The artist had but one request, and it was so simple: Paint the room black.
As in, blacker than the deepest recesses of a mineshaft. Blacker than the darkest night. So black that if you were to put your hand in front of your face and still make out its murky form, it would not be black enough.
"So, we made it black," says Mandy Christine, Station Casino's corporate entertainment manager. "We dry-walled it black. Oh, it was black, definitely."
It was a strange night at Red Rock, or in this case, Black Rock.
"Charlie," as shown in Judy Alberti's office at Red Rock Resort.
The name of the artist is withheld to protect the paranoid, or maybe Gothic, but Christine is used to such curious requests as part of artists' rider submissions. One act requested fruit pairings for specific rooms: Two oranges in this suite, two apples in another, a banana duet in yet a third.
"I couldn't figure that one out," she says from her office at Red Rock Resort's corporate headquarters. "I still can't."
There was also the time a Kanye West-headlined show two years ago led to an all-time high room request: More than 100 rooms, held for artists, entourages and touring crews.
"But that was understandable," Christine says. "Those rooms were for four acts, not just for Kanye West.
Christine is busy prepping for Friday night's show at the 4,000-seat outdoor Sandbar venue by comparatively low-maintenance Train. Almost all seats have been sold or accounted for, aside from a few dozen standing general-admission tickets.
Train is a relief to work with, Christine says, as the band hasn't requested anything more involved than the standard finger food and deli sandwiches. It'll all be sliced appropriately, so no Nigel Tufnel moments of trying to fold cuts of ham to fit tiny bread slices.
On Thursday, Christine participated in an "ops" meeting, where she reviewed a two-page to-do list in advance of the concert. The list is a study in minutiae, but all of it necessary. Under "Internal Maintenance" is the directive, "sweep end of show." Under "Banquets/Catering" is the duty, "provide dressed bus tubs for beverage drop at entrance line."
This particular meeting flew by, because Christine fell terribly but temporarily ill after what seems to have been a bout with food poisoning from the Red Rock employee dining room. She spent a couple of ours at Urgent Care before returning, and the word is the reason for her illness was an adverse reaction to what authorities have termed, "bad hot sauce."
Christine has been with Stations for six and a half years. Prior to that she was an executive assistant at the Aladdin just as it was being taken over by Planet Hollywood, occupying a post that had about as much job security as a telegraph operator. She's planned for staging the Train show while juggling Don Henley's performance at Red Rock last weekend and traveling to Nashville along with fellow Station Casinos entertainment department execs Judy Alberti and Monica Reeves to accept their Academy of Country Music Award for Green Valley Ranch in Henderson being named 2009 Casino of the Year.
The execs have since named the award "Charlie," a pretty fair country-music name, and plan to tour it around famous Las Vegas-area landmarks: the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign, Hoover Dam and maybe even The Green Door, and I am kidding about that last one.
I'll be following Christine around today, beginning in the afternoon, for a fly-on-the-wall story about how this type of show is assembled. Until then, we fade to black...
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats.
Previous Discussion: