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Aaron Thompson

Story Archive

  • A&E

    Tuesday, July 2, 2013

    The fast-rising screamo group will wind from California to Chicago and back.

  • A&E

    Wednesday, April 3, 2013

    What, did your teen years not include mosh pits and chipped teeth?

  • Noise

    Wednesday, July 27, 2011

    They're not old enough to drink yet, but Deep Fried Orphanz already has a pretty accomplished résumé

  • A&E

    Wednesday, July 20, 2011

    The scene loses a hero. Aaron Thompson loses a "brother."

  • Electric Daisy Carnival 2011

    Sunday, June 26, 2011

    Rave-o-holics, Bunny and Sean of the Deckz.

  • Music

    Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2010

    He’s known as Metal McLovin, and if you’ve ever been to a metal show in Las Vegas you’ve probably seen him.

  • Music

    Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010

    Why has Monster Zero waited almost a decade to release a second full-length album?

  • Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010

    Sporting some of the finest curls, licks and, at least in Las Vegas, kicks, Jay Reatard will be sorely missed.

  • First Friday

    Thursday, June 11, 2009

    Random comments from the recently downsized cultural event.

  • Business

    Thursday, June 4, 2009

    Boomers after hours isn’t a spectacular place. It's your typical dive-drinking establishment—everywhere, there are neon beer signs, televisions older than most teenagers and the acrid scent of ancient cigarette smoke, lingering.

  • Music

    Thursday, May 28, 2009

    Demesic’s dedication to brutal music—and the word “brutal”—is so intense, the trio practices weekly at Hill’s Sandy Valley-area compound, with the closest neighbor some three acres away.

  • Music

    Thursday, May 7, 2009

    Amongst the bright colors, skimpy clothes and flamboyant environment surrounding Saturday’s gay pride festivities, Tracey Hope, clad in subdued gold and black, seems out of place.

  • Music

    Thursday, April 30, 2009

    Calling the Skinny Jeans a rock band feels like an understatement. They’re a soccer team. And a promotions and production group.

  • Local Music

    Thursday, April 2, 2009

    That’s right, even before the curtain has drawn on the Alley’s final performance, the thrice-opened, thrice-shuttered all-ages music hub is already, essentially, dead.

  • Monday, March 16, 2009

    Six completely out-of-context and potentially misinterpreted topics that New York dirt rockers Japanther addressed during their festival-closing set at Beauty Bar:

  • Monday, March 16, 2009

    Things I was thinking (but didn’t say) during The Doodler’s set at Neon Reverb: 1. Man, I really want some chorizo.

  • Monday, March 16, 2009

    Seventeen year-old Dylan Silva may be Anticon artist Doseone’s biggest fan, next to his grandma, that is.

  • Monday, March 16, 2009

    A few of our favorite quotes

  • Saturday, March 14, 2009

    It's nearly 1 a.m. and Black Patterns are setting up, almost insuring a 3 a.m. start time for Spindrift. Yeah, that's pretty late.

  • Saturday, March 14, 2009

    Let's call bald drunk guy Tom. Now, let's watch Tom get angry and start messing with Click Bang!'s gear while they're playing it.

  • Saturday, March 14, 2009

    A little help taking gear out of a venue is the best way to become friends with any band.

  • Saturday, March 14, 2009

    Is it just me, or does the entirety of Fremont street smell like the juiciest hamburger ever made? .... Yea, I know that smell could also be the famous $1,000,000 stench that the city tried unsuccessfully to get rid of.

  • Friday, March 13, 2009

    Or puking, either

  • Friday, March 13, 2009

    Mark being attacked/lead into a jig by a hyperactive cougar at a indie noise band's show off of the list of things I need to do before I die ...

  • Friday, March 13, 2009

    Five lessons, courtesy of Jeff, Judi and Sheila

  • Friday, March 13, 2009

    Things I did while waiting for the Beauty Bar to open up late on night one of Neon Reverb

  • Music

    Thursday, Feb. 19, 2009

    Traditionally nerdiness hasn’t been known to score points in abrasive subcultures, and the guys in Vegas outfit Mons Wolff know it.

  • Music

    Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009

    Steve Fodor and Zak Farrell look about like anyone else does on a Friday night at the dingy punk haven that is the Double Down Saloon. Farrell is sporting a reddish mohawk and black T-shirt with cut-off sleeves, while the semi-shaven Fodor chills out in a blue hoodie.

  • Fashion

    Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008

    The key has something to do with obscurity—flaunting your command of segments of popular culture that only the hyper-clued-in know about or remember. But it’s not as simple as, say, showing off your rare 1970s-era repress of a Dirty Harry shirt.

  • Music

    Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008

    Regulars at the notoriously grouchy local-music online gathering place weigh in on last week’s Weekly piece about their favorite forum.

  • Crime

    Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008

    For all that’s been said and written about former Escape the Fate lead singer Ronnie Radke, the 24-year-old has a certain zeal in his voice.

