Seven years ago this weekend, the Thomas & Mack Center temporarily transformed from a lifeless sports arena into a fantastic spectacle, a scene ripped from a traveling circus or open-air marketplace.
Costumed revelers twirled in the foyer. Bright glow sticks sailed across the skyline. Thick clouds of pungent smoke filled the air.
Outside the venue, gypsies peddled their wares: tie-dyed clothing, blown-glass pipes, veggie burritos and bottles of beer.
And back inside, the band onstage unleashed a most unique set, one comprised entirely of another group's classic album, the Velvet Underground's Loaded.
The exact dates, as any Phish fan will happily rattle off, were October 30 and 31, 1998, two of the most storied concerts in the long history of that leading act on the jam-band scene.
For T&M directors past and present Pat Christensen and Daren Libonati, the occasion provided the spark for a far grander musical concept, the festival known as Vegoose, which hits Las Vegas for the first time this weekend.
As Phish relaxed backstage after its Halloween '98 show—the second of two straight sellouts, each drawing more than 18,000 fans to the venue, along with hundreds more stuck outside without tickets—Christensen and Libonati presented the Vermont quartet with a plaque commemorating the event, and hinting at the future.
"On the back of the plaque, we engraved a very neat piece of artwork that said, 'Let's do Phish on grass at Sam Boyd Stadium,'" Libonati said. "And it had a picture of Sam Boyd Stadium, completely sold out."
Although Phish returned to the Thomas & Mack for shows in 2003 and 2004, the foursome never turned the stadium dream into a reality before disbanding last summer.
But Christensen and Libonati didn't gave up on their vision of a Sam Boyd-hosted jamfest. Why would they? The pair had made the concept work before, when they helped bring the Grateful Dead to the stadium—then known as the Silver Bowl—for 14 shows from 1991 through 1995, concerts that dramatically altered the musical landscape of Southern Nevada.
"If you look back at the year we did the Dead, it was a period of time in which Vegas was in transition in terms of music," said Christensen, now the president of Las Vegas Events, a nonprofit group funded by the area's hotel-room tax and charged with bringing events to town to boost occupancy. "The Dead showed Vegas that people will come to town to see music."
With the Dead and Phish in mind, Christensen and Libonati traveled to a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee, during the summer of 2003.
There they witnessed the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, one of the nation's premier music events. When the two returned home a few days later, they brought back a more concrete plan and a burgeoning partnership with Bonnaroo co-promoters Superfly Productions and AC Entertainment.
The Las Vegas festival concept centered on Halloween weekend, traditionally important dates on the tour schedules of jam bands—from the Grateful Dead and Phish to successors such as Widespread Panic and the String Cheese Incident—and their fans.
"Those bands do really big business on Halloween," Rick Farman, a producer for Superfly, said. "A lot of those artists create their own destination events that weekend, and the fan base that we work with is usually interested in traveling for Halloween."
That particularly appealed to Christensen, since Halloween weekend ranks just 25th out of 52 in terms of Las Vegas hotel occupancy.
"The other three weekends in October are in our top 10 in occupancy, but Halloween drops way below that," Christensen said. "It might have to do with people staying home if they have kids who want to trick-or-treat, or maybe they don't want to leave their homes empty on Halloween. But it's been a trend here forever."
For Bonnaroo's organizers, a Las Vegas event represented a chance to attract a new demographic, one not enthused about sleeping in tents.
"A lot of people were coming to us saying, 'Boy, I'd really love to go to Bonnaroo ... I love the lineup of music that you guys have ... but I don't really want to camp. I don't want to be out in a field for four days,'" Farman said. "So this way we're targeting an audience that's a little bit older compared to what we have at Bonnaroo, more of the young-professional set. And they're really excited to go to Vegas. It's an added attraction, to go to a music festival and experience everything that Vegas has to offer."
Originally projected for 2004, the Vegas festival got pushed back a year when logistics took a little longer than expected. Then all that was left was the search for a name.
"It's just one of those things that popped into someone's head, I don't remember whose," Ashley Capps, president of AC Entertainment, said. "It just came out in one of our brainstorming sessions. It got out there initially sort of as a joke, but we could never quite dislodge it. So there it is. Vegoose."
After years of preparation and months of rampant Internet speculation about participating bands, Vegoose finally kicks off at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, when Steel Train will become the first of 35 acts to hit the stage. Widespread Panic is scheduled to close it down Sunday at 10:30 p.m., after a blowout three-hour performance.
