One of Las Vegas' original punk-rock heroes has fallen. Todd Sampson, who fronted seminal local outfits M.I.A., Self Abuse and Samsons Army over more than three decades on the scene, died early Sunday morning at age 46 after being helped offstage toward the end of an M.I.A. show at the Black Door. The cause is unknown.
"He just started going down during the show," said musician and close friend Rob Ruckus. "Backstage afterwards, he was totally burning up, kinda going out of it. We tried putting ice on his head, cooling him down with water ... we loaded him into the truck and got his breathing slowed down; he actually walked into his house on his own. But he started heating up again, and then he started hyperventilating, so we raced him to the hospital as fast as we could, but he stopped breathing on the way. When we got to the hospital there was no heartbeat".
Sampson's musical journey began in 1980, when the 16-year-old Clark High student joined fledgling local punk band The Swell. The group called itself M.I.A. for an outdoor New Year's Eve performance atop a flatbed truck—and the new name stuck. The band, however, did not, at least not in Las Vegas. M.I.A. soon relocated to Newport Beach, California, with bassist Mike Conley now on lead vocals. "I was 16, so my parents wouldn't let me go with them," Sampson told the Weekly in 2008.
Las Vegas Sun