  • Culture

    Thursday, Oct. 9, 2008

    I’m a junkie. Every morning, before I take my shower or munch down on some oat-laden cereal, I need my fix. I can’t even think about getting on with my day without hitting the Airbag, my personal epicenter for finding out what’s going on in Las Vegas’ cultural underground.

  • Friday, Oct. 3, 2008

    I have no idea why I volunteered to do this, but for some reason there’s a fake gun and a blood pack under me now. I should have know that at Point Break Live!, the intensely absurd, interactive re-telling of the Hollywood blockbuster Point Break, I’d get myself involved in something stupid as hell.

  • Sports

    Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008

    For those of you who have only a vague idea what UNR is about, note one thing—it hates UNLV.

  • Music

    Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008

    A trio of Montreal-based sonic stewards, We Are Wolves, with their hyper electro-rock, aren’t just your typical indie electro-trash.

  • Politics

    Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008

    n hit the jackpot. Minutes into Friday evening’s presidential debate-viewing party at Sierra Gold at Jones and the I-215, someone won $20. Two center-bar televisions cut away from Barack Obama’s meandering economic prescription for the recession, and up popped glowing graphics and the word jackpot in red uppercase letter

  • Music

    Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008

    The fourth release from Folsom—the pillar of Las Vegas’ fading, macho hardcore scene—is a pack of consistently balls-out, hate-filled testosterone abuse.

  • Music

    Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008

    Kevin and Scott Leonard seem like pretty normal guys on the surface—family men, brothers, bandmates for most of their lives. But as they sit inside a hot mini-trailer applying removal wipes to garish-looking makeup, they admit something took their lives in an unexpectedly bizarre direction.

  • Art

    Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008

    It’s 5 p.m. inside the Water Street Gallery on a Third Thursday in August, and Henderson artist Chris Waters is making final preparations on one of his paintings. For Waters, it’s a strange and lonely homecoming. The 30-something artist hasn’t shown his work in downtown Henderson since his own city-subsidized gallery, the acclaimed contemporary-art haunt A6 Gallery, closed 14 months ago—a victim of high-rise condo economics.

  • Music

    Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008

    "You know, we enjoy it, and we do it really well because we’re older and we come from a period where punk rock was a lot more aggressive, fun and wild. The present form of punk has some nice things about it, but mostly it’s pretty fucking tepid and weak." --Blag Dahlia, lead singer of The Dwarves

  • Wildlife

    Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008

    Clawed frogs—they may be the world’s only interesting-sounding amphibian. But they’re also illegal in Nevada—they jack up the ecosystem—and last week state game wardens fined a Florida company $3,600 for distributing them, this after seizing 68 clawed frogs from across Nevada.

  • Music

    Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008

    As the ridiculously tall and lanky Andrew Karasa sits behind his drum kit, something seems out of place.

  • Music

    Thursday, Sept. 11, 2008

    This S.F. neo-soul outfit sounds so ’70s, you can almost smell the incense and pot wafting through the air when this CD comes on.

  • CD Review

    Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008

    This Austin, Texas, quintet’s morose, minor-key vaudevillian tunes aren’t the best we’ve ever heard, but its occasionally catchy, morbid riffs—not to mention Mr. Lewis’ unique, if somewhat irritating vocals—are interesting enough. If you’re looking to bury a corpse in the dead of night somewhere near Laughlin, there are far worse soundtracks.

  • Noise

    Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008

    Bobby Franks is a self-professed vinyl dork. With a collection numbering in the hundreds, he knows a cool-looking platter can mean the difference between a record selling at a show and ending up in a dollar bin—a major factor behind the 28-year-old Las Vegan’s recent decision to found Running in Place Records, a vinyl-only label.

  • Politics

    Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008

    State Senator Bob Beers loves Wikipedia. The conservative politician and former computer consultant—like pretty much everyone else—uses the user-edited and maintained encyclopedia to do everything from look up TV shows to analyze Nevada history.

  • Noise

    Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008

    The newest album from Oakland-based psycho-popster Vice Cooler (better known as the frontman of XBXRX) is a blitzkrieg of groovy rhythms, clumsy-yet-cool rhymes and total synth-slamming abuse.

  • Music

    Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008

    It's close to dusk, and the roar of an Air Force F-15 screams through the air. East Side Joe covers his ears slightly. His place, which everyone calls East Side Joe’s, looks like the sort of place that might be the last spot you’re seen alive. Two decrepit houses sit on the eight-acre property; rotted-out refrigerators, shattered concrete foundations and destroyed air-conditioning units litter the ground. Signs warning that “Trespassers will be Shot” discourage the homeless and meth-using squatters from coming too close.

  • Television

    Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008

    For nearly 25 years, Ron Futrell was the face of KTNV Channel 13. His laid-back, friendly demeanor, coupled with solid sports reporting and an instantly recognizable voice, made the 51-year-old father of four welcome into thousands of homes each night. But it’s been a rough summer for Futrell. After finding out his contract with the station would expire in December, and after a late-night car accident and his subsequent arrest July 25, which ended with his firing from the station for “serious misconduct,” Futrell’s nice-guy image has taken a shellacking.

  • Noise

    Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008

    Despite what the band’s name might suggest, this four-song EP actually sounds kinda fresh.