Return to Beauty Bar, O’Sheas is OK with Imagine Dragons
The band’s name is Imagine Dragons, not Imagine Lounge Lizards. But before growing into rock giants, the Las Vegas rockers spent ample hours in the city’s more intimate venues.
“We’ve played a lot of empty shows,” frontman Dan Reynolds says of the days in the late-2000s when the band was still in its infancy. “We’ve played to nobody.”
Today the band seems to play for everybody, and will perform its first ticketed show at T-Mobile Arena on Friday night. Clearly, the days when the band played for only a handful of fans and friends at local bars such as Hennessey’s Tavern and Beauty Bar, both on Fremont Street in Downtown Las Vegas, are long gone.
They also played South Point Showroom and now-closed haunts including The Pub at Monte Carlo and Ovation at Green Valley Ranch.
Another former favorite venue: The open lounge at the old O’Sheas hotel-casino, where Imagine Dragons played a series of 45-minute sets and routinely wowed typically tipsy patrons through the evening.
Band members Reynolds, Ben McKee, Daniel Platzman and Wayne Sermon have often talked about doing a pop-up gig at one of their old spots, or possibly at the new O’Sheas tavern at Linq promenade.
“We did one pop-up show outside the Bellagio (in 2014) and that was great. We have talked a lot about O’Sheas, and we’ve really wanted to go there,” Reynolds said. “But now it’s all changed, since we’ve been there. We’re talking about that, or the Beauty Bar. We’re definitely going to. It’s just a matter of time.”
More rock stuff
The Rolling Stones are known for attention to detail in all business matters. For example: Mick Jagger has recorded an eight-minute instructional video for merchandise sales reps on the band’s world tours. The video tutorial shrewdly increases the band’s merchandise profits.
Jagger is similarly, personally invested in the new “Exhibitionism” attraction at Palazzo, which opened over the weekend. The exhibit is loaded with displays of the band’s stage attire, instruments, original contracts, handwritten lyrics and a 3-D concert video.
One “Exhibitionism” highlight is a replica of the London flat the band shared just after forming in 1962. The individual rooms are strewn with dirty laundry, unmade beds, ashtrays filled with cigarette butts and unwashed dishes.
In short, a bachelor’s paradise, and Jagger made sure every butt was in its proper right place.
“We did a live video with him and he was saying, ‘OK, move that bed over to the right and pull the coffee table closer to the wall,” says Adam Steck of SPI Entertainment, whose company is the Las Vegas producer of the attraction. “In fact, we had one that was so torn apart he said, ‘Wait, we weren’t that messy. Straighten it up a little!”
There are no “Dead Flowers,” though. That would come later.
Shunock on ice
The inevitable has occurred: Mark Shunock at center stage with the city’s NHL franchise.
One of the Vegas Golden Knights’ original Founding 50 season ticket holders and a former minor-league goalie in his hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Shunock will serve as the team’s the on-ice emcee. He’ll be the guy with the mic introducing promotions and amping up the crowd at games against such soon-to-be-loathed rivals as the L.A. Kings, San Jose Sharks and Arizona Coyotes.
Shunock has hockey in his DNA. His father, George, owned the The Sault Greyhounds (where he served as the aforementioned goalie). The elder Shunock bought the team from NHL icons Phil and Tony Esposito.
Shunock moved to Vegas in 2013 to open “Rock of Ages” at the Venetian, playing the role of mullet-donning club manager Lonny, and has since founded The Space. It took that move to VegasVille for him to realize his dream of making it to the NHL.
“Having had the opportunity to grow up watching my father run the Greyhounds, I’m honored to be a part of this new team and contribute however I can to their success,” Shunock says. “This is a big deal for me, because I know it will make my old man proud.”
Cirque on the hunt
Cirque du Soleil didn’t grow from a troupe of street performers into an international phenomenon by twiddling its thumbs. This company is in an acquisition frame of mind, and is scouring the Strip (and elsewhere) to add to its collection. The company’s majority owners, TPG Partners, snapped up Blue Man Group in July, and has reportedly intensified its interest in “Absinthe” at Caesars Palace.
I first noted the TPG’s interest in the show just after the company acquired BMG. I’m now confidently told that Cirque is beyond merely scouting the production — a proven artistic and business success — and managers there are seriously reviewing a takeover in the same fashion it acquired Blue Man Group.
Cirque and BMG are business and marketing partners in that merger, but Cirque doesn’t exert enact creative influence over the Blue Men.
A similar model would work well for “Absinthe,” which opened on the Strip in 2011 as something of a Cirque parody. Hopefully, if Cirque does make this deal, the inspired, if bumbling, Cesarean Ballet (a send-up of a Cirque-styled act from Reno) will make the cut.
John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.