagon, Wang Chung Everly
Brothers and they factor into my story. So I get
the Everly Brothers a star on Hollywood Boulevard I have,
you know, it just should have been given to them,
but there was a lot of politicking. I think it
took me three years to get them the star. So
we get the star, and I thought, well, we got
to have a pretty girl on the photo. Let's get
Linda Ronstack because she had covered Everly Brothers songs. She
was out of the country. And then there was Paul
McCartney because he wrote the Everly Brothers single on the
Wings of a Nightingale for their reunion record. He wasn't
coming to America then, because you know, Lennon had been
killed and he feared some kind of similar assassination. And
I remember reading somewhere that Tom Petty was a huge
fan of the Everly Brothers. So I call up his
office cold call, no one could email them. Yeah, and
the woman who picked the phone up, Mary Klauser, It
means a friend of mine to this day. I said,
I handle the Everly Brothers. They're getting a star on
Hollywood Boulevard and they would be honored. And I had
checked this out with the group first. If Tom Petty
could present them with the star and she'll like get
right back to you. It was like one of those things,
like in my mind it was like five minutes later,
Tom will do it. Send us over a memo of
what you need him to do. And I have that
memo because she brought it to me recently. She goes
a Mitch, I found this in my archives of how
you told you know what Tom was going to do.
And so that day it was great and I get
to talk to Tom Petty. His managers felt very comfortable
with me. Just tell them what you need to do.
And I remember just telling him you could say three words,
or you could talk for three minutes or three hours,
it doesn't really matter whatever you want to do. I
think he just kind of liked that. I was just
so off the cup like that. So a few months later,
he's leaving his publicist at the time and the manager
calls me up and it says, Mitch, would you like
a meeting with Tom Petty. We obviously liked when we
met you, so I said yes, So I signed Tom Petty.
Then the manager says, you know I'm handling Stevie Nicks
and Fleetwood Mac have reconvened for an album that's going
to be called Tango in the Night. Would you like
a meeting? So I go up to the house. All
you know, all the members of Fleetwood Mac there, and
I'm going up against every other publicist in the country course,
and they say to me, you know, who else do
you handle? And I said, well Tom Petty and I
stopped there. It's all I had to say, so already
I was. But they didn't know that I just had
gotten hired, or maybe they did that, maybe they were told,
I don't know. And then I remember in the meeting
the subject of photos came up, and I just said, well,
you really shouldn't do any photo shoots. You should just
do your own photo shoot and have multiple shots and
we give them out to the press, except maybe for
Rolling Stone. You know there's a cover, then maybe that's
a separate shoot. And I said, no embarrassing chin shots.
And Stevie Nicks looked over and she goes, I like
you and I had what, you know, looking back, I
had young gun bravado and it was really attractive. You know,
there's some like you know, when artists of today sign
with younger publicists, you know, at first I flinched, like,
how come I didn't get a call? How come I
didn't get a meeting? And then I think, wait a second,
those new people have this young gun bravado that I
simply don't have anymore. I have something else called wisdom
and professionalism, and I've been around the studio. I have that,
and that's appealing to some. But there are some people
who want the real young gun. So I was that guy.
That was my moment. So after so I signed Fleetwood Mac.
And then I get a call about Ozzy Osbourne. And
I remember I met Sharon and Ozzy in Beverly Hills.
They were renting a house on the flats of Beverly Hills.
I remember I walked in with my partner, Michael Levine
at the time. Actually he wasn't my partner at the time.
I would become a partner at his company a year later.
And Ozzie's laying on the floor, bare chested, probably was
drunk er something. And we have the meeting and she goes,
who do you handle and I said, Tom Petty and
Fleetwood Mac. So I signed Ossy. And then she goes, well,
you'll be great for Ozzy, And then I have a
friend who was working at HK Management, my friend on
Andrea Ocardo the Rest in Peace, and she goes, Mitch,
you know, I was telling Trudy Green about you and
Heart needs a publicist. And I go over there and
she goes, who do you handle? And I said, Tom, Petty, Fleetwood,
Mac and Heart. This is all happening within a thirty
day period. It was one of those things where I
kept I kept having like lottery tickets and it was
just really remarkable. So that's how I really get on
the map truly as a publicist. And and the experiences
I had with Ozzy were just incredible. He was just
a sweetheart of man. Ozzy was that and more. I mean,
the sense of humor was great. I remember it was
must have been eighty eight. We were sent off to
New York City to do promotion for the Randy Rhodes
Ozzy Tribute Live album, and I remember a town car
took me and Ozzy to Mark Weiss's photo studio, Love Mark,
And somehow I can't seem to remember that did anybody
arrange for the town car to wait for us?
Speaker 3: So after?
Speaker 1: And I was, you know, even though I was handling
at that point. You know, Shaney Easton and all of
those people, I just certainly never traveled with them, and
I didn't know, and it just didn't occur to me,
Like I just thought the car would be waiting, and
I was wrong. So Ozzy and I had to get
a cab on a really cold day, and we have
all of his clothing. He's carrying some of it and
I'm carrying some of it. He sees me melting down,
because if you tried to get a cab in New
York City at four o'clock, good luck. It's the time
of the day for those who may not know where
the cabs are turning over there, so they're returning to
where they were and the new ones haven't exactly come
out yet. Yeah, so there is like a half hour
or more lag where there's not as many cabs. I
call it the Cinderella Hour of New York City. And
we couldn't get a cab. And he sees me melting down,
and he starts laughing, and I just a I think
he was impressed that I cared so much, Yeah, but
I think he was. He was also like he got
the humor of it. Yeah, So he was like that
and you know, my daughter was born, Sharon and Ozzy
sent over stock to my daughter in Disney, so you
have a certificate that actually says Walt Disney and Ozzy
and Sharon Osbourne are the certificate. So they were those people,
and you know, when you work with somebody like Ozzy,
you have to you're you know, you're embedded in that
world because there's concert cancelation, there's uh you know. And
Sharon would always say, I'm just thinking now about like
when Ozzie would play and TV crews wanted to come shoot.
She goes no, because all they're going to do is
get a kid passed out drunk and going to put
it on the news at ten o'clock. It's you know,
this is where your kids are right now. And her
attitude actually served me well. Years later, we have a
meeting with Paul Tolett and Skip Page for what would
be Coachella. They come up to our office and they say,
we're going to do this festival and what are your
feelings about TV? And I just looked at them and
I said, no TV. I said, they're just going to
get pictures of kids passed out on chemicals and it's
not going to be good. So at that very first Coachella,
we had MTV up our nostrils saying they want a
position because they got that like they got it live. Yeah,
and we said no. And and it was one of
those things that had set the stage that no, this
is what it and that's what it was, then that
this is a special environment.
Speaker 3: You think that's one of the reasons Coachella kind of
went up to what it was because you didn't have
that aspect of it.
Speaker 1: I think that was there. But it does need to
be told that the first Coachella is a failure economically,
and the reason it's a failure is that Coachella. The
first Coachella happens in October, when the bad Woodstock happened
two months before. Oh okay, and you know, there was
all these images obviously of kids rioting, et cetera. And
I think parents were just like, you're not going to
a rock festival. So the first Coachella only has twenty
thousand people. It needed thirty to break even. And you know,
from promoting it could be like the last five hundred
people could get you over the line right when you're
promoting an event, and so then Coachella doesn't come back
for a year and a half, and it starts in
year one, it's two days, it comes back as a
one day, and then it comes back the year that,
how Withchella reached its critical masses. The year that it
was the Pixies, who were never that popular in their heyday,
but Kurt Cobain talked up the Pixies so much with
Nirvana that all the kids knew that, you know, the Pixies,
you know, had a reputation. There was craft Work, Radiohead
and Pixies. I remember looking out at the field and
this might have been year three or four. My mind's
a little fuzzy, and I said to my team, Wow,
take a look, it's starting to happen. So yes, So
in the early days there was no TV images, so
you kind of had to read about it, Yeah, in
newspapers or magazines. I mean, obviously the online world is
starting to percolate by the late nineties after kind of
being introduced ninety six ninety seven, so that was really big.
