The "17 Steps" of the Vegas Dragons

There is a series of wicked turns on the lower end of the Pasadena freeway just as you leave downtown Los Angeles, heading north. At 3:00 AM, when traffic is at a minimum, this stretch can be thrilling. You can take it up to 75 or 80 MPH but all the curves are blind and you never really know what you'll face as you round the bend in the road. If one car ahead fucks up, you'll be sideways in the guard-rail for sure.

One early morning, after a club date, I found myself with this little bit of roadway all to myself. Thrills being thrills and boys being boys, I decided to punch it up a notch and whip through the blind esses. I guess I hadn't been to Disneyland in a while and needed an adrenalin rush to make it home. Clearing the first turn, my pulse raced with excitement. No tail lights ahead! I bore down on the accelerator and braced myself for the next turn into the first tunnel...and there in front of me was a wall of tail lights! I barely controlled the car and found myself on the shoulder at a dead standstill. There was no clue as to why the traffic had stopped...no emergency lights or equipment, no police or ambulance. Just four lanes of stopped cars seemingly staring into the gaping maw of the tunnel leading to the Dodger Stadium exit.

After a few minutes, I got out of the car to investigate. I have few regrets in my life, but leaving my car that night is in the top five. As I made my way to the front of the snarl-up, my eyes followed the beams of the leading car's headlights and there, in the garish light of early Los Angeles morning was a motorcycle...well, there were parts resembling what could once have been a motorcycle...accompanied by parts of what was most likely the late motorcyclist! There were, as yet no signs of help and there was the cold, icy chill of recent events suspended in the air as if afraid to settle and lend legitimacy to the surreal tableau at my feet. In the siren-less vacuum and in light absent of emergency strobes, I looked down and saw half a face, the missing half now a 75 foot long smear in the pavement. There was no movement, but the massive wound had just moments before given up a volume of blood that seemed still alive as it continued to flow across the pavement, finally pooling as it found a dip in the asphalt. The moment is forever and indelibly etched into my memory.

Brian Taylor and the Vegas Dragons are a rock band to be found on the Sellaband web site. If they were not a band, they could do well as designers of amusement park thrill rides. Their latest offering is called "17 Steps" and is best heard with headphones cranked and with the same receptive attitude one has when ascending the first long climb of a wicked rollercoaster. You get the feeling that something exciting is just around the corner, but the full impact of the excitement is still in the future and remains unknown.

"17 Steps" opens with a soundscape I can only describe as a midievil violi da gambi duet transported to a windswept Saharan dune. Enter the drums with a pulse that is almost a heartbeat but with a sinister pathological hitch. The next layer is a guitar straight from a Sergio Leone film. Before Brian utters a word, the track has already required the listener to suspend reality. Black is white, up is down and answers become questions.

The song inexorably plows its way through the blind curves of the Pasadena freeway and as the frenzied peak is approached, as the adrenalin starts to ooze through the temples and stain the headphone pads...the listener rushes down the last precipitous drop of the rollercoaster. But instead of the exhilaratingly misty ending of "Tom Sawyers Log Ride" he finds himself staring down at pain...memories and pain. Everybody has their own most painful moment...that one memory that makes the bones inside your elbows ache in horror. In my case, it was an oozing half head at 3:00 AM on the Pasadena freeway. I think Brian Taylor and the Vegas Dragons are asking the question, "What's yours...what are your 17 steps?"

Now, to get back to the real world for a moment, I would be doing the band a grave injustice not to draw some attention to areas that could be better executed. As recorded, the vocal does not sit most effectively in the mix. I get the feeling that what is wanted here is a vocal that gnaws at the brain like a nagging conscience. The little devil perched on your shoulder reassuring you in hushed tones that it's alright to burn down the orphanage. The voices that no one but the afflicted can hear. The deafening whisper of ultimate insanity. Placing a vocal with those characteristics into a track of such cinematic breadth is daunting...but production chops and proper tools can, and hopefully will make it happen.

