24 Hours in Vegas with Kyle Kinane
There’s not a lot to experience right now so I wrote about something that happened six years ago.
Hello and welcome to REPLY ALT, the first, only, and greatest email newsletter about music. Let me just start with a few housekeeping notes that might be of interest to you as a follower of this newsletter.
First off, REPLY ALT was included on this list of the 80 best email newsletters. So if you’re a long-time REPLY ALT subscriber, congrats on having your impeccable taste confirmed! And if you’re a newbie who found me through the list, welcome! I will inevitably disappoint you one day but hopefully not today.
Second, I finally got my shit together and submitted the audio interviews that have appeared in previous editions of this newsletter to the podcast apps. So you can now listen to all six interviews on Apple Music or Spotify just like a real podcast. Wow.
And third, I am devastated to report that I will not be writing about T*ylor Sw*ft on this album cycle. Way back in August, in the second edition of REPLY ALT, I fired off some thoughts about the deranged middle-aged men Rolling Stone thaws out of their cryogenic freeze tanks for the sole purpose of praising her every time she drops an album. I stand by it, but I just can’t do it this time around.
The reason I’m bowing out of this release is not because I can’t summon the strength to care about petty music industry drama while the entire world implodes, although that is true. And it’s not because I’m a grown man on a mission to collect the entire Slap-a-Ham catalog and don’t particularly care about music like this, which is also true. And it’s not even because she’s got a death cult of followers who seem to tear apart critics (even doxxing the ones who give it positive-but-apparently-not-positive-enough coverage) with an increasingly terrifying malevolence, although who needs that either.
It’s really just because… I appreciate what she’s doing to the music media. Sincerely! Each time she drops an album, the remaining cadre of critical bloviators whose identities rest on the delusion that their opinions matter spend the next several weeks tearing each other apart in the digital Thunderdome. I keep thinking of that scene in Ghostbusters when Gozer the Gozerian tells them to choose their destructor. Well, the music media didn’t think of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man; it thought of her. “The traveller has come.” The way I see it, the more legacy publications continue their wall-to-wall coverage of releases from A-listers like her, the more it pushes readers towards writers like me who provide alternative music coverage in REPLY ALT (hey, that’s where the name came from!). So, I genuinely wish Taylor well with her final album release.
OK, let’s get to the meat of this post: I miss doing my job. There are certainly more pressing problems that weigh on me every second of every day, but still, I miss it. My job was to go out into the world and find cool places and meet interesting people tangentially connected to the world of music and then hunch myself over my computer until a legible story came out of it. The world largely does not allow for such things anymore. I have not met a new person in four months aside from the loopy teenager who talked to me in a CVS parking lot about that morning’s oral surgery. Hope those teeth are healing up if you’re reading this, Tamara!
I don’t get to cover weird events or profile notable people anymore. Out of sheer boredom, I wrote the opening paragraphs to a few imaginary pandemic profiles I assigned myself:
He once sang about having a devil’s haircut in his mind, but these days Beck would settle for a regular trim. “Sorry,” the singer says, pushing away some of the greying blonde hair that shags in his eyes. “Not a lot of barber shops open during a pandemic, you know?”
Steve Harwell, lead singer of the band Smash Mouth, is picking at his soul patch while he chews on a question about a global pandemic. “I always said the world was gonna roll me,” he laughs, “but I never could have predicted this.”
Marshall Mathers has an idea for a verse. The 47-year-old rapper, most commonly known as Eminem, is frantically scribbling down words in his black notebook. “OK, you ready?” he asks. “A pandemic? All I see is a planned-emic / The government’s racism is systemic / I’ll choke you out, DJ Akademiks…” He’s spitting faster now, and has adopted what sounds like a leprechaun impression. “QAnon, Ramadan, Orange Don, got a kid mowing his lawn, but somehow we’re the pawns…”
But then I thought: Wait a minute. I’ve lived a semi-interesting life. There have got to be some stories I’ve always wanted to tell but never got around to it. And then I remembered this one, from 2014. It’s a short story about 24 hours I spent in Las Vegas with my friend Kyle. Enjoy.
(Disclaimer: Any quotes or events were pulled from six-year-old memories tucked into the back of my rotted-out brain. Also, this was written with Kyle’s permission.)
