Mushroomhead Drummer Studies Fine Cheese and Oysters in Vegas

[private]While I love punk rock, my roots lie in heavy metal.  I spent my high school years banging my head at metal shows at the Philadelphia Spectrum.  And I was a DJ on my college radio station WSOU – at its time the number-one hard rock/metal station in the country.  It wasn’t until I was married and unemployed in New York and took a job working at New York’s infamous CBGB that I really got into punk.  But I’ve never lost my love of metal.

Since I spent 15 years interviewing musicians for a living, I used to attend great rock concerts as frequently as I visit great restaurants today.  Yet I’ve never seen Mushroomhead live.  When I heard they were coming to Vegas, I was dying to see the show.  Unfortunately, it was during a week packed with food events, and my schedule was full.  But since the president of their record label is an old friend of mine (we used to do a show together on our college radio station), I decided to do the next best thing: take one of them out on a Dining Invasion shoot.

It was the first time I’d ever met the band’s drummer, Skinny.  But as you can see in the video, we hit it off right away.  And given the fast food bands are usually forced to exist on while they’re on tour, he was thrilled to hit a gourmet restaurant with me – even if it was just for some snacks.

I decided to take him to Morels in The Palazzo for two reasons.  First, a morel is a type of mushroom – and I’m a sucker for that kind of bad play on words (just look at my porn stars and beef video).  But more importantly, I’d been dying to do a video on cheese and oysters: two very simple foods that still intimidate a lot of people.  There’s no restaurant on The Las Vegas Strip that has a better cheese selection than Morels.  And the month we shot there they had a pretty amazing selection of oysters.

Shooting with Skinny was a blast.  And he seemed to have a great time.  He and Chef Robert also hit it off.  In fact, when I left the chef was making plans to check out the band’s set later that night.  Unfortunately I had another engagement, so I wasn’t able to film that dining invasion.

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