The entertainment capital of the world and the most costumed night of the year have joined forces to create a Las Vegas music festival on Halloween weekend. Costumes are encouraged.
Superfly Productions and AC Entertainment teamed up to create Vegoose, a music festival that runs Saturday, Oct. 29 and Sunday, Oct. 30 at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas.
A series of late-night performances from Oct. 28 to 31 around Las Vegas will accompany the Vegoose stadium events.
The festival’s lineup includes musicians Dave Matthews, Beck, The Decemberists, Galactic, The Flaming Lips, Widespread Panic and Primus.
Galactic, a New Orleans-based jazz group, will play at one of the festival’s night shows in the Las Vegas House of Blues on Sunday, Oct. 30 at midnight.
The show will be part of their Ten Year Invasion Tour, which celebrates the band’s first decade, said Rich Vogel, Galactic keyboardist.
Their tour begins Wednesday, Oct. 26, Vogel said.
He said he is looking forward to the revival of the New Orleans music scene.
“It’s certainly not OK, as in, back to normal,” Vogel said. “But it’s better.”
He said he looks forward to playing music and seeing friends again after Hurricane Katrina.
“We’re trying to kind of forget about this as much as we can for a while,” Vogel said.
He said he has high expectations for the festival.
“I think it’s going to be a great time,” Vogel said.
Galactic has played every type of show, from all-nighters during Mardi Gras to 30-minute openers for B.B. King.
“We just get out there and try to hit everyone with a solid dose of groove,” Vogel said. “That’s the show, whether you’ve got 30 minutes or 3 hours.”
The Flaming Lips, an Oklahoma-based pop group known for their outrageous stunts, will play Sunday, Oct. 30 at 5:15 p.m.
“We do a Flaming Lips show, and everybody knows that we do all kinds of silly gags and over-the-top things,” said Wayne Coyen, band founder. “It’s just that we simply have no boundaries of what we’ll do.”
Coyen said the band puts on animal costumes, and he will pour blood on his head or play inside a giant ball.
“We think of these things as being stunts,” he said. “You’ve got to do stuff that makes [the audience] you know, wake up and remember that they’re supposed to be having fun.”
He said that bands often do stunts to get attention and liven up shows.
“I’ve kind of always gauged those sorts of things by really what all the other bands have done,” Coyne said. “If I get there and – Beck has gone out in a space bubble and has landed in the UFO, you know I’ll have to do something else.”
Coyen said he likes to play at shows like Vegoose because there are so many bands.
“We’re just simply one piece, one small piece of a very colorful and animated afternoon – Nobody is filling the stadium just to see the Flaming Lips there,” Coyen said.
Widespread Panic, a Georgia jam band, will play Sunday, Oct. 30 at 7:30 p.m.
Dave Schools, bassist for Widespread Panic, said he looks forward to the Las Vegas festival.
“The festival is out of the stadium, which is away from the strip, and I feel like there’s just so much extracurricular activity going on in the town that never shuts down that people can go get their dose of music and even go get a dose of late night music and still go have the King’s buffet and play blackjack all night,” Schools said.
He said that Las Vegas is the perfect place for a Halloween show.
“To place this kind of festival there, especially on a night like Halloween, it really kind of seems like a no-brainer fun idea,” Schools said.
He said Widespread Panic usually plays special Halloween shows, in which they play different music like Black Sabbath and Nellie instead of wearing costumes.
Tickets for the two-day festival and for the Night Concert Series are available starting at $128.50 at www.vegoose.com.
Contact Julie Chance at [email protected]