So there was there was an aura of mystery and
utter coolness. You could not see with no disrespect Mark
Goodman or Nina Blackwood, bless their hearts, saying we're backstage
here at Coachella and next up is Frank Black. No,
that did not happen, you know. So I remember, you know,
in the VIP section in maybe years three and four,
where you know, you would have the Paris Hilton start
to come to Coachella and that crowd and the Golden
Voice people who put on Coachella. They were like, this
is not the image that we want. And so years
later they did take away the VIP section remained for VIPs.
It used to be VIP and press, but the press
were seeing all this, so they were writing about, oh,
Paris Hilton's here. So now it's still at Coachella. The
press section is completely different from the VIP section. So
these are the things you get to experience in real time.
And one of the great things I think about for
me and just looking back at my career, a lot
of times you're in these moments that you do not
know it will be history, right, You have no idea.
In fact, if you try to tell yourself that, it
would be like sort of high faluting and ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1: But just looking back, am I going wow, I saw
the New York dollars before they were signed? And my
ticket was three dollars. And so now I have in
my h the Village Voice. I found through an old
website the ad for the very show that I went to,
and it says three dollars. Wow, best three dollars, right
I ever spent?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, so that so you know, going in those moments,
we did pr for Electric Daisy Carnival, including the year
unfortunately that the girl who is under age odd and
then ADC gets kicked out of Los Angeles and then
it moves to Las Vegas. But there was another situation
like here we are doing publicity for this massive event,
and we were getting a lot of festival business because
people knew that we did Coachella' so they figure out
these people are at least not going to fuck it
up right right right. So we would get Voodoo Festival
in New Orleans, which was really great because I got
to travel. I got to really see New Orleans, like
in three consecutive years. Whatever we were doing the festival
might be more, but I went. My team was doing it,
but I went for like three years. I fell in
love with you. I just fell in love with the city.
So these were just a lot of the great things
so and then so I hire a publicist. I could
see EDM was getting big. In fact, people don't realize
the very first Coachella, the bill is seventy percent electronic music, really,
which was starting to happen in the downtown La Raves
and over from England. And I remember afterwards we came
back to the office a few days later. We were
having lunch, which was great back because you know, people,
this is like when people had physical offices. You would
talk to people over you know, a sandwich. And I said,
you know, I could like the energy of all those
electronic artists. I think we should get an electronic pub
assistant here. So somebody, a publicist who worked for me,
Christine Ashton, she goes, I know this gal, Alexandra Greenberg
said bring her in. Alex came to us and then
all of a sudden, it's like we're handling David Ghetta cascade.
These are like debut albums a Dead Mouse. And so
I got a chance to see that world blow up
right in front of us, to the point they put
Dead Mouse on the cover of Rolling Stone. So it's
really interesting to see that world happen. And I did
you know a lot of the electronic music. A lot
of it I think was a little bit more avant
garde than it is now. Sasha and Digweed, stuff that
was coming out of England, Underworld and obviously from America
and Crystal Method from Las Vegas. They were avant garde.
They weren't like on the pop tip. So that really
appealed to the rock and roller in me because I saw,
you know, I saw the rock and rollness in it. Okay,
just as anti authoritarian as I remember like Dead Mouse
calling the office and telling Alexandra before he's even like famous,
I don't want to do those interviews. And I remember
alex came back into the off to my office one
day she goes, God, he's like yelling at me on
the phone, and I said, you know, this could be good.
It might mean he's going to be a star.
Speaker 3: Well, so let me ask you this, then, Mitch, you
think rock and roll is more of an attitude than
a genre.
Speaker 1: Then yes, I would say, for instance, like you can
like you can have an artist. I mean people are
saying that about young Blood, who in his music has
elements of pop but he looks like a rock and roller. Yeah,
But I yeah, I like when something is anti authoritarian, Uh,
something is confrontational, you know, really just against the grain
that it could be a it could be a folk singer,
even if it just has that that element of confrontational edge.
So that's that'll always appeal to me because because I
mean at that point, I mean, I'm a real lyrics guy. Yeah,
and I mean sure, you know, I will I love
you know. I mean, I mean think about ac DC's
you know songs. Those lyrics are really sharp and well
thought out, and not anybody can write them. They put
themselves into the mind of a teenage kid and get
these great lyrics and that's a real talent. But you know,
music that favors lyrics because lyrics tell you about somebody.
I always thought like growing up, like wow, that's my
you know, when if I found a band I liked,
that's my band, it's kind of like that's my club,
that's my gang. That's a secret society that I want
to belong to. So that will always be appealing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was just kind of curious because, you know,
because the way you're talking about, you know, this is
rock and roll, and then you know the way the
rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a lot of
people hate the fact that there's not actual rock artists
going into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, yeah, they'll always be that sort of
controverse going around. Let's see, just sitting here, you know,
looking at where we're doing this podcast, just right off
the strip. I couldn't help, you know, but just notice,
you know, there's Bally's and his Horseshoe.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I was David Lee Roth's publicist for ten years.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, so oh oh boy.
Speaker 1: So saw I've become his publicist on the album and
it was a great one, but it didn't didn't get
really big a little late enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
great song.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was one with Jason Becker. Correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so I was with David Lee Roth for
ten years. And in that time he plays Las Vegas
and he does a residency at Bally's and I'm here
for it, and it doesn't go over well. I think
if he would have performed a David Lee Roth show,
it would have gone over well. But I think he
was trying to make it a Vegas show, okay, and
it seemed a little corny in some of the aspects
of it. Although he was trying to appeal to a
mass audience, but he was still cursing a lot on
stage and in Vegas in nineteen ninety five or six seven,
whenever that residency was, it was still too much and
it was so it's not it wasn't successful, But I
remember being here for that, and then I was handling
TLC and I remember I came to see them. They
were headlining the Grand Garden Arena and wow, and it's
like all of a sudden, Vegas starts coming into my midst.
Although the first time I was here was when Melissa
Manchester headlined the Riviera. It was nineteen I think eighty three, Yeah,
nineteen eighty two or eighty three, and you know, and then,
of course, you know, I leave Los Angeles with my
wife five years ago and we move here for a
couple of reasons. Financial incentive for sure, like many others,
and also it just it felt great to open up
a new chapter in my life. I grew up in
New York City, came to you know, came to Los
Angeles and came here. In fact, there's a little you
could actually form a club. Bruce Culick, Steve Stevens. Yeah,
it's new York Los Angeles and I uh into Vegas
and I joked with them, I said, we could do
actually a club of just those people who get it.
Speaker 3: You could.
Speaker 1: And I love Las Vegas. Lass has so much New
York to it more than Los Angeles ever did.
Speaker 3: Really.
Speaker 1: I mean, for example, I just wrote about it because
I have a column called, uh, you know, Las Vegas
Mixtape at Vegas four one one Namoa is a one
hundred and two year old Chinese dim sum restaurant from Chinatown,
New York. It they just opened a spin off of
it at Rampart Casino, and that's the only one on
the West Coast. So it's New York, Philadelphia and here.
And obviously New York is very Italian, and I grew
up in an Italian I'm not Italian, but I grew
up in an Italian neighborhood. And here there are more
Italian restaurants, where in Los Angeles there's more Mexican rest.
