We continue our Sample Sunday series with a bunch of excerpts from one of our original history books, Cult Vegas – The Weirdest! The Wildest! The Swingin’est Town on Earth! by Mike Weatherford, the long-time entertainment columnist, journalist, and reviewer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Among us editorial types at Huntington Press, Mike Weatherford’s Cult Vegas is a big-time favorite.
For starters, Mike is one of the best entertainment writers in the country, which is as it should be, given that his reviews emanate from the Entertainment Capital of the World. He’s been covering this beat for more than 25 years at the Review-Journal and how he manages to keep his reviews, columns, and features fresh day after day, week after week, and year after year is as amazing as it is inspiring.
Similarly, Mike’s book is one-of-a-kind. Not only has there never been another one like it, but given his eclectic and elastic interests, no one else could have pulled it off, especially not woven together as he managed to do.
Forget modern, corporate, themed Las Vegas; this book resurrects the true golden age of entertainment in Sin City: the lounge heyday, the boozy comedy, the offbeat movies, the memorable babes, the original all-night parties, and the many forgotten corners of showroom trivia and esoterica.
As such, we’re doing something a little different with the excerpts this week. As always, you can get a good look at the book’s overall content via the Table of Contents. But the flavor of this work – the eclectic focus, the singular style, the outlandish history – is best revealed in seven of the two dozen sidebars that pepper the book, stories and tales that didn’t quite fit in the chapter formats, but couldn’t be left out.
These include: "The Beatles in Vegas," which many entertainment directors on the Strip considered a "kids’" act; "Esquivel Space Station Vegas," concerning the Mexican bandleader who experimented at the outer frontiers of stereo recording techniques; "Diamond Dave: Eternal Gigolo," about Van Halen’s David Lee Roth’s cover of Louis Prima’s "Just a Gigolo"; "Foster Brooks: So Real He Hiccups," the story of MGM Grand’s $150,000 animatronic monument to the "Lovable Lush"; "Tom Jones: Eternal Sex Machine," from whom Elvis borrowed some athletic stage moves; "Vampires in Vegas," featuring the Bela Lugosi Revue and horror-hostess Vampira; and "As Seen on TV," about sit-com stars and game-show hosts turned Vegas nightclub acts.
If you don’t agree that this week’s excerpt provides a completely original and paradigmatic look at Las Vegas entertainment history, your money back!
