Las Vegas NV: Widespread Panic 10/23/10 at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel
Southerners Undertake Concert Knowing Songs
The Hard Rock Cafe started in London in 1971 and its money-making concept is proven -- there’s less overhead in a $24 t-shirt than a $24 burger or $24 cocktails -- but serving all of it up in a throbbing atmosphere too loud to for the customer to complain makes it work. From Bahrain to Belo Horizonte, Hard Rock Cafe is encasing music memorabilia and letting the walls do the talking. We risked bad wiring, cigarettes ground into carpet, and an ever-present lifesize photo of KISS’s Gene Simmons in multi-groupie grope (did he provide towels for the girls to wipe off their faces?) to visit The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas Saturday night to take-in the star-studded Widespread Panic show. The Joint and Panic delivered.
Despite having its iconic neon Stratocaster clipped by John Malkovich in a C-123 transport plane, the Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel continues to consume dirt east of the Las Vegas Strip. The HRH has added three towers to its original convex structure, tying all of it into a throbbing commercial maze of smoky multi-cultutalism -- offering fruity pebbles tapas and mini-bars you can gamble with along with the expected hemlines and nasa-engineered bustiers. The Joint - the Hard Rock’s 5000 person showcase venue fit the bill - a steel cage venue designed to achieve 120 decibels, and to use sloping concrete and spilled beer to create a perfect customer experience ($24 cocktails can be easily replaced for $24 and the foam ear-plugs are also $24.) Despite Carlos Santana’s upcoming in-residence shows, the Joint’s steel cage cavern is perhaps most well utilized by a hard rock hard rock hard rock act with a solid, fat bottom and stamina like Widespread Panic.
6000footdrop.com has taken-in WSP shows in three decades but only after seeing three shows in a week (and the crackerjack acoustics of the Joint) did we realize that in fact WSP is not a band aspiring to be like The Grateful Dead or Phish -- WSP is aspiring to be a hard rock hard rock hard rock act. And succeeding. The relentless low end of the band and pounding of every song make clear there will never be a WSP children’s album. WSP is for listeners who love long, well constructed setlists and segues and guest artists -- plus, at The Joint, the sound is configured so loud it makes you forget about WSP’s trademark muddling. Hard to say the music sounds muddled when no one can hear you. WSP’s lead singer John Bell is talented no doubt, but penned-in by WSP’s amazingly broad narrow versatility. But if you submit to the hard rock hard rock hard rock of it, WSP makes more sense.
Saturday’s highlights included the Low Spark of High Heeled Boys/Arlene sandwich where Steve Winwood might bring you to tears about “the man in the suit has just bought a new car on the profit he’s made on your dreams...” but WSP can take a soulful superstar like Karl Denson and immerse him in the hard rock hard rock hard rock and make it all make sense -- at 110dB with 5000 souls shining the concrete with $24 beers.
Stop Breaking Down was a wonderful sonic two-step and the “we turn it to 11” Tall Boy to close the second set had the older-than-phish crowd showing them about hard rock hard rock hard rock. Walk-ins included Wally Ingraham again on rythmic amplified skin pounding, Mule’s Warren Haynes on the encore set including Jesus Just Left Chicago, and Carrot Top trying hard but rendered silent on percussion on Climb to Safety.
Jo Jo Hermann was the night’s MVP on super-amplified keys, but Bell and Schools are truly the stars of the WSP show. WSP sounds so much better when you realize they are trying (and succeeding) to sound just like they do sound! This band is not trying to be The Grateful Dead or Phish -- because they’re hard rock hard rock hard rock.
Although 6000footdrop.com prefers, for example, the Montreal Jazz Festival to Ozzypalloza, or Phish to Pearl Jam, we have a newfound appreciation for the well constructed, well executed, muffled-sound-sonically-drownable hard rock hard rock hard rock capabilities of Widespread Panic. And these 5000 people (including Diane von freaking Fursternberg!) were well aware that WSP would eclipse the entertainment value of a $24 hand of blackjack -- and provide a much different style of hangover.
WSP is too hard-working to stay in-residence at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, despite how apropos it would be. But lets all say a little prayer that an angel will restore Carlos’ dignity before he’s been there too long...
See you at Turtlehead Peak!