Human Nature heats up, cools off for holidays; Extreme Thing dumped for ’15; ‘Mondays Dark’

By John Katsilometes

Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2014 | 10:58 p.m.

The Kats Report Bureau at this writing is the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel. I am positioned on the actual floor seating area of the music hall, in which The Killers played on opening weekend and Imagine Dragons performed just last week.

You know who else played The Joint a little more than five years ago? Sonny Charles, once of The Checkmates and, today, The Steve Miller Band. Miller was a huge fan of The Checkmates, the great lounge act fronted by Charles and Marvin “Sweet Louie” Smith.

The act was silenced when Smith died of a heart attack in December 2007 while on a Caribbean cruise. A few months after Smith’s death, Miller called Charles and asked him to join The Steve Miller Band.

And in October 2009, Charles walked onto the stage at the Joint as one of Miller’s backing vocalists. Incredible. Charles, 74, is still in The Steve Miller Band.

The Joint has offered a very Vegas charity scene, too, as Mark Shunock has finished off his “Mondays Dark” anniversary show. The past 13 charities have been honored and the next 11 lined up for 2015 represented. The total take just from the silent auction was about $26,000, and that total might be matched by VIP table and ticket sales.

And elsewhere, “Rock of Ages,” the show in which Shunock appears, celebrates its second anniversary at the Venetian on Thursday night.

• The annual Extreme Thing Music and Sports Festival will cease to be annual this year. An announcement on the event’s official website and Facebook page read simply: “It is with a heavy heart that we must announce that there will not be an Extreme Thing in 2015. Thank you all for understanding and for your support to everyone involved in past Extreme Thing events.”

In a statement, Clark County spokesman Dan Kulin said: “We are down some staff at this time, so we were concerned that we would not be able to adequately plan, prepare and implement such a large event.”

Extreme Thing has been one of the city’s most popular outdoor festivals. The 2013 event drew more than 22,000 attendees with 40 bands performing on four stages. Also onstage was pro wrestling, a BMX dirt track competition and an amateur skateboarding exhibition.

The event has been held each Spring Break at Desert Breeze Park and sponsored by Clark County’s Parks and Recreation Department. This 2015 event, which would have been the 18th installment, was being planned as late as this month.

• A holiday show to catch is the Human Nature Christmas showcase at Sands Showroom in the Venetian. The guys are staging a version of the show they have performed on tour in the U.S. and also in their native Australia filled with great holiday numbers and the animated clip they debuted a year ago. They talk of celebrating their Christmases on the beach in Australia, as December is in the middle of the summer in that region.

The group, spending its first holiday season in Las Vegas, shows its year-old, stop-action adaptation of “White Christmas,” which is set in the desert outside Las Vegas. Acclaimed animator Martin Meunier, who has worked on “Coraline” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” among other film and video projects, produced the film.

Most rewarding are the moments when the guys sing on their own absent the group lineup. Andrew and Michael Tierney sing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” together, just those two. Human Nature recently celebrated 25 years as a four-man a cappella group, but they show in this show how good they are individually.

Robin Meade of HLN’s “Morning Express” also performs a few numbers, marking the first time in the history of the act that a guest star has been added to the show. Smokey Robinson and Mary Wilson have joined in but more as walk-ons. Meade is with the show through its run of holiday performances ending Dec. 24.

• The annual Toys For Tots “Pop! Goes Las Vegas” charity show at Westgate Las Vegas raised about $300,000 in toys, with some guests donating a half-dozen bicycles apiece. Promoter Jonathan Scott, who organized the event along with drumming sensation and Cadillac of Las Vegas exec L.J. Harness, reports an attendance of 1,580 in the house. That’s just about full, as even the seats in the Westgate Theater balcony, what I call the “Fern Section” (an inside joke about “Raiding the Rock Vault”) were filled.

The hotel was otherwise slammed with two other parties, including a Las Vegas Metro holiday party of about 2,000 attendees. So scarce was parking that Eric Jordan Young, one of the show’s featured acts, was nearly shut out. For more on Mr. Young, read further …

• Eric Jordan Young, famous in part for being name-checked in the above item, ends his run at Sin City Theater on Dec. 27. The run is deemed “successful,” which is true from an artistic perspective. But that theater is not an easy sell, even for such terrific showmen as Young, who is now shopping the show around to any suitable Las Vegas venue. He’ll land somewhere, certainly, and I hope it’s in this city.

For more on the haps in the Sin City space, read further …

• “Celebrity Idols,” the show fronted by former “Fame” star Billy Hufsey and featuring the vocals of Elisa Furr and Sina Foley, is closing at Sin City Theater on ... well, it has closed. The last night was Tuesday night. The show was presented as a series of production numbers celebrating icons of stage, film, music and TV. It opened about two weeks ago and suffered what is described as “lackluster” ticket sales.

The other show planned in that theater, also a Nannette Barbera production, has closed before it could open. “Hollywood Bombshells” also is off the Sin City Theater schedule.

The show to be fronted by Angelica Bridges was to open last week but will not move forward, either, and theater operator John Padon says the decision was made to halt “Bombshells” because of “failure to pay rent in a timely manner.” He said both productions were underfunded and unable to pay for a proper marketing campaign.

Elsewhere, the theater is bracing for the return of comic magician Murray Sawchuck to the Las Vegas stage. He opens Saturday at 4 p.m., his daily show time (dark Fridays).

• During an appearance this morning on KNPR morning show “State of Nevada,” Cirque du Soleil Senior Vice President of Resident Shows Division Jerry Nadal unspooled a couple of eye-opening numbers.

When asked by host Dave Becker about the influence of “Absinthe” on the Strip entertainment scene and if Cirque would attempt a smaller-scale show with bold, adult themes, Nadal noted that “Zumanity” was once seen as such a risque production when it opened a decade ago at New York-New York. Nadal said the show was so jarring that at least 100 ticketholders per night walked out because of the then-unexpected adult content was so “raunchy.”

“Zumanity” is undergoing an upgrade in January. The show had great shock value a decade ago, but sensibilities have changed — especially on the Strip, with the arrival of “Absinthe” — since then.

Nadal further talked of Cirque’s worldwide appeal as the company sells 15 million tickets per year to global shows. That number is expected to grow as the company develops its new production division in New York headed by former BASE exec Scott Zeiger.

Also, as a highlight to the celebration of “Mystere’s” 10,000th show Dec. 27, guitarist Bruce Rickert — an original member of the company — has never missed a show. Nadal said that Rickert is to be listed by Guinness World Records for that feat.

And the nonsequitur question from that episode, as Nadal turned it around to ask Becker: “Do you like clowns, Dave?”

• It is official: Club Paradise Gentlemen’s Club is reopening Jan. 9. The timing of the club’s return to activity is not coincidental: That is the Friday night of the annual Consumer Electronics Show, which runs Jan. 6-9. The club’s grand reopening is scheduled over two nights, Jan. 9-10.

The new owner of the club is Steve Paik, who operates adult clubs in Philadelphia and New Jersey. Club Paradise has been out of commission since June 9, when the business closed after a raid by IRS agents and Metro Police detectives after reports of credit card fraud and other violations at the club.

But that was seven months ago — an eternity in the adult-club industry — and a job fair last week at the business drew 300 applicants for all positions open at Club Paradise.

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