[Dixielandjazz] Music in Las Vegas shifts.

[Stephen G Barbone]

I remember when live music was all the rage in Las Vegas. Lots of jazz musicians went there almost 60 years ago because they could work three 4 hour gigs a day and make $100,000 a year, a fortune in the 1960s'. 

BTW: The reference in the article to the $ billion investment in dance music by concert promoter Sillerman echoes his view that: 

 “There’s a wave of interest in attending concerts that have less to do with the specific music and more to do with the experience attached to the music,” he said, referring to the immersive appeal of many large-scale dance events. “Our thought is that the experience of attending an individual event can be perpetuated and made better by connecting the people, not just when they’re consuming the entertainment but when they’re away from it.”  

Now where have we heard that before? <grin>

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband



June 11, 2012 - NY TIMES - By Ben Sisario

The New Stars in Vegas: D.J.’s and Dance Music  EXCERPTED for brevity.


LAS VEGAS — Steve Wynn, the 70-year-old casino magnate, stood before an invitation-only crowd at the opening of a Japanese restaurant here last week, promising good food and even better music.
“Tonight we’re very lucky,” Mr. Wynn said, flashing his trademark grin. “Afrojack is here.”

He started to explain — “for those of you who are not exactly with it, like me, Afrojack is the coolest D.J.”— but it was unnecessary, as a phalanx of models in little black dresses rushed to a corner booth to watch the music man at work. Only the arrival of Paris Hilton drew them away.

After years on the margins, the blaring, pulsating sound of electronic dance music is ascendant, and Las Vegas has embraced the trend the only way it knows how: by going all in. Casino nightclubs that a few years ago were devoted to hip-hop now compete to sign dance acts to million-dollar contracts, and they market these once invisible musicians as superstars. Along the Las Vegas Strip, billboards advertise top D.J.’s like Tiësto and Steve Aoki, alongside David Copperfield and Cirque du Soleil. . .

Over the weekend the city was also host to the Electric Daisy Carnival, the largest festival of electronic dance music, or E.D.M., in North America. From Friday to Sunday, more than 300,000 fans — recognizable by their butterfly wings and Day-Glo tutus — descended on the Las Vegas Motor Speedway to see Avicii, Calvin Harris, David Guetta and dozens of other acts.

At the same time, artists and music executives gathered for the related EDMbiz conference here last week, debating whether the city can be a test case for the wider appeal of a genre that in the past has stumbled on its way from subculture to mainstream. They also questioned the long-term commitment of a city known for chasing the winds of pop culture.

“Vegas is a reflection of what’s hot, not the driver of what’s to come,” said Marc Geiger, the head of music at the agency WME.

As musicians and promoters tell it, D.J.’s have always been part of Las Vegas night life, but only in the past few years have they earned headline billing and been allowed to play anything more adventurous than Top 40 hits and crowd-pleasing mash-ups.

“I used to consider Las Vegas the most musically ignorant place in the world,” said Mr. Aoki, who spins monthly at Wynn’s Surrender and XS clubs, and is known for antics like leaping onto an inflatable raft in the crowd. “Now it’s completely flipped,” he continued. “People coming into the clubs, they have been educated. They’re aware of the music of that D.J. before they step into the club.”

A turning point came last year when XS celebrated its second anniversary with Deadmau5, who performs in vaudevillian headgear. Held on a Monday night, which usually draws about 3,000 people, the event had 7,500 attendees — “Saturday night numbers,” said Jesse Waits, the club’s managing partner. Mr. Wynn, intrigued, invited Deadmau5 to his villa, and the two became friends. . . .

The city’s huge “superclubs,” most of them attached to casinos along the Strip, are now banking almost entirely on dance music.

According to Nightclub & Bar, a trade publication, 8 of the Top 10 nightclubs in the country are in Las Vegas, with Marquee leading the list, at $70 million to $80 million in annual revenue. That 60,000-square-foot club put in a $3 million sound system and added a D.J. booth that becomes a “drawbridge” over the crowd, said Jason Strauss, a partner in the TAO Group, which manages the club.

Wynn’s four nightclubs have signed 34 D.J.’s to exclusive residencies, and the hotel’s deal with Ultra will involve online video from the clubs, albums released under the name Ultra/Wynn, and even a hotel TV channel. Throughout its casino, Wynn promotes Ultra acts on stanchions and sells Deadmau5 merchandise like T-shirts, CDs and “mau5 ears.”

Last week dance music seemed to be everywhere in Las Vegas. With Electric Daisy Carnival in town, the nightclubs had packed lineups both late at night and at their daytime pool parties, which allow promoters to keep shows going almost any time of day. . .

For the music industry, the value of the Vegas E.D.M. explosion is unclear. It has introduced a valuable promotional outlet, and the casinos’ marketing dollars have helped turn faceless D.J.’s into stars who are mobbed for photos at the airport and in hotel lobbies.

“While it’s harder to pinpoint a record breaking out of Las Vegas, what you can count on is an incredible amount of audience exposure there,” said Craig Kallman, the chairman of Atlantic Records. “It’s become a very key promotional destination for new music.”

At the EDMbiz conference, executives discussed the effect of the changes, including escalating artist fees, the dangers of hype and corporate involvement in a historically independent enterprise, like the media executive Robert F. X. Sillerman’s recent announcement of a plan to spend $1 billion on dance companies. . . .

There is also an inherent danger in one of Las Vegas’s defining characteristics: its fickleness and adaptability to trends. As some executives at EDMbiz noted, if Las Vegas is dance music’s strongest  promotional platform, what happens to the genre if the tourist crowds start to crave something else? . . . . . that is always a possibility, but for now the dance beat rules.
“If the crowd wanted country music, country music I would give them,” said Sean Christie. “But the crowd wants this music now, so this is what we give them.”