Poolside Playing

LL Cool J and his fans can deal with whatever Mother Nature dishes out.

Last weekend, the charismatic rapper played to a fight-weekend crowd for the Hard Rock Hotel's "Friday Night Live" poolside concert series. Fans were encouraged to jump in and splash around, but the blustery weather put a chill on that option.

It was the other way around last July 14. Cool J did an outdoor show at Sunset Station on one of the hottest nights of the year, and the pool wasn't even part of the concert venue.

"Usually in the middle of July you'll get your highest (temperature) reading of the summer, and it was hot out there. But you know what? We still had people out there and had a great turnout," recalls Joe Santiago, vice president of entertainment for Station Casinos. "The heat wasn't keeping people away."

Still, Sunset is now the only one of Stations' three outdoor concert locations where patrons can't take a dip during the show. "It's refreshing when people can do that," Santiago says of outdoor concert setups at Green Valley Ranch and Red Rock Resort.

Wet or dry, outdoor concerts are proliferating all around the valley, making a distant memory of the days when tours packaged expressly for "the sheds" -- outdoor amphitheaters such as the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles -- would skip Las Vegas because of the summer heat.

The current trend all stems from Mandalay Beach, Mandalay Bay's wave-pool stage that launches its season Sunday with Foreigner. The 11-acre pool area opened in 1999, with the stage designed as a permanent fixture.

This summer, the Hard Rock waded in as the new contender for king of the beach concert. An 11-concert "Friday Night Live" series that kicked off with Jet on April 27 and continues today with The Donnas, the female rock quartet that had been around eight years before "Take It Off" took off in 2003.

The Hard Rock's indoor venue, The Joint, lives or dies entirely by the popularity of the act. But poolside shows are more about the overall experience, and the lineup is "as much about booking an act that's a cool fit for the pool," explains Paul Davis, the Hard Rock's vice president of entertainment. When it comes to reggae acts such as Steel Pulse (Aug. 10) or the comedic Dread Zeppelin (May 25), "the fact that it's at the pool is going to drive tickets" more than putting the same act indoors.

Don't bother with the swimsuit if you check out Chris Isaak, who kicks off the "Stars on the Lake" series today at the Lake of Las Vegas Resort's Montelago Village. The resort experimented with two configurations in its first two seasons, one where people could swim and one where they can't. None of the seven concerts scheduled so far will be in the beach configuration, but one or two with the swimming configuration might be added.

"This year we're doing most of the concerts in the Village so people can dine in the restaurants and they're not so isolated on the other side of the lake," says resort spokeswoman Sally Dewhurst.

Because of the dry-dock setting, the series takes a break after Three Dog Night on June 30. A couple of past artists were reluctant to perform in the heat, leaving fans uncomfortable and disgruntled.

It took time for the "Stars" series to find its niche as an upscale alternative to the beach concerts, targeting an older demographic on the balance. "At the beginning, it was very hard because nobody knew Lake of Las Vegas," Dewhurst recalls. "What was a floating stage? Did it move? It was a gamble."

After PBS televised an Adrea Bocelli concert in 2005, "everything turned around for us and we started having performers call us once they realized it wasn't a floating barge." Au contraire, the artists are shuffled from their hotel in a yacht, which doubles as the "backstage" dressing room.

Dewhurst notes the series doesn't revolve around the casino drop, but serves to promote the development to potential residents. The concerts have been "extremely beneficial for that. They sort of put us on the entertainment map," she says.

In another corner of the valley, the Suncoast tests the waters with a May 27 concert by The Original Family Stone. This one will be poolside, with no actual swimming. "We're going to try three or four of them just to see how it goes," says Terry Jenkins of Boyd Gaming. "We're going to try different (musical) formats for each one of them."

The Silverton continues its poolside concerts today and Saturday with Unauthorized Ozzy, the same weekend that the real Ozzy Osbourne is in town.

Ticketed concerts go hand in hand with "parties" that usually are promoted in tandem with radio stations and include local live bands or tribute acts. The Orleans drew 700 people to the first of its smooth jazz events poolside on Friday nights. Sunset station launches a Friday night beach party series on May 25.

Municipal entities also turn into concert promoters with outdoor shows at the Clark County Government Center and the Henderson Pavilion.

The Hard Rock's Davis believes the more the merrier. "We're all going after different things here," he says. "You're not seeing as much overlap as you see with other venues in town."