EYE OF THE BEHOLDER As Las Vegas readies for Kanye West and the Foo Fighters to touch down at Life Is Beautiful, some locals are working on their own alternatives to the mainstream music-leaning, celebrity chef-focused festival. If punk, grassroots entertainment is more in your wheelhouse, you’re in luck.
Returning this year is garage rock/punk fest Life Is Sh*t at Dive Bar. Founder/local musician Jack Evan Johnson and Same Sex Mary member Tsvetelina Stefanova curated the lineup, which includes Burger Records bands (White Mystery, Lenguas Largas), a handful of locals (including SSM, Johnson’s own Dangerboner, Illicitor, Bog-trotter’s Union and Headwinds), a “sh*tty car show” and a charity raffle benefitting local nonprofit Girls Rock Vegas.
“We just wanted to do a for-locals, by-locals festival with a sense of community that was real and not manufactured,” Johnson says. As for the name, “Life is sh*t for a lot of people,” he says. “Life is hard, especially coming out of the recession. And sometimes you gotta embrace that.”
There’s also Vegas Is Beautiful, the local-acts-only Hard Hat Lounge fest created “after viewing the Life Is Beautiful lineup and being totally disappointed,” the poster explains. The lineup includes The Quitters, The Solid Suns and more.
Rounding out the alternative programming is Later! Louder!, a Fremont East party featuring Backstage Bar & Billiards performances by Everclear, Warren G., Franky Perez & The Dirty, The People’s Whiskey, The Dirty Hooks and Pet Tigers. All proceeds benefit nonprofit Keep Memory Alive.
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CHEYENNE, REBRANDED After more than a decade as Vegas’ go-to metal dive bar, the Cheyenne Saloon is under new ownership—and has a new name: Adrenaline Sports Bar & Grill. “Back in the [Cheyenne Saloon’s] heyday, you could go in there at 8 o’clock on a Tuesday and there would be 100 people in there. It was the place to be,” says new owner and Double Barrel Diplomacy member Ric Eubank. “As time goes by and things happen, it starts to be the place you don’t want to be.”
Eubank has big plans for turning around the dive bar—the installation of a 44,000-watt Carvin PA, a DMX light board, new flooring and new carpet. “We’re not just putting a fresh coat of paint on it and calling it a different name.”
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FULL MOON FEVER Strap on your guitar—the Bunkhouse is throwing a Tom Petty tribute show on November 8. So far, the lineup includes local musicians like Ryan Pardey (Halloween Town), Eric Koch (Most Thieves) and Ronald Corso, with all proceeds going to the Shade Tree. Interested in participating? Email [email protected] with “Tom Petty Tribute” in the subject line.
Vegas Is Beautiful October 24 & 25, 8 p.m., free, Hard Hat Lounge. Later! Louder! October 24-26, 11 p.m., $20 per night, Backstage Bar & Billiards. Life Is Sh*t October 25, 4 p.m., free, Dive Bar.
