Life is Beautiful is still a big peace of Vegas

Craig Asher Nyman leads a quick walk to a giant peace sign near Container Park. The piece of art takes over a significant chunk of new turf on the 18-block Life is Beautiful footprint in downtown Las Vegas.

“This is me, right here,” says Nyman, the festival’s head of music and programming. “We’re all about peace and having a great time.”

Life is Beautiful is building its three-day block party in downtown this week, ahead of its Friday opening. Expect 150,000 fans to inhabit the temporary village. The festival’s drawing power shows that, at least of a weekend, downtown can match with Strip’s bevy of headliners.

“It’s a homegrown festival, and this being our ninth installment in 10 years, we’ve become the largest multi-genre event in Las Vegas,” Nyman says, referring to LiB’s launch in 2013 (missing 2020 for COVD-19). “When you look at the swath of entertainment across the board, any night you can have 40-plus headliners in Las Vegas. We have people coming in from all over the world, year ‘round. But for us, every September, it’s a chance for music fans to be part of any genre they want.”

Zappos has Pitbull. LiB has Gorillaz, Arctic Monkeys and Cage the Elephant. Known primarily for its rock base, LiB also stages several varieties on its seven stages. The experiences include electronic music, R&B, hip-hop, a new Latin theme with Casa Bacardi, and a honky-tonk scene at Western Country Club. (The entire scope of LiB’s music, comedy, art and comedy programming is at lifeisbeautiful.com.)

A music expert with an encyclopedic knowledge of those genres, Nyman has been a member of the LiB creative family since its inception. The festival has gone corporate, to a degree, under Rolling Stone’s ownership. The publication’s parent company, Penske Media Corporation took control of the grassroots festival in February 2022.

Nyman says both organizations can gain in the budding partnership.

“For me, it’s the opportunity to have one of the most storied publications around believing what we’re doing,” Nyman says. “If you look back at the history of the magazine, why it was started, it wanted to be sure artists had a space and a place to be noticed, a long time before the internet. If you remember the scene in ‘Almost Famous,’ where they are geeked up about the possibility of a cover story in Rolling Stone.”

That scene tapped into the time when Rolling Stone was still a grassroots company. Now it’s big enough to buy its own, and if you aren’t sure what Life is Beautiful is meant to be, walk along Fremont Street. The peace sign will tell you.

Tenacious, indeed

Great booking vision is in play at the Theater at Virgin Hotels, where Tenacious D is playing Dec. 30-31. Excellent pairing of Jack Black and Kyle Gass, and NYE in Vegas. AEG Presents executive Bobby Reynolds had the eye for this one. Tickets are onsale at 10 a.m. Monday at AXS.com.

Packing the sax

Baritone sax master Eric Tewalt has had something of an eventful run this month. He’s regularly with Santa Fe and the Fat City Horns on Monday nights at the Copa Room at Bootlegger Bistro. Saturday, Tewalt performed with The Biermeister Band at the kickoff of Oktoberfest at Hofbrauhaus Las Vegas. The band backed Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman in the annual event. Tuesday he backed Diana Ross at Radio City Music Hall. In only one of those shows did he wear authentically-styled lederhosen.

Tewalt also played the Hollywood Bowl with Ross a few weeks ago, and is in the horn section for Lady Gaga and Celine Dion. As he says, “I’m kind of all over the place.”

The Garrett-Iglesias connection

Years ago Brad Garrett told me of the days he opened for Julio Iglesias in the early 1990s. Night after night, Garrett would deliver the material that made him a hit on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

But Garrett’s jokes misfired at every stop.

The comic and proprietor of Brad Garrett’s Comedy Club at MGM Grand finally expressed his concern to Iglesias. The headliner remarked that his audiences were primarily Spanish-speaking. Garrett, of course, was speaking English.

“Then what am I doing here?” Garrett asked. Iglesias replied, “I like to laugh before every show.”

During a recent interview I relayed that information to Enrique Iglesias, son of Julio, who is headlining Saturday night at the Theatre at Resorts World. He laughed at his father’s response. “That is a great, showbiz answer.”

On the topic of Garrett…

His club hosts the semifinals and finals of The World Series of Comedy at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday. WSOC is a nationwide comedy competition that has played a dozen cities in North America. More than 500 comics competing what is billed as the largest touring comedy festival in the world. The top six stand-ups advance to The Main Event semifinals at 6 p.m. The top three are at 8 p.m.

Those who have risen from WSOC include 2012 champion Landry, 2014 champion Spencer James, 2017 champion Jason Cheny, 2018 champion Trixx, along with Jeff Shaw, DJ Sandhu, Carlos Rodriguez and Vince Maranto. All have performed at Garrett’s club.

Cool Hang Alert

A birthday show for R&B and jazz great Ms. Monet is 6 p.m. (dinner), 7:30 p.m. (show) Thursday at Gatsby’s inside Gambit Henderson at 21031 W. Sunset Road. This lady can flat bring it, and Gatsby’s is a proven Cool Hang. A $30 F&B minimum is required; cocktail attire dress code “enforced.” So dress up and get there. Go to AEGroupLV.com or call 702.292.9404 for info.

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His “PodKats!” podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.