Speaker 3: Right, and there's no there's there's no Little Italy in
Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: No, and here it's it's not like there's even though
there's not an official Little Italy. I sometimes joke that's Summerlin.
There are so many Italian restaurants within three square miles
of Summerland. It's like wow, you know, and they just
open another one. I pause at the Ramport Casino and
there's Choo Vino, There's a Romi, there's Las Strega. I
could go on and on, but you know, and the
other great part of Las Vegas is the vintage part,
like the Italian American Club for great food. It's fifty
plus years old. It's where the rat pack used to go.
Where is that? Oh you have to busy?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I know, I'm excited. Now.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's on East Sahara. It's in that area that's
called Paradise Palms. Okay, so it's not too far from here.
It is wonderful. It is this big standalone building. You
pull up, there's a giant parking lot. There's fake Roman
statues out front. Love it already, right, you will fall
in love it. And the food's great. They also do
shows there where they have tribute performers. They do Christmas shows.
It's wonderful. That really. So somebody, when I first got here,
Sai admits, you love all things vintage, you should go there,
and I went. So that was just great. So pizza
I think is becoming the main food of Las Vegas.
Speaker 3: It's all over the place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I you know, having come here five years ago,
I could really see it just keep galvanizing.
Speaker 3: So being a New York guy, where's your go to
for pizza? For like, at least New York style pizza?
Speaker 1: Everything from Dom de Marco's to Yukon Pizza, which is amazing.
It's on East Charleston Boulevard, about a mile east of
the Arts District, across the street from the Huntridge Theater
which is being revitalized. That is just fantastic. You know,
it's actually very good too. Miami Slice in the food
court of the Fountain Blue really yeah, and you know
they do you know, the pepperoni and then you can
put the hot honey on it. So that offers some
good kicks.
Speaker 3: What about that place in New York, New York, not
on the top, but down on the bottom, in the
little where where it's supposed to look like it's yeah,
New York. It's like it starts with an S. And
I love it because you show your ID. Yeah, you
get a beer and a slice and it's like ten bucks. Yeah,
you know which is a great deal. And that's honestly
to me, that's my favorite pizza around here.
Speaker 1: I should say I should try that because I mean,
who doesn't love pizza? I mean, and now the options
are so wonderful. Speaking of Italian, you know, I love
the place Palm at the Aria food Court. Okay, the
spin off of Carbone. But because it's in the food court,
it's price friendly. So you can get a chicken palm
sandwich for like nineteen dollars. Is that is just mind
blowing there. So there is just I feel very connected
to my New York roots being here. I mean, here's
another example. So two miles from my house, Na Mua,
that Chinese restaurant just opens a spin off. One mile
from my house is Rocos New York Pizzeria yep. And
the other way half a mile is New York Chinese
Food on Lake Mead Boulevard. And I start to look
around and I go wow. And I was just saying
to my wife, I said, in Los Angeles, there's not
that fascination with New York City. Here it's very pronounced.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: It makes me feel really at home. Plus there's enough
Los Angeles feeling in Las Vegas and also to you know,
with the mountains especially, you know, nature wise, Yeah, for sure.
I mean I always telling people, go, what's life like
living in Vegas? I go, it's a great blend of
nature and neon And that's a great that's a great explanation.
Thank you. And because it's just it's something fast that
I could tell people, and I didn't want to, you know,
give them know my whole life story. It's like, that's
what this place is great for. You know, my Pacific
Ocean is Red Rock Canyon, and I could just really
observe the you know, the majesty of beauty. So I
just I love those aspects of this town and I
love I love our Chinatown Chinatown Vegas. People don't realize
it's three square miles. There's two hundred and fifty plus
restaurant and I'm just saying Asian and other cuisines, and
it's amazing, you just because the way it's built. It's
all big shopping plazas. You just roll up in your
car and you get out. When I was living in
La I think it went broke paying for valet parking.
Speaker 3: You have the valet at freaking strip malls.
Speaker 1: It's insanity here. It's just user friendly like that, you know,
in terms of offstrip stuff. So that's been really so
that's really wonderful here. And I tell people are going
Chinatown in Las Vegas. But the problem of Las Vegas
image wise have most people come here for five to
six days yep. One day is travel yep. The other
day is travel back. And it's so easy to get
embedded into the strip, which is one of the things
that's so beautiful about it is that you could you
could drink and you don't have to drive or whatever.
You can really like let go. But people don't realize
like some people do, but not everybody that how vital.
Aside from Chinatown, the Arts District is just remarkable in
the five years, and I'm here just to see it
growing on the other side as well. Because the Arts
district there's Charleston Boulevard and a lot of people obviously
know South Main Street where Esther's Kitchen is yep. But
on the north side of it there's the Pepper Club,
the Doberman Drawing Room, like these amazing bars, and then
you have Downtown Vegas. Brandon Powers like he comes up
with these imaginative places Pachi Pachi corner of sixth and Carson.
It's kind of e DM club vibes, but it's a
rest on social club hang really surreal decor and ambiance.
So this is really bold of me to say. But
if you take into consideration the Circus Sole shows, Awakening
at the Wind, which are these incredible shows, I think
that blend art and technology, add up the artist residencies,
add up the ethnic culture that is available here in
Las Vegas. There's even e Lebanese you know, food festival.
I'm seeing all the stuff. So I believe that Las
Vegas right now is Paris in the twenties, oh wow,
or New York or la in the sixties and seven. Yeah,
I really believe that. And you know, and then I mean,
obviously you look at this sphere again, this blend of
art and technology. You know, there's some people some people
who will just say, oh, that's just glitzy, but you
have to really dig below and go wow. I mean
I went to see Awakening at the Wind and I
was you know, the cast, the sixty people in the cast,
you know, the stage, it's it's in the round. The
theater was built for the show.
Speaker 3: Okay, so it wasn't the theater that davidly Roth played
just right. Oh no, that's not the way. That's Fountain Blue. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well well, yeah, that's right. David the Roth recently played Fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you go to that show?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And how was he? It was Dave? Wow, Yeah, it
was Dave.
Speaker 3: And this is what I always say, is, like, what,
he's never been a great singer, right, He's an entertainer,
and that's what it was. Did he have his moments,
He had a couple of them, but for the most part,
it's what you would expect from Dave and he just
enjoy the show and the stories. And I walked out
of there thinking to myself. You talked about how he
was trying to do like a Vegas show. If he
actually did a Vegas old school Vegas lounge act, it
would be the greatest thing ever because he has that personality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was great. The ten years I work with him,
he was amazing. He was specful. I just have great
feelings about working with him and his sense of humor.
One of the great things I remember I read about
Van Halen was that they were this perfect blend of
sand and vasoleene and it was like, wow, So Eddie's
the vasoline and David Lee Roth is the sand Yeah,
and that's what makes them great. So to your point, like, yeah,
so David Lee Roth, he's going to miss some notes
or he's going to throw the microphone to the audience
sing that chorus for me, or whatever it's going to be.
That's just the way it's rock and roll. Yeah, exactly.
You know, people are getting older, but it's better than
seeing a hologram.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, let me ask it. So one of the
reasons I did want to get you in here is
because you are currently working the Ozzy Osbourne book. Yes,
what can you tell us about that? What's it like
working a book for somebody who's no longer here? Very interesting?
Speaker 1: So, by the way, and I think it's being announced tomorrow,
the book enters number one New York Times Wow seller
not fictions. Yes, so that's really exciting. And they just
sent me the chart and it's like Ozzy Osbourne the
next one Kamala Harris, and I was like, wow, you
know this is great. So yeah, it's really totally heartbreaking
that he's not here to see that his second memoir
is number one, but the family, uh, you know, who's
kept us going through by hiring us for this book.
