With all this wackiness, the show has to be called ‘Vintage Vegas’

Wednesday, April 6, 2011 | 3:44 p.m.

Chris Phillips is talking about his personal life on live radio. He is aware that the show is not being taped, as everyone has already talked of the unique tension that is a live, unfiltered, unedited radio broadcast.

Phillips is better known as Zowie Bowie and has performed in a variety of music stylings in Vegas lounges and showrooms since moving to town to open Red Rock Resort’s Rocks Lounge in 2006. Incessantly tanned, his hair a field of blond spikes and wearing all variety of wardrobe accessories, Phillips arrived amid great splendor with his then-fiancee (or was she just his girlfriend? It was always so unclear) Marley Taylor, she of the gleaming smile, curvaceous figure and robust dance moves.

The two eventually split amicably, or not, a couple of years ago, but are now reuniting for another whirl with “Vintage Vegas” that debuted at the Monte Carlo in September 2009 but cratered when Phillips and Taylor broke up.

To take off with another man.

Who happened to be the show’s music director.

So Phillips is talking of all this on “Kats With the Dish,” the radio show I co-host with Tricia McCrone on Fridays at 6 p.m. on KUNV 91.5-FM. As it turns out, Phillips has been left to participate in this show by himself, because Taylor was a last-minute drop from the program so she could attend a surprise birthday party for her brother.

As McCrone so enthusiastically noted, “I was surprised that she wasn’t going to be here!”

The show aired on April Fools Day, which might be fun to note at this point. Phillips is winding through his effectively drama-filled personal and performing life with Taylor, and it is suggested that he was able to come out of that period in fine repair. He’d taken up with a beautiful girlfriend who is such an attractive person, she models swimsuits. Her name is Tiffanie Craddock, and the two are just lovely together.

“I got to meet a lovely young lady …” Phillips starts.

“You have a beautiful girlfriend!” McCrone leaps in.

“She dumped me Saturday,” Phillips adds.

Whump!

“Oh my God!” McCrone says.

“What!?” I offer.

“I’m totally not kidding. It was a year and a half. My heart is broken, yes. It’s over,” Phillips says among apoplectic laughter.

Wow. Now, if this were the most theatrics offered by Phillips on April Fools Day, or any day, that would be enough. But as Phillips recounted, the “Vintage Vegas” show he’s resurrecting at Ovation at Green Valley Ranch has a history of drama bordering on farce. The show debuted at Monte Carlo’s then-Lance Burton Theater in 2009 and ended about the same time as the relationship of Phillips and Taylor, who in an interview I conducted in September 2009 said they’d never spent more than three hours apart in the decade they’d known each other.

But the relationship soon faded like a $6 spray tan.

“If you want the absolute truth, what happened in that time was about a year and a half ago, we were doing our show as always, and one night she decided, ‘I’m done with you, Chris,’ and moved on with somebody who was more in line with where she was at mentally at the time,” Phillips says. “The problem with that was, we were still under contract with the hotel and had done a half a million dollars in marketing all over town. So we had to hide our split-up for at least a couple of months. … We never split up the show, but we ended up going home separately.”

If that was the biggest problem, No. 2 on that ever-lengthening list was who Taylor began partnering with, personally and artistically.

“When we split, she started dating my conductor of the 18-piece orchestra that we had in the Lance Burton Theater,” Phillips says.

“That’s not awkward at all,” McCrone adds in a rare burst of sarcasm.

That performer is one of the city’s best, trumpet player David Perrico. He and Taylor perform in the David Perrico Group, writing and playing their own original compositions.

But we’re not through yet, nor is Phillips.

“We haven’t done the ‘Vintage Vegas’ show since then, and now we’re debuting it again, and for our conductor, I hired David Perrico,” Phillips says.

Why in the world would you do that, Chris?

“He’s not only the best in town for what he does, but they make sense as a couple, and I wanted to create something they could do together,” Phillips says.

This is where we say, “Pass the popcorn!”

At that point I had to ask, “Was it a condition for her to be back in the act to bring him on?

Without pause, Phillips answers, “Uh, the other way around (laughs). I said, ‘I really want Dave Perrico, I guess Marley the broad can show up, too!”

Ovation, here we come!

Yes, it’s all one happy, if complicated, family as “Vintage Vegas” takes another spin. Everyone’s happy -- the buxom ex-fiancee, the ace trumpeter/bandleader and the forever tanned and indefatigable Chris Phillips himself. Heck, I’m guessing that the swimsuit model, too, has come out of this quite nicely in the ever-adventurous saga that is Zowie Bowie.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow "Kats With the Dish" at twitter.com/KatsWithTheDish.