This happened at Harrah's Lake Tahoe. It was the dead of winter and I was playing the cabaret room with a Motown singing group Drifters, Coasters, one of them or one just like them, I vaguely remember a lot of Lieber/Stoller tunes so if pressed I would say Coasters, but, before I sobered all recollections of a specific nature are suspect.
There was the Original Country Redneck Rebel playing the main room with his band of incestuous inbred deviants. He was a nice enough guy though. Good writer, good enough singer with a thin, reedy voice. Crappy guitar player though.
Anyway, the night before they were to open OCRR throws this big ass blowout in the star suite sitting up there high atop south Tahoe, hermetically sealed glass windows, panoramic views, hot and cold running keno girls, free flowing high ticket liquor, legendary pot and various and sundry assorted pharmecuticals and black market diversions.
And music. Live. Music. The main attraction was a good old fashioned Texas Guitar Pull. There were three guitars floating around the room that changed hands with every song. The person who sang the last song, and it was usually a song that had been written by, or for, that singer, would pass the guitar to the singer that they wanted to hear next. The other two guitars were to play support and backup, you know, be ready to solo if the bong hit between verses made them choke up a lung and stuff.
I was there with my National Steel Body axe ready to provide snotty slide guitar licks where ever it was indicated and to hoover up as much white powdery shit as hit the tables.
Somewhere in the night the tequila ran out. OCRR phones down to the front desk (it's about 3:30 a.m. or so, not late at all for Nevada musican time but on Rocky Mountain Standard for regular square working stiffs it's fucking late or fucking early take your pick) to have them send us up a couple cases of Cuervo muy pronto and he is informed by the kid on the phone that the entertainment director of the casino is concerned about the rampant substance abuse and reports of flagrant alcoholism that have surrounded this guy for quite a long time. He tells OCRR that he has been directed to refuse any and all requests for more alcohol to be delivered to the suite. He further informs OCRR that the normal restocking of the bar will occur at 2 p.m. that afternoon and that this is something that will happen once a day and once a day only in quantities that management has pre-approved. No special requests or appeals will be considered.
The Original Country Redneck Rebel is not phased in the slightest. He tells the kid on the phone that he is a good boy who is just trying to do his pinché job and that all is well in the land of the stars up here in the Star Suite.
Then, he moseys, and only true country boys understand the beauty of a genuine
mosey, over to where there is a heavy oak chair at a table by one of those hermetically sealed plate glass windows 28 stories up in the air during a December blizzard in south Tahoe. He picks up the chair and throws it through that window. He watches it fall all 28 stories into the gathering banks of snow.
He walks back over to the phone, tells the kid at the desk,
"We got us a busted windah up here in this suite. I need a new one muy rapido compadre. Please,
make sure it's got plenty of tequila too. Gracias chico."
Fifteen minutes later we were moved into a new suite just down the hall. Five minutes after that there was a knock at the door. It was two guys from hospitality services, two hand trucks, each stacked with four cases of tequila, and a sack of limes.
Debauchery commenced.
Discretion will not allow me to state the name of the OCRR. There are more than enough clues for a music aficianado to figure out. If you email a specific guess and are right I will confirm your suspicions in a more private medium.
3B's