24 Hours in Vegas with Kyle Kinane
Nothing should exist in Las Vegas. That’s not a dig. I’m not implying that the city is unworthy of culture or life’s finer things. What I mean is, given its natural state—endless miles of flat, dry terrain and a climate similar to that of the surface of the sun—it’s not a welcoming place for life of any kind outside of the snakes and other slithering ground-creatures that inhabit it. But, as an affront to God, an entire city exists out there in the Nevada desert.
In this unholy metropolis, hotels and casinos exist, largely because they’re designed to create environments antithetical to the landscape just beyond their walls. They are filled with air conditioning and words spelled out in neon lights and all kinds of artificial decorations intended to make their inhabitants forget that they are sitting on the closest ground the Earth has to another planet.
Other things exist in Vegas besides hotels and casinos, too. Breakfast buffets, blacklight miniature golf courses, haunted museums, lunch buffets, shotgun wedding chapels, and souvenir stores that sell t-shirts with slogans like WHICH WAY TO THE GODDAMN BUFFET?. All of these things are available to those who don’t mind rummaging around in America’s sweaty undercarriage. But if there’s one thing that absolutely should not exist in Las Vegas, it’s outdoor music festivals. There is no reason large masses of people should risk dehydration and sunburn to witness live music in its least enjoyable form.
In May of 2014, I was assigned to travel to the city that should not exist to cover a music festival that should also not exist. The festival was Punk Rock Bowling and the lineup that year included Descendents, Cro-Mags, the Dwarves, and a deeply dude-heavy list of other bands I’m forgetting. Covering a music festival is like music journalist boot camp. Essentially, you spend ten hours standing in the sun staring at huge stages from 50 yards away, followed by a club show or two at night, and then, when you get back to your hotel room at 2 a.m. and your body just wants to melt into your bed, you have to stay up for another two hours trying to dump out whatever sunburnt ideas your two remaining brain cells can conjure. Five hours later, you wake up, try to make sense of any of the previous night’s incoherence, wrangle pictures from your photographer, cram it all into the editor’s mail slot, and head back out to do it all over again. All so that a grand total of three readers can skim it and say, “Sounds fun.”
I did not attend the first day of the festival. The headliners were H2O and JUDGE and now, six years out, I can affirmatively say that I do not feel I missed out on anything of particular importance. One life, one chance, gotta do it right, after all. Instead, I walked around Fremont Street and took in my first Vegas experience. Las Vegas is shitshow incarnate on any day of the year, but when several thousand punx are scattered throughout the crowds, it starts to feel like a bad fever dream.
As the punks with their green, foot-high mohawks and plaid bondage pants strolled down Fremont, past the locals who make a living by dressing up as Spider-Man and Stormtroopers, a few got stopped by tourists asking for photos. Watching some dude with liberty spikes throw up a middle finger and put his arm around a grandma from Wisconsin for a picture that will assuredly be posted sideways on Facebook is the most damning indictment of modern punk I’ve ever seen. At what point did punk rock become a novelty? When did people stop being afraid of it? What is it even rebelling against anymore? These are the questions I wish I had more time to ponder, but I was late for the first event I was actually excited about: the festival’s comedy showcase, headlined by my friend, effortlessly funny human, and hotel roommate for the weekend, Kyle Kinane.
Kyle was doing a standup set as part of something called the JT Habersaat Altercation Punk Comedy Tour. I didn’t know what JT Habersaat was and I didn’t know what punk comedy was and I didn’t know who any of the other comedians were. They told jokes about topics that, I guess, are relatable to aging punks—the pains of circlepitting with arthritic knees and such. All jokes were designed to win the audience over to the comedians’ sides. One of the comedians sneaked in a reference to Bad Religion and earned himself a few cheap woos. Then Kyle took the stage and did the complete opposite of this.
For the entirety of his set, he made a point of pitting himself against the Punk Rock Bowling attendees. He told joke after joke about how their meticulously patched and studded vests looked like “punk rock arts and crafts projects” and how they spent more time on their hair than his aunt Edna. Mind you, these were the people who were sitting there watching his set, the people he was paid to entertain. But, not only did they not take offense to the jabs, they LOVED IT. Anyone can judge people’s life choices behind their backs (I certainly do!), but a real hero does it right to their face. Kyle Kinane is a hero.