I mean Jack Osborne did an interview with Good Morning
America and it was a very moving one because Jack's
feelings obviously are still it's he's raw. Yeah, but he
did an interview and there were tears in the interview.
So in that case, no, you don't have the the
person who wrote it around. But obviously his his kids
have been just incredible and Sharon's not done interviews for it.
That's too soon in this process. But I think, but
I think, you know, Jack has really upheld the importance
of Ozzy. So that's been you know, it's called Last Rites.
When they sent it to me, I read it in
two sittings over one weekend, and I almost didn't want
to read it too fast. It's a page turner because
you know the ending, yes, and but he he the
For me, the takeaway from Ozzie's book, it's a story
of courage. The last six seven years of his life
was living in pain because of the you know, the
bad neck and you know the reviinal, the neck of
bad bad surgery. His fall is a million things and
obviously the onset you know parkings, Yeah, a lot of
things that are happening for him, and in one in
the BBC documentary, you see him sitting outside in Los
Angeles in his backyard and he just gives a very
uncomfortable look and Sharon says, is that your neck? And
he goes yeah, And so that's so you really could
see that he had to contend with all of this.
Last time I saw Ozzy, my partner Marcy, who lives
in Los Angeles, who's led the campaign more than me
in recent years because I moved here, but I did
go back for Sharon's big birthday party. I guess it
was her seventieth and Ozzie was there. Jonathan Davis was there,
a lot of other folks. I remember just sitting with Ozzie,
but he really couldn't get up because because he didn't
really want to. He's very self conscious.
Speaker 3: He's a rock starter, right, Yeah, that's sure.
Speaker 1: Here he is, you know, walking with the cane and.
Speaker 3: I can't let people see me like this, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think that was hard, but you know,
his sense of humor was great. May I tell a
great Ozzie story?
Speaker 3: Heyes, please, that's what I got you here?
Speaker 1: All right? This is great so it's nineteen eighty seven.
I sign him, and it's it's either the first trip
to New York or the second trip. But when I
told you about when I went to the Mark Weis
store of studio, that was I think the second trip
the first one. So I had just signed him and
it was like, we're off to New York and doing interviews.
We have to cover for Ozzy. So Sharon didn't come
on the trip, but Pat Ceciliano also Rest in Peace,
was the handler, and so we went and I was
sitting in first class with them and the first and
this is where it starts getting crazy. I see Ozzy
drinking to the point of literal insanity, and and I'm
you know, and and somehow it gets told to me
maybe Ozzy he's afraid of flying, So okay, hey, we drink.
So we get off the plane and there's obviously a
car waiting for us at JFK, and I swear I'm
not making this up. We get into the car on
the TV and the limo is the film The Man
who Saved Hitler's Brain, And here we I'm sitting with
Ozzy Osbourne and a dark, big other fashionable of course,
of course, and he just looked at me goes, you know,
they're gonna kill me on stage one day, and he's
completely drunk, and I was just mind blown. But I'm
gonna have to back up a little bit. People, Okay,
this is where the story gets. It's great. So we're
at Lax about to fly to New York City and
uh so I feel like, I, you know, I have
to get to know Ausie. I only met him once
before and now we're on a trip together. Yeah, and
you know, it wasn't too far from the years with
the bat biting and when he bit the head off.
Speaker 3: Of the dove.
Speaker 1: And so I just say to him, you know, like
now that I'm dealing with the press, you know, when
people ask me about it, is there anything that you
would like me to perhaps just say. He changes the
topic immediately and he starts talking about Liviy in California
has been really great for me. It's healthy. It's all
about you know, staying fit, and I have colonics. And
I was like saying to myself, Wow, this is getting
a little deeper here, and he said to you know,
and you know, and remember I was asking him about like,
you know, you've put the head off of the AAP
and he says, well, you know, I go to have
colonics and he goes, the last colonic I had was
so good that the beak came out.
Speaker 3: Well that that is definitely worth a Pat Fontaine laugh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I love that you have that. That has been a
drop on this show for at least twelve years.
Speaker 1: Wow. So and I just remember howling with laughing.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: He was just putting me on so he could deliver
the punchline. So that is like definitely like a big
Ozzy story for me. And then it was such a
joy to do publicity for him because you know, the
evangelists were really against oh yeah, and they would really
you know, they'd show up to protest his concerts. They
would do anything to discredit him. And I remember h
sitting with Ozzy and he was saying something about they're
all hypocrites or whatever. And I remember I got back
from a trip and it was announced on the news
that Oral Roberts, the televangelist, was raising trying to raise
eight million dollars for some kind of study program. And
he said to his followers, if I don't collect the
eight million dollars, I'm going to die. I mean like
something like so insanely crazy. He actually collect makes eight
million dollars from his followers. And so after he gets it,
I talked to Sharon. I said, you know, we could
do something here, and the idea was batted around. So
Ozzie put out a statement and said I'm happy to
Oral Roberts, and it was done in a telegram. I'm
very happy that you didn't have to die for your cause.
But now that you've come out of your prayer tower,
which he had described Oral Roberts that he was in,
here's one dollar for your psychiatric treatment fund. We got
so much news on that. And I always told people
the best kind of publicity is when your artist does
not do interviews where they just talk about you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can I take you into a Ted Newton story. Okay,
So it's nineteen eighty six and I'm looking at USA
Today in the money section, and it said that Westinghouse
was putting Muzak up for sale. And I thought, oh,
that's interesting, and I kind of like put on like
my old punk rock hat. And I called Doug Banker up,
Ted's manager, and I said, what if we make a
bogus offer to buy it and say, the reason we
want to buy it is that we want to destroy
it because Muzak has ruined the best minds of a generation,
you know with those.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, so what that? That just sounds like Ted?
Speaker 1: So here's this is where it goes. So I'm you
have to remember I'm a young gun. Yeah, I probably
you know. I call up and a woman, presumably an assistant,
answers the phone and I said, hi, you know, I'm
so and so I handle publicity for the rock star
Ted NuGen He read with interest about how music's going
up for music's going up for sale. Now in the story,
it said they were going to ask something like twenty million.
I forget the exact figure, so I so, I deliberately
come with an under figure, and I said, you know,
Ted would like to offer eight million dollars and she
says to me, which was golden. She goes, well, that's
not even in the realm of what's being discussed. And
I said, oh, so then you wouldn't entertain that, and
she said no. So I put a press release out.
Music declines Ted Nugent's offer to buy so brilliant, you know.
I look back and it was just so insane. So
it gets into the news and then Brian Gumbel on
the Today Show at the time is talking about it
and Ted's not even being interviewed, and it was like
this publicity and it really you know, at this in
nineteen eighty six Ted sales, you know, it was like
the Little Miss Dangerous album.
Speaker 3: It was not it wasn't it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't even Weekend Warriors. Ye to take it
back there. So I really raised his profile. I would
do crazy stuff with Nugent. I adored him, so I
knew obviously he was a hunter, and you know, he
knew you know, he knows that I'm liberal, and but
I said, you know, I now understand why people hunt. Also,
you don't want the deer to inbread and then go
into the road and then people have car accidents and die.
