Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

Pussy Riot, Oscar Goodman and ‘picnic at the disco’ fire up first night of Life Is Beautiful

Life Is Beautiful Crowd

L.E. Baskow

A crowd takes in a performance of The Weeknd at the Downtown Stage on the opening day of the Life Is Beautiful festival Friday, Oct. 24, 2014, in downtown Las Vegas.

2014 Life Is Beautiful: Day 1

Josiah Johnson with The Head & The Heart performs within the band on the Western stage during the opening day of the Life is Beautiful Festival on Friday, October 24, 2014. Launch slideshow »

2014 Life Is Beautiful: Kanye West

Kanye West closes night one of the 2014 Life Is Beautiful music festival in Downtown Las Vegas, Friday Oct. 24, 2014. Launch slideshow »
Click to enlarge photo

Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alekhina of Pussy Riot attend BuzzFeed and Facebook's "Bowties & Burgers" at The White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on Saturday, May 3, 2014, in Washington, D.C.

The Kats Report Bureau at this moment is the lobby at El Cortez’s Cabana Suites. Outside, we hear thunder, in the form of the set by Girl Talk at the Downtown Stage at Life Is Beautiful.

This is the first night of the second lifefest and lovefest in Downtown Las Vegas. A general rule to follow around LIB is to understand that this is a loosely framed, freewheeling life experience. It is asphalt Woodstock, and you should just go with it. That goes for whatever snag you will encounter. Because, hell, it’s unique, the music roars, the food is really good, and the art installation at the Western is “sticky.”

That is to mean you’ll want to stick around, though over the years the Western itself has been somewhat sticky. When the walls were to be repainted in preparation of this year’s event, up to five coats were needed to cover the yellow tinge of years of cigarette use in the building.

The music highlights tonight were to be show-closing sets by Kanye West and Panic! At The Disco, or what might be called Picnic! At The Disco for all the food stations ringing the stages at this year’s LIB music venues. At the Downtown Stage, Rick Moonen’s RM Seafood, Honey Salt and Due Forni have built temporary eateries. Over at Ambassador Stage, it’s Nacho Daddy, the eateries at the Plaza hotel-casino and a Bacardi tent where a trio of spandex-clad models power blenders with exercise bikes to make pina coladas.

Kind of a Rupert Holmes-meets-Greg LeMond approach.

Tonight it’s Lionel Richie, The Roots, Fitz & The Tantrums and Outkast on the Downtown Stage. On the Ambassador Stage, The Flaming Lips are the closing act at 11 p.m.

The opening day’s Learning program highlight was the appearance by Pussy Riot during the series of panel discussions at the Western. Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina are the women of Pussy Riot, who formed a rock band and were imprisoned for more than a year for staging an anti-Vladimir Putin protest. More than 300 attendees crammed the venue just off the entrance of the old hotel-casino. Their segment was slotted under the title, “The Good, The Bad, The Grey.”

The audience was fully engaged, even as the two spoke mostly through an interpreter.

“Maybe human rights now is fashionable,” Nadya said through that interpreter, who happened to be her husband. “That’s not bad … In the West, it’s something that has been accepted for decades, but in Russia it is something you shouldn’t touch. When you think of human rights in the United States, the ambassadors are people like Angelina Jolie and Katy Perry. Russian people get very different images. Usually it’s a very aged gentleman in a sweater.”

The women said they often laughed of their plight, spending month after month in deplorable conditions in a Russian prison. They often laughed at their guards and at the decision by Putin’s subordinates to bring charges against them. “What Putin is doing is so outrageous, we had a laugh about it,” Masha said. The duo also said they are finished recording after releasing their one and only album; rumors of them appearing on “Game of Thrones” or “Orange Is the New Black” abound.

Before the Pussy Riot appearance, former Mayor Oscar Goodman appeared on the same panel with storytellers Ed and Selena Gavagan. The talk centered on jurisprudence and the criminal court system and also enveloped prisoner rehabilitation.

Goodman was asked about his history of getting his clients sprung on “technicalities” he found in the methods used by law enforcement.

“I hear this, ‘You got someone sprung on a technicality,’ well, if violating someone’s Fourth Amendment’s rights is a technicality, I’m somebody’s uncle,” Goodman said. Later, after he watched Pussy Riot’s presentation, Goodman said he had a good time. “I think that I brought some life to this, at least.”

This is true because without life, Life Is Beautiful would not be possible.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.

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