The next afternoon, Kyle and I sat in our friend Lisa’s room at the Plaza and watched the pre-festival pool party from her window. These parties give punx a chance to cool off in the pool with their studded belts on while bands play in the background and after a few hours, the water turns into a seafoam broth of hair dye and warm Miller Lite. For reasons I’ve never understood, Lisa insists on booking the first-floor room directly behind the stage every year. It is, unquestionably, the least desirable room in the entire building. People meander in and out asking to use the bathroom and whether it was cool if they smoked in there. It was there that Kyle cracked open his first beer of the day. And then another. Fast forward four or five beers and Kyle was engaged in a shirtless chicken fight with members of the band Old Man Markley wearing a garbage can for a hat.
At some point he and I figured that we should put our shirts on and actually head to the festival. We walked over there and the scene inside was one of Kyle’s jokes come to life—just a sea of people wearing slightly-different-but-sort-of-all-the-same punk uniforms. Normally, the way people dress is none of my business. I will leave the jokes about punk rock costumes to professionals like Kyle. But given that the temperature was over 90 degrees and we were stranded in a blacktop parking lot under a sun that hangs 30 feet above head, it was concerning if nothing else. Wearing a 20-lb metal-covered vest when it’s over 90 degrees is just impractical, but then again so is a punk festival in the middle of the desert. Touché. A few hours into the day, mohawks began to wilt like sad little posies in need of watering and attendees took cover in what little shade they could find which usually meant leaning up against a Port-a-Potty.
As its name might suggest, Punk Rock Bowling’s general culture falls under the broad umbrella of punk, but that particular day’s lineup catered to a very specific type of punk fan—those perpetually stuck in 1977 England. The day’s three top acts were: Peter and the Test Tube Babies (formed in 1978), Anti-Nowhere League (formed in 1979), Cock Sparrer (formed in 1972), all supported by an undercard filled with several increasingly subpar versions of this type of band.
Kyle and I had a vague interest in seeing the headliner, Cock Sparrer, which meant waiting in the heat through one miserable set full of songs about life in Thatcher’s Britain after another. Hours passed and Kyle drank more beer and we kept waiting. Mercifully, the sun finally went down and the sky grew darker as we were only 30 minutes away from the headliner. I noticed Kyle’s face was buried in his phone a lot during this home stretch, though I didn’t know what he was looking at. Finally, as if something snapped inside him, he abruptly looked up from his phone and put it in his pocket.
“Alright I’ve made a decision,” he said. “I’m gonna take a cab to go see the Rock of Ages musical. You coming?”
I don’t know what I was expecting him to say but it wasn’t that. He hadn’t previously expressed a desire to see the Rock of Ages musical, nor did I know he even liked musicals.
“How much is it?” I asked.
“Tickets are a hundred bucks.”
A hundred dollars was too rich for my blood, even though I dumped at least that much into something called Spin-Ferno over the course of the weekend, for which I saw no financial reward whatsoever. I told Kyle that since we’d made it this far, we should cross the finish line and watch Cock Sparrer. This prompted him to plead his case, insisting that seeing a musical would be “more punk rock than anything here.” Kyle got louder and louder in his defense—loud enough that punk passerbys started to take notice and shoot us snide looks.
“How about I’m gonna go see people who actually give a shit about their art, how about that?” Kyle said at a very high volume. “What’s embarrassing is seeing Cock Sparrer in 2014, that’s what’s embarrassing.”
It was around the time he started shouting in a cockney accent that I realized there was no talking him out of his Rock of Ages plan. He was set on following his inebriated heart and I had to respect that. I walked him off the festival grounds to help him hail a taxi. An entrepreneurial local was selling cans of beer out of a cooler on a street corner and Kyle decided he’d like to drink one on the way there. He paid for it, cracked it open, and asked the local if he’d heard good things about Rock of Ages.
I gave Kyle a key card for the hotel room and, noticing his phone battery was hovering around ten percent, said, “The room number is 412. Do you want to write that down since your phone is about to die?” Kyle didn’t seem to be in the best state to be remembering numbers, so I figured this would be helpful. He grinned and said, “Ah man, you think of everything!” but did not write it down. Then he and his corner beer promptly got in a taxi and as his door slammed shut the thought hit me that there was no way he was ever going to find his way back to the room. For all I knew, that might’ve been the last time I’d ever see Kyle Kinane.
“Maybe he’ll be OK,” I thought. “Maybe if he doesn’t use his phone, he’ll still have enough battery left to call me when he returns at the end of the night.”