He would explain all this to me, and it's like, Okay,
I'm starting to understand it. Although I never agreed with
him when he said let's whack let's whack him or
who killed Bambi or whatever, I couldn't buy that. But anyway,
I knew where he was coming from. So I said, okay,
So I said Ted, why don't we put out something
saying that you're going to open a restaurant in Beverly
Hills and you're creating a prospectus for investors. The restaurant's
going to be called red Meat, and it's going to
be a slap in the face to vegetarians everywhere. That
was the line that I came up with, So I
get it into USA today, Ted Nugent, you know, as
a perspective going around if you're looking for investors for
a restaurant called red meat, and you know this time
where Ted's not a big star, So it was my
idea to keep them in the news in telling you
that story. That story could not happen today. Somebody would say,
can you email me the prospectus? It would take sure
you could create it for publicity. But back then nobody
really checked. I mean, here's another crazy story I did
for Ted. He put his record out a little Miss Dangerous.
So I said to Ted, can you give me a
list of the ten most dangerous women in America? Because
people love lists, It's like the it's like pr one
on one. So I helped him create the list and
we have fun stuff on there, and I gave it
to USA Today and saying Ted NuGen has created this
list of the ten most dangerous women in America. It
gets into what was then the Lifeline section, and radio
jocks would read right off that was like the Internet,
like that Sharlem that People magazine, Rolling Stones, random notes whatever.
I got that, so I would keep getting him in
the news. And so the last time I saw Ted
NuGen he played the Canyon Club in Agora Hills. Maybe
this was like ten years ago, and I remember I
said to him, you know, can I tell you what
it was like being your publicist in those particular days
when you were being hated by a lot of people,
but the fact that you were a hunter and a
lot of the liberal media just did not resonate with that,
to be kind, And I said, I used to tell
people this story, and he was all ears. I said,
I would tell some journalists who would attack him. Imagine
you're riding on the Long Island Railroad and there's a
serial killer who just walked into a train car. Would
you rather be sitting next to Ted Nugent or Michael
Stipe that? Yeah, because Ted Pack's a gun. Yeah, absolutely,
And people will go Mitch I get it. And so
when I told the story to Ted, he said, well,
then you get the Davy Crockett Award. It was great, great.
So I like these amazing times that I've had with people.
I love colorful personalities because they have a great sense
of humor and they understand how that could be used
to advance their career through aaps on publicity.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, before we wrap up, because we could go on
for hours, we haven't even gotten into Bowie.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you one great Bowie?
Speaker 3: Please?
Speaker 2: Please do?
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So it's nineteen ninety five and he's about to put
his record out called Outside, which was a collaboration, not
a collaboration, but I was eno produced it. And so
the tour is Bowie and Nine Inch Nails. So I'm
flown to Hartford, Connecticut, which is going to be the
first show of the tour Bowie's. It was kind of
a co headline, but Bowie obviously the show. So I
remember being there the day before and I was invited
to be at a dress rehearsal. So I'm sitting in
the back of the auditorium or the shed Amphitheater wherever
it was. Yeah, and I'm taking notes because I knew
that I'd have to write a press release about it,
and I knew on the night of I wouldn't have
time to really write my notes because I'd be running
around with photographers, TV crews, et cetera. So after the
dress rehearsal is over, I just sit and hang out
there and his very famous PA personal assistant, Coco Schwab,
comes over, and I'm only working with David for a
couple of years at this point, and she says, he
saw you taking notes. He would like you to come
back and tell you and you can tell them what
you thought of the show, but you know you need
to be honest. I said, of course, But they knew
I was a rock critic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So I went back and I praised parts of the
show that I really dug, and I said, I have
to tell you that I thought the momentum was wrecked
when you played a song You're cover version of Scott
Walker's song called night Flights, which was on his not
popular album a couple of years prior, called Black Tie
White Noise, And I said, I because I'm unfamiliar with it,
mostly as most people will be, I thought it just
wrecked the momentum, and I remember just saying it because
I knew I had I couldn't be a yes man
to him. And he looked at me and he said,
I know that, but my job as an artist is
to give the audience what they may not know that
they want. And I went, WHOA, that's deep.
Speaker 3: But it's also inspiring at the same time.
Speaker 1: Yes, And it was just really remarkable to me because
I think if you think about that line, you think
about you know, Bowie changing from glam rock into that
sort of funk rock of you know, young Americans, and
then that sort of like German inspired funk rock of
the station to station record before he goes full blown
electronic with Eno, like he is gambling his career with
every possible move, but it's done in the name of art.
And again, you know, as an artist, I feel it's
my job to give the audience what they may not
know they want. And I just remember that has always
stuck with me about that is that's a true artist
who can also afford to take those gamblers right.
Speaker 3: Well, you know one thing they did need was that
Vick Jagger video for Dancing Well.
Speaker 1: David hates that era in fact, so David, and many
of his interviews talks about how it did make a
a star. He finally was able to play stadiums with
Let's Dance and all that, but he said he absolutely
hated it. He hated it so much he created a
group called Tin Machine with taking a back with hunting
Tony sales. So I get hired for Bowie for the
Tin Machine second album. Okay, okay, and that was incredible,
But the press was not really lining up for that
Tin Machine project. They wanted Bowie. They didn't want a
band that was playing noise rock because Bowie would tell
people I think the Pixies are the greatest group, and
I think he was even Yeah, him and Kirk Cobain
were talking up this group, just like saying how they
change music. And so that's how I start working with Bowie.
And so basically he kind of throws his career away
by forming Tin Machine. It keeps him artistically interesting. And
I think Pearl Jam covered Heaven up here from the
first Ten Machine album, so it was not lost on everybody.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, bow I never got Bowie either, but
that sounds like something I might like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you should check it out. You know, it's a both,
I don't. I think the second album is not even
on Spotify because it was on a label that went
belly up and it's probably caught up in some kind
of rights, but it's probably on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And but the first ten Machine album there was also
a song called crack City. It's very like, very noisy,
and if you're a fan of Bowie, you have to
work to enjoy it. But I don't think it's like
an immediate get yeah, I mean it has its charms.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he was somebody who was a true artist and
who would take outrageous, outrageous chances. I mean when he
put his Young Americans album out and switches from glam
rock to seoul. He even pre ams negative criticism by
describing the music as plastic soul. Just think about that. Yeah,
oh god, I have to tell you one other story
about the Sex Systems. Okay, So I get hired to
do their reunion tour, the first one and I did
two others, not the current one that's out now without
Johnny Rotten. So I'm flown to England to be at
the press conference at the one hundred club Downstairs Club.
It's like ten in the morning, the British press is
all there ready to attack them for oh, it's reunion
and you're just doing it for the money. So there's
no press release that goes out about what the name
of the tour is or anything. It's just you're gonna
learn about it at the press conference. So a comedian
starts gets on stage to kind of like get the
crowd going, and then the group comes on and Johnny
Rotten before he takes a seat while the others do,
he has a beer in his hand and he says
he looks at the crowd and he goes, do you
know why we're here? Because we found a common enemy
and the common enemy is you shit, And just it
was so great, and then he goes out, and then
it's revealed that the tour is called Filthy Lucre, which
is Filthy Money, so he preempts the criticism by saying yes,
and then he also says we found a common cause
your money, which was so amazing. Yeah it is. It's
like you're it's like basically, I'm going to control the
narrative and you will follow. And that was just incredible.
And another great moment was I was they were getting
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and
I was doing a photo shoot with John and he goes,
you know, we're not going, and I said, well, I
kind of had a hunt and I and I said, well,
they in fact asked me if you would come up
with the statement. So he starts, he starts to write
the statement. I was with my co publicist, Libby Coffee,
Uh yeah, and he writes. So we start to write
something together and he goes, I'll get back to you,
and then we get a fax the night before and
we're going to put it out and you can find
it's a hand scrawled note that says, we are not
coming to your you know, piss you know, you're just
a pissed stain. And it's one of the great things.
And you can you'll find the you know, go online
and type in sex pistols, rock and roll fame, you
know letter. Yeah, and it's just incredible. And I remember
being at the fax machine because that's how things were done.
