In Bally's long-running revue Jubilee!, the band plays on as the Titanic, flanked by topless showgirls, sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
Imagine for a second that that band was Radiohead.
Fans of the illustrious British quintet did just that the weekend of the 11th, when Ticketmaster posted a mysterious on-sale notice for a March 1 Radiohead concert in Bally's Jubilee! Theater.
Odd as that scenario seems, it's even stranger when you consider that Radiohead has performed just once in the U.S. since 2003 (May 2004 at Coachella) and hasn't played Las Vegas since opening for Tears for Fears at the Aladdin in October 1993.
Toss in the fact that the Bally's showroom has hosted Jubilee! twice nightly except on Fridays—and nothing else—for 25 years, and the promised event sounds downright absurd.
Then again, Vegas has been known to host the occasional unconventional music bill: Beck at the Tropicana, Wu-Tang Clan member GZA at the Blue Note jazz club and the Beastie Boys 2$Bill show at the aged Huntridge Theatre, for example. So it's hardly shocking that Radiohead's rabid fan base began snatching up tickets on the off chance it panned out.
"Someone wrote about it on the [Radiohead] message board [ateaseweb.com], and it seemed like it might've been some kind of sure thing for us," Jean Philippe Pulles of Orange County, California, explains. "The idea of a Radiohead concert in a Las Vegas hotel seemed feasible. We were really excited about getting to see Radiohead three months earlier than planned [at Bonarroo in June]."
It wasn't long before Radiohead fans began inundating Bally's box office with inquiries. "We've had numerous calls from people, and we informed them we had no information on that performance here," Assistant Box Office Manager Tina Millan says.
Alas, it was not to be. Within hours, the listing had been updated to reflect—you guessed it—simply another round of Jubilee!. Radiohead's official merchandise site (wasteuk.com) soon posted this announcement:
"It has come to w.a.s.t.e's attention that tickets for a bogus show on the 1st March 2006 in Las Vegas have been sold over the weekend by Ticketmaster. There is no such show, and we are currently investigating why this has happened. We would recommend that those who have purchased these tickets go back to the seller to organise refunds."
So what exactly did happen? Bored Ticketmaster techie playing a joke? Coldplay fan hacking in to wreak havoc with the Radiohead crowd? Nothing quite so sexy, according to the ticket giant.
"It was a unique programming error which only affected a handful of consumers, all of which are in the process of receiving full refunds," Ticketmaster spokeswoman Bonnie Poindexter says.
Poindexter added that Internet reports that the promised Radiohead at Bally's concert sold out within minutes are "completely incorrect," explaining that the sale was shut down once Ticketmaster's staff discovered the programming miscue.
Rex Vanstee, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, begs to defer. "Even after calling Ticketmaster three times and being on the phone with them for at least an hour each call ... they talked to their managers and their managers' managers ... same answer every time: ‘Yes, Radiohead are playing at Bally's' " Vanstee said. "I then called them as soon as I found out the show was bogus, and at first they tried to tell me they would not refund my ticket because the show was sold out."
Phoenix resident Paulette Kienitz claims she also had difficulty obtaining a refund from Ticketmaster, before finally being promised a "one-time customer service exception." "This seems like a poor policy, and I don't understand how a company would generate any goodwill from the public when refusing to refund for any reason is the rule, even when they were the ones making the error."
Poindexter insists refunds are available, but that ticket agents were unaware of the mix-up when ticket holders first began requesting them.
Either way, Vanstee says he's out unrefundable money spent on airfare and a Las Vegas hotel room thanks to Ticketmaster's "unique programming error." As he puts it, "Hail to the Thief, I guess."