Then the texts started coming in. My phone kept buzzing as I watched the five bowling pins that comprise Cock Sparrer sing songs about working extra shifts to pay for rounds at the pub with their mates. The first message contained a blurry photo of Kyle’s shoes, standing on tacky blue carpeting, covered in shimmering confetti. I didn’t know what it was supposed to mean. The next message had a blurry photo of confetti being shot into the air. Then, a short video. It was him with two women in their sixties. They were sitting in a row of seats, saying something into the camera but the blasting REO Speedwagon song in the background drowned them out. The message was loud and clear, though: We’re having the time of our fucking lives!!!
After about an hour of this, I stopped hearing from Kyle. I cannot attest to what happened from there but here’s what I’ve been able to piece together. Kyle was seated next to some tourist women enjoying a ladies weekend. They shared Kyle’s love of musical theater and were on his approximate level of intoxication, so the group became fast friends. In their excitement, one of the women mistakenly knocked over Kyle’s beer and gave him $20 for a new one. They sang songs by Twisted Sister and Bon Jovi and Styx and were still singing and laughing as they exited the theater after the show was over.
From there, Kyle made the six-mile trip back to Fremont Street, felt something in his pocket, and realized he had 20 bucks burning a hole in there. So he decided to have himself a little night on the town. Like a moth to a flame, he was attracted to the bright, neon glow of Fremont’s casinos, where he spent the next few hours.
It was 2 a.m. when I heard the key card slide in and out of the door’s lock. The door opened and I heard Kyle’s unmistakably gruff voice. It was filled with sheer incredulity that he’d gotten himself back to the correct room as he said, “No way!”
Kyle’s hands were full. In his right hand he was holding two chili dogs with the works. I found this peculiar because earlier in the day Kyle had mentioned that he’d recently gone vegetarian. When I pointed this out, he again said, “Ah man, you think of everything!” Then he asked that we “not get bogged down in semantics” regarding the chili dogs.
In his left hand, he was clenching a stack of money. Apparently, he’d stumbled into one of Fremont’s many gambling establishments, plunked his 20-dollar bill down on a roulette table, and won some money. Then he won some more money. And then some more. Before he knew it, he was up $300.
He told me about all of this with a mouthful of chili dogs. “Fuck you, punk rock! Fuck it!” he said between bites. “I did Vegas with a show and gambling, how it was supposed to be done. And it was better than all those dirty dick bag of shits.”
At this point I should mention that Kyle had to wake up in four hours to catch his flight to his next city. This seemed like an unlikely task to me, given his state, but it didn’t seem to concern him very much, and he swore he would have no problem making it. He curled up on the couch in my room and nodded off among his crumpled up chili dog wrappers. He fell asleep, muttering something about punk rock being a scam, and then I passed out as well. The next thing I remember was feeling a tiny little kiss on my forehead that smelled of hot dog. It was 6:30 a.m. and, like a true pro, Kyle was off to catch his flight.
The next day I headed to the festival alone, hung around there for an hour, and left when I realized I don’t much care for music festivals and should not be sent to cover them. Ryan Young from Off With Their Heads and I walked around looking for snacks, beverages, and reprieve from the afternoon sun. We found a 7-Eleven, which was more or less like any other 7-Eleven I’d ever been to except for the addition of slot machines in the corner. There are slot machines everywhere in Las Vegas. There are rows of them leading up to the gates in the airport so that, on the off-chance you are leaving town with any remaining cash or dignity, you can ditch the last of it seconds before boarding your flight. I’ve never seen a mini slot machine above a urinal, but seeing such a thing would not surprise me in the least.
I paid for a Gatorade at the 7-Eleven counter and when I turned around Ryan was playing the aforementioned slot machine. I took a photo of him back there, alone and pushing random buttons. It remains the most cursed photo I’ve ever taken.
Eventually we meandered back to the festival and I watched some bands I can’t recall. I don’t remember if Cock Sparrer was any good, either. In fact, the only things from the weekend that stick out in my mind are throwing my clothes in the trash when I got home and the lingering sense of regret. It’s a regret that has only intensified over the years.
Every so often, I will hear a song by Bon Jovi or Styx and smell the faint hint of chili dogs. I will think of Kyle and our night in the ungodly city, and how I should’ve gone with him to see that fucking musical.
I swear I didn’t plan this, but as luck would have it, Kyle released a new comedy album as I was writing this, Trampoline in a Ditch. Give it a listen if you want to hear some good jokes which have nothing to do with Bad Religion.
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Kyle is one of the greats. This was a delight to read, thanks!