Raving about the show

Las Vegas survives and prospers, in large measure, because the city keeps re-inventing itself.

In a town built around adult entertainment, the generation of the 1950s was happy enough with Dean and Jerry and the Rat Pack. The common wisdom was that rock ‘n’ roll drew only shrieking teenage girls. They wouldn’t be able to drink or gamble, anyway, so who needed them — or their scruffy heartthrobs, Elvis and the Beatles?

Fortunately, Sahara entertainment director Stan Irwin thought Las Vegas might be able to survive a couple of Beatles shows in 1964 — even with the lads commanding a whopping fee of $30,000.

Then came “Viva Las Vegas.” By the end of the ’60s, Elvis was selling out the International showroom. What would Las Vegas be, even today, without its constant reminders and tributes to the fab four and the King?

Again in the ’80s and ’90s, some objected to providing concert venues for the Grateful Dead and their itinerant fans. And last week, there were familiar echoes of concern that the tens of thousands of young people flocking here to attend the weekend-long Electric Daisy Carnival at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway were cash-poor drug users, up to no good.

But the rave turned out to be a happy scene of energetic youth enjoying electronic music, generating far fewer troubles over three days than the naysayers had feared.

The attendees needed meals and hotel rooms and cab rides, didn’t they? What city could have served them better — and who would object if they left here with happy memories, vowing to return?