"17 steps" is not the sort of music that will result in many backseat conceptions. But there are already plenty of songs filling that particular bill. "17 Steps" is a ride inside. After repeated listenings, I found myself happy to have made it out again, but in some twisted way, unable to resist revisiting the scene of the crime.

Studying for the bar...and Sellaband's Vegas Dragons

When I was nineteen, A few college mates and I started a band. We had a Hammond organ and three piece horn section so the logical material for us to play was Blood Sweat and Tears, Chicago and Cold Blood. All of us were music students and man, we were snobs. We prided ourselves on being able to read music and thought quite a lot of ourselves.

Then I fell in with some cats who weren't musicians but who influenced me more than any musicians had up to that point. To be frank about it, I don't really know what influenced me more, their acid and weed...or their record collections. I look back on those times as my years of studying for the bar...because it was at the bar that we usually ended our daily studies.

We played a game called, "Favorite Record" the object of which was to play a record and convince the others of a particular artists merits. If enough members of the group hated your choice, the record was smashed to bits. We made our choices with much trepidation and a world of music of which I had not previously been aware was laid open to me.

And suddenly I found myself, a serious college music student, playing bass in a bar band... LOUDER THAN SHIT!! And what did we play? Album cuts from what had become my favorite records, of course. Tender little ditties like, Chunga's Revenge and Eat That Question by Zappa...Dark Star by the Dead...and 45 minute frenzied jams ala Captain Beefheart. And were we popular? Hell No! Did we care? You gotta be kidding! We dug it and that was all that mattered. We played and lived with absolute reckless abandon.

And that brings me to a band that is soon to achieve their album budget funding goal on Sellaband. The Vegas Dragons are an Australian band led by a personable fellow named Brian Taylor. I met Brian at the "London Calling" show where I played bass with another fine Sellaband artist on the rise, Lucia Iman. So tonight, I decided to give Brian and the Vegas Dragons a good listening to and hear what this personable young man's band is all about.

After listening to the three songs posted on their Sellaband page, I thought to myself, Oh, this is going to be a short review. Because all that I could think of to say was..."JESUS CHRIST!!!" Yeah, I know, Too short to be a thorough review... and I felt that, as nice a guy as Brian is, I owe the band more than that. So let me try to put my impressions into a more detailed form.

We've all seen the silent movie where some poor shlub is walking down the sidewalk, whistling to himself and thinking that the day is just too groovy to be true. Then he turns a corner and...BLAM! A safe falls out of an office building and drives the guy into the sidewalk up to his chin like a 16 penny nail. That...is called impact. The Vegas Dragons have impact, but not that kind. Their kind of impact is...well, imagine that the safe didn't stop at the sidewalk. Imagine getting hit on the head with a safe and it just kept going, right through the sidewalk, through the earth's crust, gathering speed as it plowed through the mantle, then the core and didn't lose steam until it drove you right out onto a street in China. That's as close as I can get to describing the Vegas Dragons brand of impact.

Musically, the band has no weakness. The palette of sound colors seems to be very well thought out and only lacks the polish that a first rate studio recording would provide. The intent and concept are evident as depicted on the mp3s . The rhythm section plays with absolute reckless abandon...or so it seems. In actual fact, these guys play some intensely challenging and difficult parts, but in a spirit that recalls my years of studying at the bar. It's that Alan Watts dichotemy of doing something as if you just don't give a shit... but also in the knowledge that this may be your last chance so you better nail it.

The song "Hands of Love" is just a lie from beginning to end. Here you are, minding your own business, whistling your way down the sidewalk. It starts to get a bit more intense, but you're still okay. Then, four-and-a-half minutes into the song...BLAM! And then it's another 90 seconds of being plowed through the earth by a runaway safe.

Brian and the Vegas Dragons will get their day in court. It's just a matter of time before believers in this band put them over the top and they go into the studio. I wish them the success that they will deserve when their recording is completed. But before that, I wish for them a producer and a production team that really gets under the surface and allows them to realize their most interesting vision.

And now... I'm beat, I'm going to the bar...