This was part of a big roundup on Vegas researched with the whole VIA Magazine staff – great trip.
March/April 2005 – VIA Magazine – check into below for updates
Downtown strip of Vegas at night
How To Bring Down The House
By Camille Cusumano
2 A.M. I could have sung “New York, New York” and worked the crowd into a frenzy with my comedic off-key rendition of this Sinatra standard, then snapped them out of it with a little ring-a-ding-ding. I had high hopes. I would show this throng, jaded by Las Vegas’s many lounge acts and stage spectacles, that I was one who had Frank’s phrasing down.
How often had his voice and mine fox-trotted a smooth slow-quick-quick over the years, with the nimble backsliding, through his decades at Capitol and Reprise? Granted, his was on vinyl, mine was in the shower. So it goes.
I chose “Come Fly With Me” for my karaoke debut at the local watering hole, Ellis Island Casino & Brewery. The clientele was my kind—people with more pride than cash in reserve. Esteemed DJ Timmy Welsh called my number and I hopped up on the 3-inch-high platform, eager to deliver some of the jazziest pentameter in pop music. “In llama land there’s a one-man band . . .” and so on
The result? Let’s just say luck was blowin’ on some other guy’s pipes. All my years of rehearsing did nothing for my timing: The words streamed across the monitor before I was ready for them, and the synthesized orchestra got ahead of me. Still, the audience, a generous bunch (many of them aspiring and off-duty performers), applauded. In the end, my act was worth the gamble—I did it my way.
Ellis Island Casino & Brewery Karaoke every night. 4178 Koval Lane, (702) 733-8901, www.ellisislandcasino.com.
Gold Coast Hotel and Casino Karaoke Wednesday nights. (800) 331-5334, www.goldcoastcasino.com.
Barbary Coast Hotel and Casino Karaoke Monday nights. (888) 227-2279, www.barbarycoastcasino.com.