Preview: Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend — PHOTOS
For the next four days starting Thursday, a large rockabilly music and classic car show takes center stage in Las Vegas, and our city’s own burlesque beauties will be in the spotlight as vintage–era fans pour in from around the world to The Orleans.
Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend organizer Tom Ingram has created the festival for 20 years. Ex-“Pin Up” at The Stratosphere star Claire Sinclair and her pal Mosh appear Saturday at Sort This Out Cellars booth and raffle themselves for a date that night at Golden Tiki.
The 2011 Playboy Playmate of the Year, who is launching her Clairebnb boutique hotel project Downtown, told me: “I love the culture that surrounds the rockabilly scene. I love the appreciation and passion that the people attending have for the vintage aesthetic.
“I’m no spokesperson for rockabilly. It’s more my love of all things pin up that float around the genre. I’ve been attending since 2011. It’s really cool for all these cool people to meet up. I love to browse around the clothing vendors and look at all the great vintage outfits, watch the fashion shows and burlesque acts.
“Fans can come and take photographs of us. Mosh and I have a real Jane Russell-Marilyn Monroe dynamic. I’ll be wearing a white vintage halter dress styled by Las Vegas fashion guru Jasmin Rodriguez.”
Viva Las Vegas is all about pin-up girls, vintage cars and yesteryear ’50s music, fashions and dancing. Thousands of Elvis Presley lookalikes, tattooed models and burlesque queens flock here for the longest-running music festival in Las Vegas celebrating its 20th anniversary. Many have attended all 20 festivals.
For the first time, Burlesque Bingo is being introduced. In addition to Tiki Pool parties, there are more than 120 vendors and 85 bands, including The Reverend Horton Heat, Wanda Jackson, Freddy Cannon, Lee Rocker of The Stray Cats and legendary Grammy winner Brenda Lee.
Los Straight Jackets are an instrumental/surf/garage rock band who have a cult following from their elaborate shows, which include wearing Lucha Libre masks, among other shenanigans. This year Viva Las Vegas has more female-fronted bands and DJs than ever before with doo wop, rock legends and 1950s stars of rockabilly.
Naturally, there’s pinup contests, but also a pinup beauty academy, and our city’s newest resident burlesque star, and photographer Bettina May (Bettina.ca/photography) will be behind and in front of the camera all weekend.
On Friday, she’ll model the Speak Easy Lingerie collection and Saturday and Sunday, she’ll offer styled photoshoots at a vintage home in Paradise Palms for fans who want Hollywood glamour photos of themselves.
Bettina will wear vintage reproduction outfits from designers Bernie Dexter and Meg Shops. “Always with Secrets in Lace lingerie underneath even when I’m behind the camera,” she says. Her “Absinthe” at Caesars Palace Green Fairy friend Melody Sweets will be stopping by to welcome Bettina to Las Vegas.
This year former “Crazy Horse Paris” at MGM Grand star performer Dita Von Teese, who began her career as a striptease artist at one of our men’s adult-cabaret clubs, will be featured in a burlesque. Sleek bodies and gorgeous curves of vintage cars also will draw attention.
On Saturday expect to see some 20,000 people attend the pre-1964 vintage car display of 1,000 vehicles. In the first year of Viva Las Vegas, 1,200 people attended the events with 12 vehicles at Gold Coast. The show outgrew that space and has now sold out in advance for 10 consecutive years moving to The Orleans.