Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Scinta showmanship returns in residency
THE Kats! Bureau at this writing is the South Point Showroom as
Frankie Scinta opens his weekend residency, “The Showman.” It’s a 3 p.m. show on select weekends as Scinta has found a home after opting out of Plaza Showroom as “A Mob Story” loaded in.
Always able to land somewhere, Scinta is out now, calling out “Let the Good Times Roll” to open the afternoon shindig.
“Hey, everybody, let’s have some fun! You only live but once, and when you’re dead you’re done!” Righteous. Later we’ll be watching Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov beat the crud out of each other. For now, “The Showman” is punching ’em out at South Point.
Boyz II Mars
Lady Gaga has some company next door for her New Year’s Eve show at the Park Theater. Bruno Mars, with special guests and Mirage stars Boyz II Men, headlines T-Mobile Arena on Dec. 30 and Dec. 31.
That show was just announced. Gaga will have just launched her “Enigma” on Dec. 28; Mars has no dates on the books for Las Vegas other than T-Mobile. Both shows are listed at 8 p.m., so no countdown, but it is another embarrassment of riches on the Strip.
A Stirling return
On the topic of New Year’s Eve…
As promised, the new owners of Stirling Club at Turnberry Place have set a party for New Year’s Eve. Invites are out for the sneak-preview party for the spa-event-entertainment fortress at Turnberry Place. Club operator Debbie
Kelleher, president of DK Entertainment, is hooking in the entertainers for the night (expect Kelly Clinton-Holmes to return to her onetime performance venue) and promises an open bar and “very highend appetizers.” That’s the scene for the $150-per-person ticket; go to membership@thestirlingclublv.com for tickets and info. This is an extended preview of the space, which is scheduled to open next spring.
The Stirling Club was a prime, regal entertainment destination until then-owners
Jeffrey and Jackie Soffer of Turnberry Associates shut the place down in May 2012. Many of those who partied in the club’s heyday have since died or moved on, but those who remember Stirling Club at its peak know there was nowhere like it. A real Las Vegas hang.
We heart ‘Nasty’
I stopped in to see a bit of lighting setup for the new rock-and-dance show “Little Miss Nasty” at Hooters’ Night Owl Showroom on Wednesday afternoon. Singer/groover
Gina Katon heads up the four-woman dance team, and from everything I observed and learned, this show is not quite like anything in town. The soundtrack is super-aggressive, pulling from Marilyn Manson, Korn, the harder
edges of Led Zeppelin, Pantera and Rob Zombie. Katon also performs to her own Gina
and the Eastern Block altrock outfit out of L.A., though all the songs are tracked.
“Little Miss Nasty” has had success in L.A. and touring around the country. It’s not topless but has a distinctive adult tenor.
The show’s format is a swiftpaced, two-act set covering about 90 minutes. There is a brief intermission, too.
“The idea is to feel like you’re at a concert where you drop the lights down and you can feel some loud, kick-ass music,” says producer Marc
Jordan, an ex-record producer who has worked with the Cult and Slash, among other rock acts. “We’re going to play it lean and mean and not bite off more than we can chew.”
But we can’t rule out some biting, not from this nasty cast.
More from K.T.
Keith Thompson elaborated on the closing of “The Cocktail Cabaret” in a statement Friday, invoking the business downturn of Oct. 1 as one reason the pre-dinner, 6 p.m. show is shutting down Wednesday at Cleopatra’s Barge at Caesars Palace.
“I think it is a miracle that we have run as long as we have at Cleopatra’s Barge, especially in the uncertain ‘post-October One’ economic climate of the entertainment business in Las Vegas that has tourism projections down and casinos increasingly hesitant to take risks on smaller unproven entertainment options,” said Thompson.
Emerick remembered
Renowned Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick, who died Wednesday at age 72 in London, helped fine-tune several legendary albums, including “Revolver,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Abbey Road.”
Emerick also had a brief but fulfilling run on the Strip as producer of “Sgt. Pepper Live” at Las Vegas Hilton and Paris Theater several years ago. The production starred
Cheap Trick performing the album end to end and capping the show with a few of their own hits. The show ran at the Hilton in September 2009 and at Paris in the summer of 2010.
Emerick liked being in a Vegas show. On the final night of the production at Paris, I leaned into the sound booth and shouted at him, “Are you coming back?” and he said, “We want to! We want to! Absolutely!” We never saw him again, but there is a DVD of that show, and it was some kinda great.