And then yeah, because it's ninety five and the internet
is not as big, so I just remember being at
the fax machine with an assistant and we start faxing it.
It was like faxing something out, like World War three
has started, and it was just really great to see
and texted right and it was just amazing. And when
you worked with John it would be crazy. And I
hit one stunt I came up with and this will
be the last thing I think I'll say, but it
was great. So at the time when the sex Pistols reformed,
Princess di was a Princess Diana was sort of being
ousted from the monarchy and there was talk about that
she may not have the money to lead the kind
of life that she's had gotten used to. So I
said to the Pistols, I said, oh, we should do
something and say that you're going to do a benefit
concert for her, like I would do crazy stuff. Yeah,
So we put something out and saying that the sex Pistols,
you know, feel even though they had the song, you know,
God saved the Queen, it was perfect, and saying that
they they want to do a benefit concept for Princess
Die who's been unfairly you know, like ousted from the monarchy.
And in the story, the person I gave it to
at USA Today or maybe Associated Press called Princess Die's
office and there and the comment back was no comment,
which is worth its weight in gold, because it wasn't
like there was nothing said, yeah, it was no comment.
So I got that in the press everywhere and it
was like, yes, you know, we're back to creating controversy
and that was great. You know, so that's rock and
roll spirit and.
Speaker 3: That absolutely that's that's what I live for. That well,
let me so let's leave on this because this is
one thing I did really want a touch on. How
much has what you're doing right now and the Internet
affected what you do because because it's like you know,
and you know, social media, because now people are hitting
up artists, you know through so instead of going the
proper routes which you know, which which you have, Which
is the way to do it out there? Podcasters, if
you're going to hit up somebody, hit up their publicist.
That's how you do it podcasting one O one. There
you go.
Speaker 1: So I'll take you back to a story. I was
the Backstreet Boys publicist, proving I can I can do
pretty much any genre. Find so and those guys and
I saw them at their residency here at the Sphere
and there they were it's like full vocals, there's no tapes,
there's five great you know, there's five voices that just
you know, sore in harmony. So I remember I was
at my house and my partner, Marcy Rondon, was on
the road with the Backstreet Boys, and she's on the
way to the airport. And then the manager calls me
and says, I think you should tell Marcy to go
back to the hotel because here's what's happening. We're going
to check AJ into rehab and put the tour on pause.
You have to remember, this is like the biggest band
in the world at the particular point. And they said,
we would like to know how you're planning to handle it.
It's a Sunday afternoon in the summer. I was at
my pool and I remember I called Marcy up and
I said, you can't go back. I mean, you have
to go back to the hotel. You can't get on
that plane back to Los Angeles. She was in Boston,
and I said, you know, the tabloid, I remember saying
to her, and we both agreed, the tabloids you're going
to get the story, so let's get ahead of it.
So we called management up and said, we feel we
should put a press release out and we should send
the Guys Without AJ to New York City to go
on TRL on MTV and The Today Show to talk
about how they've been forced to ansel their tour. One
of their comrades has fallen from being on the road
from drinking, and the tour is going on pause. So
we basically outsmarted the tabloids and we took control of
the narrative because in this era right now, you need
you need to really control the narrative before before the
media gets it. I mean, TMZ is perfect. Yeah, back
in the day, you know, you could say no comment.
Uh huh. That does not work anymore. You have to
say something like our client is going through this, they
respect their privacy. When there's more to report, you need
to say something. You can't go the old no comment.
So right now, I mean, I could you know, I
could wake up and you know, especially when you know
Ozzie was alive. You know, I'm not telling any tales
out of school. You know, there was during the time
where you know, there was inde yeah, and this had
to be addressed. So there were ways that we got
in front of the story. I forget exactly how on that.
But so now as a publicist, you have to be engaged. Look,
it was always a twenty four to seven business, right,
but but it became even more of a twenty four
to seven business. And so that's it.
Speaker 3: So that's it.
Speaker 1: You have to you have to be on top of it,
and you have to outsmart TMZ and if something happens,
it's like we got to put something out, so we
take because whoever starts the story, it's always the first
shot right right, and then everything else becomes follow up.
So I think that's important. That's It's pretty much how
my job changed.
Speaker 3: Love it, Mitch, dude, thank you so much. I'm going
to hit the ultru music here and we're going to
say goodbye and boom Mitch Schneider, I really I really
appreciate this man. Well, and like we just scratched a service.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: There's oh, there's so much there is. People want to
find you. Where can they find you? Where can they
find your newsletters?
Speaker 1: Well, here's the deal. So I write a column for
the website called Vegas four one one. It's called Las Vegas.
So the column is called Las Vegas Mixtape. So you
just go to Vegas four one one. They usually have
my column on the front page and it runs once
every three weeks. I cover shows, restaurants, off beat events,
fun retail stores. Like I just love pop culture, and
I don't like if you said to me, we're gonna
go to a music gig like five nights in a row,
and say no, let's go to a bur letsue show.
Let's go to a groovy new restaurant in the arts district,
and let's really enjoy pop culture and not be limited
to one, you know form. So that's what the column
is about. It's about shining a light on the best
of Las Vegas. People don't even know that we have
two China towns here.
Speaker 3: Yeah it's true.
Speaker 1: The second Chinatown you know, opened in not opened, but
the area begin developed in twenty twenty, the year I
got here. It's on put the South Rainbow Boulevards South
the two fifteen. It's a whole new level of Asian restaurants.
So I love going around sometimes telling people, oh, I
went to the you know, the second Chinatown last night,
and they look at me like, what the hell do
you mean? And I said, Hey, this is your city
and you really need to dig in. So my column
is just really about digging in, finding out what's groovy,
what's new, and what's old. I love vintage stuff, you know,
there's like even there's just great stores all around that
are committed to it. So I'm out there. I try
to find new places and it's not easy. There is
so much happening in Las Vegas. Yeah, just the level
of restaurants again, the residencies. I can't go to everyone, right,
but I mean, I've seen great shows here and I
know there and there's more, and I know the city
right now is in a feeling of economic uncertainty. That
and that's reality, and I guess we'll all find out
how it's going to play out once we get beyond
the fall exactly.
Speaker 3: Well, it's amazing what's happening with the Durango. The station
casinos lower the drinks, people come in and spend money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I must say. I was driving around
and I saw that station casino, big you know, led
sign that said Margarita's a dollar ninety nine. So I
went where I live in Summerland. So Red Rock Casino
is the nearest station casino to my house, and I
just said, I gotta go in. So I sat at
the bar. It's not at every bar. It's at the
bar with the machine obviously, of course. So I ordered
a margarita. So it's a dollar ninety nine and you
could make it stronger for only two dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a box for a double margarita.
Speaker 1: And it's just insane. And I didn't go for it.
Was in the afternoon, so I didn't go for the
second shot. Had to like work more. Yeah, but I
was like, wow, I got I got a light buzz.
It tasted good the mix, and I go, wow, this
is like the best of Vegas. And there's so many
other great food deals right now that's going on, and
the city has risen to the occasion. What did I see?
Caesar's Palace for the time being is free parking?
Speaker 3: Oh really finally for now, for now, look.
Speaker 1: That up and I you know, and I'm just seeing
all this, and the people have spoken. And right now,
if you go to I don't work for the Virgin Hotel,
but I can tell you if you go to the
Virgin Hotel right now, there's no resort fees, and they
reduced the room rates by forty percent. And of course
the Virgin Hotel does not have any costs for parking
exactly so there's a situation of like you can come
to Vegas. Yeah, you're off the strip by like.
Speaker 3: What a mile, but a Vegas mile, right, a Vegas block.
