The Kats Report Podcast
KWTD — Jerry Lopez
On this week’s show, John Katsilometes talks with Jerry Lopez, founder of the great Las Vegas band Santa Fe & The Fat City Horns. On Monday, January 11, the band is making its second appearance at Cabaret Jazz at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts— and hopes to play the venue more often in 2016.
The Kats Report Bureau at this writing is raking through email and snail mail hoping to find an invitation to Mike Tyson’s housewarming party. Should be a real barn-burner, through referring to his new 8,149-square-foot, $2.5 million home in Seven Hills a “barn” might be slightly off-target.
More from Tyson, and elsewhere, in this cruise around the neighborhood:
• Always expanding his business horizons, Tyson is about to launch a podcast with co-host Peter Rosenberg of the Hot 97 Morning Show in New York. One of the early guests, already recorded, is Lennox Lewis.
The show marks the first face-to-face meeting between the two since Lewis knocked out Tyson in Memphis in 2003. They have never aired out what happened at the news conference leading up to the fight, which was … a fight.
The show should launch within the month, and other guests include UFC founder Dana White and hip-hop stars Russell Simmons and Las Vegas’ Flavor Flav. Any podcast can only be enlightened by the arrival of Flavor Flav.
• On the topic of those who have performed under bright lights, Nevada Ballet Theatre has secured Human Nature as the headlining entertainment for Saturday’s Black and White Gala at Wynn Las Vegas honoring Woman of the Year Olivia Newton-John.
Marie Osmond, herself an NBT Woman of the Year, will be on hand to pay tribute to Newton-John from the stage. Additional entertainment will be furnished by David Perrico’s band and the NBT Future Dance Scholars troupe.
Also scheduled: the presentation of the Nancy Award for philanthropic support to Wendy Plaster. Chet Buchanan, who has recovered from the Seahawks’ NFC Divisional Playoff Game loss at Carolina, is once more the night’s able host.
• If it is possible to fly under the radar while traveling the globe while concurrently filling a Las Vegas entertainment venue, Frankie Moreno has achieved that.
He’s back tonight for another packed house for his “Under the Influence” series at Cabaret Jazz in the Smith Center. His next announced dates are Feb. 1 and 16 and March 1 and 8.
Smith Center President Myron Martin and Moreno have hinted none-too-obliquely from the stage that Moreno is heading for a fancy Strip residency, and soon. Believe it.
The idea is that Moreno will be permitted to continue monthly performances at Cabaret Jazz no matter his schedule on the Strip. But I understand the new show will be dazzling and performed in the largest venue for Moreno in Las Vegas.
• Terry Fator’s handiwork helped lead “Puppet Up! Uncensored” to the Venetian. The first person interested in putting “Puppet Up!” onstage in Las Vegas was indeed Fator, the prolific puppet practitioner (awesomely aggressive alliteration) who headlines at the Mirage.
In 2011, Fator approached then-hotel President Felix Rappaport with the idea of Fator presenting a show titled “Stuffed and Unstrung,” which was being staged in L.A. by Brian Henson and Henson Alternative Division of the Jim Henson Co.
Rappaport then called SPI Entertainment founder Adam Steck about producing the show at Terry Fator Theater. The group watched a performance at Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City, Calif., and loved it. But the deal halted when the Fator Theater was deemed too large, at 1,200 seats, for the show to turn a profit.
With Rappaport’s blessing, Steck then pursued Base Entertainment as a partner and sought a different room on the Strip, landing at the 740-seat Sands Showroom. He also forged a name change, with “Puppet Up!” catchier than “Stuffed and Unstrung,” which sounds a bit like the name of a class in taxidermy.
Also, the relationship between production companies Base Entertainment and SPI Entertainment in staging “Puppet Up!” is this: Base is the producer. SPI is co-producer. Base is the primary investor in “Puppet Up!” is the distinction.
• It’s an odd sighting, but less so if you know the business partnership: Ex-NBA star Shaquille O’Neal was spotted wearing a hardhat and walking through the under-construction Beer Park by Budweiser on the Strip last week.
O’Neal is an investment partner and celebrity spokesman in the sports bar and restaurant, which is being built on a 10,000-square-foot deck above the Strip at Paris Las Vegas.
The exact location is just above Hexx Kitchen, Bar and Chocolate and is due to open by the end of January. Expect to see a lot of O’Neal at Paris, where his presence is always (wait for it) an Eiffel (boom!).
• Two 20th anniversaries of note, just a few weeks apart, are approaching on (or, about on) the Strip. The Stratosphere opened April 30, 1996. The Sands closed on June 30, same year. That hotel’s implosion was the night of Nov. 26. For all the talk of how wonderful the Sands was in its heyday, it was really ready to be taken down by the summer of ’96.
A few friends and I visited the place a month before it was closed, and the casino was in such disrepair that one of us remarked, “This is it? It might fall over on its own.” But I do remember longtime Las Vegas residents crying the night it was dropped, a sure sign that times were changing on the Strip.
The Strat and Sands were further connected by the final craps game ever played at the Sands. The last dice roll was by Bob Stupak, founder of the Stratosphere (and before that, Las Vegas World on the Strat property) at 6 p.m. the day the Sands closed.
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.
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