YOUR WEEKEND: Watch the ‘American Pie’ movie at the Fremont Street Experience, and catch his concert

With the Fremont Street Experience running a fabulous light and sound show that pays homage to his classic song “American Pie,” Don McLean has booked himself for a concert November 14 at Texas Station.

You’ve gotta figure the legendary folk singer will want to make a visit to the downtown casino district while he’s in town to see the 8-minute, 36-second show set to his song. It’s quite an experience seeing it up on Fremont Street’s electrified Viva Vision canopy, which is longer than five football fields.

The “American Pie” show has been in the nightly rotation at the Fremont Street Experience since it debuted on Fourth of July weekend. Producers of the light and sound show selected a host of intriguing images to illustrate McLean’s 1971 song that traces America’s strange odyssey from the day the music died, Feb. 3, 1959 — when singers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper perished in an Iowa plane crash — all the way through the turbulent decade of the 1960s.

For those familiar with the lyrics of McLean’s hit song, the filmmakers’ selection of matching images is especially fascinating. When McLean sings the line about “when the king was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown,” the animation shows at first Elvis Presley and then Bob Dylan. Later on, when McLean sings the verse, “The players tried to take the field/The marching band refused to yield,” people standing on Fremont Street see 1965 news clips of civil rights marchers getting beaten and tear-gassed by Alabama state troopers when they tried to march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery.

The line in the song “helter skelter in a summer swelter” has always been assumed to be an obvious reference to the horrendous Manson family murders of 1969, yet the makers of the Viva Vision show refrained from using images of Charlie Manson. Andy Taylor, a reporter and graphic artist at the View, surmised in a newsroom conversation with me that it simply would have been a little over the top.

“Not a good idea to bombard tourists with images of mass murderers,” Taylor sagely remarked.

As it stands, tourists sure do seem to enjoy this extra-long Viva Vision show — not only its historical allusions but also the fun imagery of dancing girls decked out in the styles of the ’50s and ’60s. Ya gotta love those beehive hairdos of the mid-’60s!

Don McLean’s concert in the Dallas Events Center at Texas Station in North Las Vegas, which is only about a 10-minute drive from Fremont Street, is set for 8 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 14.