Speaker 1: But that's what free parking, no resort fee, and a
forty percent off rooms and you're staying in a sophisticated hotel,
you know. So I think the city does have to
reat on to that. Unfortunately, with social media, when the
Fountain Blue open, people were putting their receipts on like
how much a water costs in a room and that's unfair.
And I'll tell you why. If you stay in a
four seasons in any city, whether it's Boston, La, Chicago,
Los Angeles, the room, the room service rates are insane.
And the first is a luxury hotel. I'm sorry if
you want to stay there, it's going to be unfortunate
in terms of some of the prices on things.
Speaker 3: But Vega.
Speaker 1: But people still figure in their minds that Vegas is
value city. So it feels, especially uh Psycho, that it
would be that much. They forget that it is a
major city and it is a luxury hotel. But it does.
But that image did not play well on the internet.
People were like you know, hell with Vegas. I'll go
somewhere else to give my money and blah blah blah,
And people get angry. Obviously understand that. But I always
tell people, you know, come to Vegas. You don't need
to stay on the Strip. There are plenty of austrip
hotels and then you can explore Chinatown Vegas. You can
get Since you're not on the Strip, it's easier to
go to Fremont Street East.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: The clubs, the bars, the culture, the people on the streets,
the free concerts. They do not even in the Fremont
Street experience, but they do some at the corner now
of Sixth Street and Fremont Street, Oh East, and they
have some DM performers out there. So it's really exciting.
And I just love going I love going out in
Vegas because you don't have to travel far. In Los Angeles,
I completely felt held hostage by being in my car,
and I looked at it this way. I know my age,
so I can tell you time is tight for me.
And if you know that your time is tight, why
would you want to spend the available time left sitting
in traffic?
Speaker 3: I know I drove lyft uberl for eight years. Yeah,
you know, and look, it's everything's twenty minutes away here.
Speaker 1: It truly is, unless you know, maybe the ride from
summer Land to Henderson's going to be like the thirty
you know, thirty three minutes or whatever it's going to be.
And the great thing here is, you know, you're not
really confined necessarily to the UH to the freeway, the streets.
I mean, everybody knows you could take desert In and
fly on that street.
Speaker 3: Desert In is my is my secret.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And sometimes you know, if I have to go
because like one of my accounts is the Copra room
now at the Tuscany. Yeah, absolutely, Sometimes what I do
is I just get off the fifteen at Sahara, swing
over to Paradise Road and go down that way. And
it's like I've avoided a lot of stuff that could
be crazy on a busy night or whatever. So there's
lots of ways to get around here. We're in Los Angeles.
If you have to do certain drives, there's really only
the freeway, and you know that's that's hard. So being
here I feel that I don't feel as like I'm
being held hostage. And that was the Los Angeles experience.
So that was so that really worked in my favor
in being here. And also the first year of being
in Vegas was great because the rest the lockdown happened
like about like March twenty first or whatever. The restaurants
were open here, not everyone on May thirteenth, so I
was posting online that my wife here, we are at
these restaurant. I was taking food photos. And then somebody said,
you know, Mitch, you're experiencing Vegas through a Los Angeles
lens and it's really interesting to read your stuff. And
so somebody said, you should talk to my friends at
casino dot org news. So I started writing a column
for them, and then from there I went over to
Vegas four one one. So I've been writing for them
this column for two and a half years.
Speaker 3: It's great. So that's it.
Speaker 1: I love the city. I hate to see it get attacked.
But look, I understand if somebody is going to charge
you twenty six dollars for a cocktail, that's a problem.
Speaker 3: And that needs to be examined exactly exactly. Look, one
of my buddies was in town about a year ago,
staying at Mandalay Bay. He touched he touched the bottle
of vodka in his room. Touched it, boom, ninety five
dollars and it was like a bottle of Tito's. You know,
it's like, come on.
Speaker 1: Right, I know I hate those refrigerators because if you
move something around yep, so you have to go fight
them at the desk about that. So that's unfortunate.
Speaker 3: Oh I helped him drink it.
Speaker 1: Oh you did.
Speaker 3: He's like, well, fox it. You know I have to
pay for it. Anyways, Miles will enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, Okay, well that must have been a
great night then. Oh it was so so yeah. So
I mean, I I'm a real ambassador of Las Vegas.
I my column aside from appearing at Vegas for one one,
I send it around to lots of folks that I
know in Los Angeles and New York City and points
elsewhere in America. And people are like saying, I didn't
know you how to Chinatown. I didn't even talk about
Chinatown too. I didn't even know. And I said, it's
real and you should experience it. And it's simply what
a mile and a half from the Venetian Spring Mountain
and you could walk it if you wanted to or
you could just take an you know, a ride share,
and it's it's wonderful. It's big shopping plazas. The one
that's the most notable is Shanghai Plaza. It's a little
difficult to park in there if you go to is
that the one with the gold that's a cross. No,
that's Spring Mountain Plaza. That's parking is busy there, but
you can park in the back.
Speaker 3: Also, I know I shouldn't have shed that edit that out.
Oh wait, I'm talking to myself. Yeah, I'll bet I'll
put a beep there.
Speaker 1: So and yeah, and there's lots of other just great
aspects that once I lived here. I remember somebody said, Mitch,
why don't you just get an MGM credit card. It'll
give you free parking in none because and MGM now
owns nine hotels, including the Cosopolitan, which was their most
recent acquisition. So there are ways to play it so
it doesn't come off. So I will I'll stand for this,
you know, I'll stand for the city and the goodness
and I and the museums. I'm happy on one level
that Vegas is going to get a proper art museum,
and I think it opens next year. With a lot
of pieces on loan from Los Angeles top museums. But
I hope it doesn't distract from the fact that we
have the Punk Rock Museum, we have the Atomic Museum,
you know.
Speaker 3: We we have the we have the only heavy metal
museum in Metal Blade Records.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I have to get there. That's great, you know, I
have to go there. And so I got a call
Brian and uh, because I would see Scott at the mix.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he told me he hasked, wanted me to ask
you if you wanted to go to Uhurt tomorrow night.
Speaker 1: I can't go out tomorrow night, but that's great, and
uh it's I'm doing publicity for the Bones, and the
guitarist is in the Bones also, But I just I
have some stuff going on that I can't go out
tomorrow night. But so that's great. So yeah, there's just
all this this wonderful stuff, and the rock and roll
community of Las Vegas cannot be underestimated. I agree, And
it did not. It existed in Los Angeles during the
hair metal years. See I used the phrase, and all right,
there was there was rivalry. But rivalry is good because
it makes musicians stronger, saying you know, we have to
do stuff here that's going to make us stand apart
from that other band, even though they're our friends. We
got to get a leg up. So rivalry is good,
but the rock and roll community is here, and it
was just amazing just for me, Like when I started
doing the mixers, and then then you came to one
and then somebody brought somebody else, and then it's like
the next time I invited them, and then they brought
somebody else, and like even like my client Mickey free
Brandons again that creative visionary. He brought Jack Banks, a
video director, and then he started shooting Mickey Freeze videos.
He shoots also just awesome social media videos too for
Brandon's Pachi Pachi, which I mention. So I've now seen
that people have met people at the mixers, so that's
been really gratifying for me. And the first mixer I
did was in the year June twenty twenty one. I
did it Dom de Marco's and there were like fifteen
or twenty people because I didn't know many people that
at that point, and what was just really incredible about
it it was that was the three weeks that the
masks came off. Oh god, and it was so liberating.
It was like wad and I looked back at the pictures.
And then soon after that we were told to put
the masks back on again, right, And so I called
it People Need People and that title was inspired by
the isolationism of the pandemic and decided to keep it.