Actually, it's more accurate to say Vegoose begins on Friday night and finishes late on Monday. Along with two 11-hour festival days chock-full of music at Sam Boyd Stadium and the adjacent Star Nursery Fields, the extended Halloween weekend features 11 "Vegoose at Night" concerts, promoted and presented by the same folks. Those shows will take place at the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel, the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay, the Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts, the Orleans Arena and the Thomas & Mack.
"It wasn't about being a hog, and just having one event, for us," Libonati said. "It was about looking at the big picture and utilizing all the resources of Las Vegas. We knew that the whole city could benefit from it if we could expand the stadium concept to incorporate all of Las Vegas and its entertainment venues."
The festival itself will be spread over four stages, one inside Sam Boyd, two on the northeast and northwest corners of the Star Nursery Fields and a one inside a tent near the center of the fields.
Though Sam Boyd's primary Double Down stage will feature many of the nation's top jam bands—Dave Matthews & Friends, Phil Lesh & Friends, ex-Phish frontman Trey Anastasio, the String Cheese Incident, Widespread Panic and moe.—Vegoose's lineup extends far beyond the improvisation and extended guitar solos of that scene.
Critically acclaimed indie acts such as Beck, the Arcade Fire, the Shins, Sleater-Kinney, Spoon and the Decemberists will perform on the Snake Eyes and Jokers Wild stages, as will veteran New Orleans funk outfit the Meters, comedic rock favorites Ween and genre-bending trio Primus, among others.
Additionally, the Clubs Tent will play host to top underground hip-hop talent—including Talib Kweli, Blackalicious, Atmosphere, Lyrics Born and the reunited Digable Planets—along with break-dancers, graffiti artists and other attractions.
"Bonnaroo's got the reputation of being a jam-band festival, and we certainly reach out to that audience because they appreciate live music and support their bands," Capps said. "But we don't consider either Bonnaroo or Vegoose to be jam-band festivals. They're music festivals. And we've discovered that music fans don't fit neatly into one box as far as their tastes and interests are concerned. They can be fans of Widespread Panic or Trey and also have great appreciation for Beck or the Arcade Fire."
Las Vegan Weston White certainly fits that description. A jam-band fan from way back, White is looking to score tickets for some of the weekend's sold-out after-shows: Anastasio at the Aladdin on Friday, Sound Tribe Sector 9 at the House of Blues on Saturday and Ween on Monday. But he's just as excited to check out the Decemberists, Atmosphere and Primus at the festival grounds.
"It's almost overwhelming," White said. "I'd like to see it all."
White has friends driving in from Portland, Salt Lake City and Southern California, and his buddies know people coming to Vegas from as far away as upstate New York to take in an event that could someday join Coachella, Bumbershoot, South by Southwest and Bonnaroo among the nation's elite music festivals.
"It seems like people are taking it pretty seriously," White said. "A lot of the bands have their own followings, and getting them all together in one city at one given time ... people are wanting to be a part of that whole experience and see as much music as they possibly can."
In addition to their musical offerings, the Vegoose grounds will feature plenty of other activities, from an impersonator café to a cabaret tent to an on-site (mock) wedding chapel. The site will also play host to a costume contest, as well as a short performance by the Blue Man Group on the Double Down Stage prior to Saturday night's Dave Matthews & Friends' set.
Ticket-holders can also partake of the Vegoose Film Series at the Palms, with Dazed and Confused, School of Rock and Almost Famous among the movies being screened.
By all accounts, Vegoose appears headed for success. Sales of two-day festival passes—priced at $128.50 plus $14.25 in service fees—already number around 35,000, with capacity pegged at 50,000 per day.
California easily ranks as the top Vegoose ticket market, followed by Nevada, Colorado, Arizona and New York.
Individual day tickets went on sale to Nevada residents this week at the Thomas & Mack box office, and might be available at the festival site if two-day passes do not sell out in advance.
"We're bringing people out to Sam Boyd during the day, then pushing them into different venues at night," Farman said. "And most of those people are obviously going to be staying in hotels on the Strip at night, so I think we're gonna have a nice little impact on the economy."
In short, it looks like Vegoose could be a part of the Vegas musical landscape for some time to come.
"It's certainly our intention to make this an annual event," Capps said. "We're still focused on this year, obviously, but I think at this point we're feeling very well-positioned for moving forward with year two."