‘Screaming at Yoko’ an idea whose time has come at Hard Rock Cafe

By John Katsilometes

Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011 | 3:02 p.m.

“Screaming at Yoko” might be a more appealing concept than, say, “Screaming by Yoko.” Most important, it also is a fittingly funny name for an inventive comedy/rock band playing on the Strip.

The assembled comic musicians are multifaceted funny guys Todd Paul, Mat Black, Rob Sherwood and Ian Stewart. Paul, Black and Sherwood have all been busy comics in Vegas for years. Paul is a regular performer at “The Dirty Joke Show,” which also stars relentless joke-teller Geechy Guy and Mickey Joseph, at Hooters Casino Hotel. Paul’s own “Fear and Laughing In Las Vegas” lasted for about a year at the hotel before closing in December.

But these guys are dependably busy and appreciably durable. All four play instruments and, of course, are veteran stand-ups. They have known one another for a span of years, and, as Sherwood says, “We were sitting around, shooting the (stuff) about music and comedy, and we’d always thought about being in a show where it was like comics who are musicians, like a band.”

So it is that the band has been assembled, named Screaming at Yoko (the funniest title they could agree upon) and performs in the “Hard Rock Comedy Show” at Hard Rock Cafe on the Strip.

The show started in earnest last week and is staged in a the cafe’s third-floor banquet room at 10 p.m. nightly. Cost is $20, which includes two drinks. Capacity is cozy -- about 80 seats -- but the goal is to move the performances into the Hard Rock’s spacious main live music club.

As Sherwood tells it, the four play all variety of guitars and drums, alternating between those instruments and stand-up. They mix original tunes with such imaginative covers as Sublime’s “Bad Fish,” performed as Paul juggles. They take on “Chocolate Jesus” by Tom Waits, Pink Floyd’s “Shine on Crazy Diamond” and even Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”

If for no other reason, the band/comic troupe is worth backing for their great send-up of the “Abbey Road” album cover, which was shot without any formal re-routing of traffic in front of the cafe on the Strip.

We’ll check in to see how this looks. I, for one, am all in favor of a comic team that can supply its own rim shots.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats.