Add a large new music venue? There’s a crowd for it
Things are always coming and going in Las Vegas: tourists, your child’s college fund at the sports book, sobriety, etc.
This goes double for the city’s music scene.
A pair of venerable clubs, downtown’s Las Vegas Country Saloon, better known as LVCS, and the Hard Rock Cafe on Paradise Road, both closed at the end of the year, a bummer for local music fans and bands in particular.
But with these departures came some mammoth new arrivals, in terms of both venues and destination festivals, the circle of life in this entertainment-centric city.
Here’s but a few of the big developments in a big year for music in Vegas:
1. Life Is Beautiful and iHeart Radio Music Fest square off — It was Bono vs. Marcus Mumford, the Strip vs. downtown, the great indoors vs. the great outdoors, G-Eazy vs. G-Eazy when the Life Is Beautiful and iHeart Radio music fests squared off on the same weekend in September. The former had a strong year with a consistently packed EDM stage and a stellar undercard highlighted by Crystal Castles, Kamasi Washington, The Shins and more. Meanwhile, iHeart held its own at the T-Mobile Arena with appearances by big timers such as Drake, Sia and Britney Spears. Aforementioned rapper G-Eazy knew what was up: He appeared at both.
2. Neon Reverb returns — This multiday indie music fest came back after a three-year hiatus with arguably its biggest and best lineup, returning to finish what it started by further coalescing the downtown-centered music scene into the vibrant piece of the arts district that it’s become.
3. Park Theater opens at the Monte Carlo — Yeah, you could make the case that Vegas needs another venue like the local 7-Eleven needs another video poker machine, but the Park Theater offers a strong counterargument. It’s a fairly big room that can hold up to 6,000, but its huge stage and cutting-edge video technology create a more up-close-and-personal feel than might be expected from a venue its size, making it well-suited for upcoming residencies by big names like Bruno Mars and Cher.
4. The Killers celebrate 10th year anniversary of “Sam’s Town” — The Killers celebrated the 10th anniversary of the album most deliberately evocative of their hometown in all its dust-covered glamour at the cozy, packed Sam’s Town Live! ballroom. There, the band played “Sam’s Town” in its entirety over two sweaty nights in September and October, the intimacy of that room contrasted with the expansiveness of the T-Mobile Arena, which The Killers opened in April.
5. Psycho Vegas debuts — The power of the riff compelled the stoner rock forebears, ’60s garage greats and feedback-obsessed metallers of all stripes who ensured that the Hard Rock Hotel lived up to its name for four distortion-drenched days in August when Psycho Vegas debuted. The fest has booked its return. August 2017 is gonna be a loud one, dudes.
6. Guns N’ Roses kick off reunion tour at T-Mobile Arena — Welcome to the jungle, we’ve got … lots of cash. One of the year’s top grossing tours began in Vegas, when a kind of, sort of reunited Guns N’ Roses (guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan joined frontman Axl Rose together for the first time in decades) set aside their differences to the tune of $133 million in ticket sales. That’s how you paper over any sore feelings (literally).
7. Rock in Rio’s future becomes uncertain — When it debuted in 2015 with big name headliners such as Metallica and Taylor Swift, Rock in Rio was intended to become a biennial attraction. But without much of a clear musical identity, the fest lost upward of $20 million during its first go ’round and won’t return in 2017 as originally scheduled, coming and going in a windfall of unfulfilled hype.
8. Phish pays tribute to David Bowie in Halloween bash — This veteran jam band delivered a stunning remembrance of David Bowie by performing “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” in its entirety on Halloween night at the MGM Grand, rendering the evening as unforgettable as the man being paid tribute.
9. Electric Daisy Carnival has biggest year yet — This Daisy has blossomed into a metaphorical bean stalk, scaled by hundreds of thousands of electronic dance music diehards to enter a real-life fantasyland where everything is gargantuan, especially the impossibly festive crowd: some 400,000 strong attended EDC 2016, its largest draw yet.
10. Kanye West thrills at T-Mobile — Performing atop a mobile riser in lieu of a traditional stage, Kanye West conjured one of the most overblown crowd responses we’ve ever witnessed in his command performance at the T-Mobile Arena in late October. West may be a troubled man, but for an evening at least, he and a crowd of nearly 20,000-strong rhymed those troubles away in unison.
Read more from Jason Bracelin at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com.