And it's like, you know, you ain't nothing without other people.
Speaker 3: I ended the story.
Speaker 1: I agree, you know, it's just the way it is.
Everybody needs a friend, every performer needs a fan.
Speaker 2: It's just it.
Speaker 1: So, you know, sadly, the location that I've been using
for the past couple of years, the Great Laguna Pool
House and Kitchen on the sixth floor of the Palms Place.
It's one of three restaurants now that have closed due
to the probably the economy at the Palms Hotel. So
you know, I'm kind of scouting for another location. I
know I won't be able to exactly replicate.
Speaker 3: That, right, Well, just do me a favor. Find a
place that has happy hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true, although you know, the drinks were happy
hour pricing, but they're.
Speaker 3: Happy hour pricing was long, but I think my can
of bud light was ten dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that doesn't feel like happy. Well that's not happy,
that's brutal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was still fun.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Before I met you, I at one of the early mixers.
After I did it at Don de Marcos. A few times,
I was walking around that great area of Las Vegas
called Commercial Center New Orleans Square, and I went into
that store, Avante Pop, which was a very cool indie
bookstore that's not there anymore. Then I went into the
Horror Collectible Store and they said, oh, this cool place
just opened called Sister Kim's Kitchen, a soul food restaurant.
So I went in and I just kind of said,
this would be great to get people to come here.
And so I did a mixer there and really on
a Saturday afternoon and people could order whatever they wanted.
There was no alcohol, though, but it was like, you know,
you should taste what the black community is offering up
here in Los Angeles. This food is like insanely great.
So that was great, and there's other places. I mean,
I love empanadas. There's a wonderful place called Fu Gazetta
at Sahara and Jones in one of the shopping plazas there,
and it's an offshoot of one from Buenos Aires. And
I always tell people one of the ways to experience
Las Vegas offstrip is to get in your car and
then get out of your car when you go into
a shopping plaza and walk around, because that's how I've
discovered a lot of stuff. You know, it's not easy
to do in the heat of summer right where it's
like you just you can't even imagine that, of course,
on a day where it's you know, the heat is penetrating.
But get out, walk around, love your city, you know,
and support places that are close to you, because if
you support places that are close to you, you'll make
your neighborhood great. I always tell people, don't you know,
you know, you don't have to go with no disrespect
to Chinatown or Downtown Vegas. It's like, look what's in
your area, because you'll make your area better is support it.
So I will pick real neighborhood restaurants to write about.
Another good lemon Cello at the Sahara and Cimarron, not
too far from where Vamps used to be. Interesting to
say it that's just that's that's great. It's got but
a little pricey, but it has the sophistication that I
think warrants the pricing. It's not like you're being jacked.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, so it's.
Speaker 1: Like, okay, I get it. So you know, love your city.
Speaker 3: That's one place you should check out. One of my
favorite places, the Blue Ooks. What's it called again, It's
called the Blue Box. There's two box. There's one on
Sahara and there's one that the one I go to
is on Eastern Okay, and there's two different owners, but
they're like brothers. Yeah right, it's Minnesota bar. They fly
in Walleye from Minnesota. They fly in the cheese curds
from Wisconsin. A deep fry am there and it's affordable
and they give you a shit ton of food. Okay,
and it's a bar restaurant, you know, it's it's a
local bar, right.
Speaker 1: Well, I love to get these tips and you know,
and there's something to be said because I haven't really
talked about the East Side. You know, you have really
wonderful places there. At the Metro Pizza, which is an
offshoot of the Laker Street Pizza place in Greenwich Village.
You have that here, Like that was not immediately apparent
to me until somebody said Mitch, Okay, just go to
Metro Pizza that can come from New York. What are
you waiting for? So I went there. There's a great
vintage and modern consignment store called the Purple Chandelier on
Eastern and Tropicana. It's thirty thousand square feet and it's
incredible if you go in if you're looking for furniture.
So that's on the east side. So I'm trying to
make it more of my mission. Okay, talk up the
east side. And of course I mentioned the Italian American
Club because obviously Casta Dea More on the east side
is right right, so there's there's all of that happening.
So people should think about the east side.
Speaker 3: Found I've found when the other night I was craving
a three taco plate, huh, and like I'm going east,
I went east, went I went east, and I found
this place, Lafa mall of I can't remember the name
of it, and I know it's exactly it's the Eastern
it's the Eastern and Tropicana well maybe half a blockdown, so.
Speaker 1: That's right near the Purple Shand yeah here then, okay,
so that's great, and I have to say that I
do like Roberto's Taco Shop.
Speaker 3: I have to tried again.
Speaker 1: The chili rino was great. I can't tell you that
every dish. I tend to be the kind of person like, like,
if I go to Italian restaurant, at least for the
first time, you've got to give you the chicken palm
because that's how I'm gonna see how real you are.
Of course as a restaurant. But the chili Reanno at
Roberto's Talker Shop is just fantastic.
Speaker 3: Give it a shot. I'll love to give it a shot.
Speaker 1: It's worth Like sometimes I think that you haven't been
to a place in a while, it's good to go
back to see if it validates what you originally thought
or maybe will surprise you and that it up the
ante somehow. So I think that's something to think about.
But yeah, so you know, east Side Downtown Arts justtrick.
And we haven't even mentioned Area fifteen. Area fifteen trumps
anywhere in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and it
keeps growing. When it first opened up, it was just
called Area fifteen. It's now called the Area fifteen district
because there's multiple buildings. Okay, so you have the universal
horror attraction that you have other buildings. There's the John
Wick Experience, there's Illuminarium. It is, you know, and I
hear that they're going to build a separate hotel.
Speaker 3: On their own.
Speaker 1: Wow, you know, to even create more of that. So,
you know, and I love art, and you know, there's
so many artful uh installations that they have at Area fifteen.
So that's something to be viewed and experienced. So I
think it's important now I when I told you before
that I think Vegas is Paris in the twenties. Area
fifteen has to be considered in that frame of reference
because that is something that does not exist anywhere else
in America to that. So that's my love for the city.
It's like, wow, go you know, people don't even know.
There's a great venue inside Area fifteen called the Wall,
two hundred and fifty people. I saw a great band
from Vermont who they have a level of popularity in
England more so than here. They're called Thus Love, and
I went to see them there and the acoustics were
just pristine, the environment was great everything, and you know,
and then you walk right out of that club into
the big expanse of area fifteen, and then I wandered
into this area and it was silent comedy where you
put headphones on and you don't have to worry about
hearing other people's laughing or whatever. So that was an experience.
And so I mean, I feel that Las Vegas really
offers just multiple experiences. So love it here.
Speaker 3: It's great. Yeah, it's great, dude, thank you. I'm gonna
hit the ultra music again. Yeah, oh my god, we
kept going. That's all right, But dude, that's all right.
I'm totally okay with that because to me, the more
content the better. Mitch Schneider, thank you so much. Make
sure you guys do check out his newsletter. I'll have
all those links in the show. And thirteenth the big
unofficial official Kiss pre party with One Last Kiss and
the Bones, and I'm hosting Matt along with DJ Noise
Is gonna be up there jamming and Hey. November fourth,
thirteenth anniversary of another FM podcast, the very first Hall
of Fame episode. I am inducting six or seven people.
I'm not gonna tell you guys exactly who they are
until that episode. So it's gonna be a lot of fun.
But something tells me that that this might be involved. Okay, well,
I've been using that drop for long enough. I think
I think he deserves it. So mister Fontaine is God
A love Pat Fontaine and his sister ladies and gentlemen.
My name's is he presley On, behalf of Mitch Schneider.
You guys have a good night, and don't forget what
I lack in talent. I'll make up for the cock