What's the rock club scene in Las Vegas like?
October 5, 2018 12:34 PM   Subscribe

I went to a rock show in Las Vegas this week, and it was...odd. Are they all like that?

I was in Las Vegas for work this week, and as a blessed escape from the conference, I went to see MC50. It was amazing, but it also was a very strange experience, and what I wonder is, are all rock shows in Vegas this odd?

To start with, there's the venue. It was at Brooklyn Bowl, which is on the Strip and is a sister bar to the same place in Brooklyn, so I definitely wasn't expecting a "typical" rock club vibe. BB's got that same kind of Vegas-simulacrum feel to it as, like, New York New York has to the actual New York skyline - it's a copy of the thing, but it's clearly, at a glance, not the thing.

That's not a problem; BB is a good space and the sound was good, but it felt very artificial and antiseptic. Are there other bars/venues in other, non-touristy parts of Vegas that touring bands go, and if so, are they more what I would expect a rock club to be - more timeworn, lived-in types of places?

The other thing I noticed was the crowd. Again, I know where I was - the heart of the Las Vegas Strip on a Tuesday night is never going to be insane. But Wayne Kramer is one of the forefathers of modern punk rock, and Kick Out The Jams is pretty much a foundational text for that style of music. And yet, there were, to be generous, a couple hundred people (at most) in a space that is listed as having a capacity of 2400. I'm not sure I'd expect a band's 50th anniversary tour to sell out, but I was definitely expecting more of a crowd than that.

So I guess my question is pretty much as I list in the title: what's it like in Vegas for rock shows that aren't arena-sized? Is there a good scene/set of venues there that are more local and less tourist-centric that can pull in small/indie touring bands, or is the small- to mid-size rock show scene just trampled to death by the billion-pound gorilla that is the Strip?
posted by pdb to Media & Arts (5 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I can't speak to the scene, but I do know who Wayne Kramer is and booking him for a 2400 seat venue is ridiculously naive. Do you have any indication who the promoters were?
posted by rhizome at 12:38 PM on October 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


No one who actually lives in Vegas will get anywhere near the Strip for any kind of event, so all you were seeing is the people who were on vacation or there for work in Vegas during the middle of a week when school is in session.

Also, since the club only has people on vacation, the "simulacrum" aspect isn't surprising. Any club would have to be emulating what the people from out of town think a rock club should look like, verses something organic and real.

My "going to two or three shows a week" days were in the early 2000s, and when I'd leave Los Angeles to visit my cousins in Henderson we'd go to the usual terrible storefront club. The local scene was kinda terrible since each time it'd seemed like 80% of the people who lived there had moved in the last month. Lots of "H-Town" tattoos lol.

To be honest, most of the time my cousins would come down to me and we'd go to the Sunset House of Blues/Palladium/Glasshouse or whatever.
posted by sideshow at 12:59 PM on October 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


There are a lot of smaller venues in Las Vegas. A few on or near the Strip (e.g. Vinyl), but Downtown/Fremont East seems to be where it's at - places like Beauty Bar, Backstage, Fremont Country Club, Bunkhouse.
posted by bgrebs at 1:09 PM on October 5, 2018


Even the original Brooklyn Bowl here in brooklyn is pretty sterile and corporate - i dont think it is that the LV version is a cheap knockoff of an original with grit . . . its all fairly disney even in the original.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 1:20 PM on October 5, 2018 [6 favorites]


We see see bands on Fremont east and/or downtown. Occasionally I’ll venture to HOB but only because it’s so easy to get in and out of for a strip venue.
posted by yodelingisfun at 1:18 PM on October 6, 2018


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