Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Show Review: "What Happens In Vegas"

Today, we took the kids to a new show, off the Strip, "What Happens In Vegas" at the Clarion Hotel, on Convention Center Drive. It featured the performance of Mike Rayburn, who is a fantastic guitarist and Paul Draper, a "mentalist". (the advertisement suggested that there would be a world class juggler/magician there, but we had these two performers instead)
Mike Rayburn is a classically trained guitarist who went to college to study guitar. He is also a comedian. His main claim to fame in the show was combining two different artists and make them sound like they match. For instance, matching AC/DC with Dan Fogelberg. He made it work with both AC/DC music and Fogelberg's lyrics and vice versa. He did this with numerous artists.
My kids thought his finale was the best part of the show and I could not agree more. His rock interpretation of Green Eggs and Ham also was great.
He combined the music with comedy and it really worked. If you like acoustic guitar music mixed with a little comedy and mixing artists, you are in for a treat. Make no mistake, he knows what he is doing and is a very, very talented guitar player.
The mentalist, Paul Draper made an appearance and I don't know if it was last minute or scheduled, but it wasn't the best part of the show. He performed 3 tricks. The first, he had 4 audience members on stage and they had to write down their color and type of underwear they had on and he had to guess who had the different underwear. It just wasn't that impressive. He then mentally bent a spoon, but he had his back to us, so I cannot comment on the quality of his act. In the final act, he had to guess what was in shot glasses- water or booze with out smelling the booze. The audience member he choose to come up was supposed to pour 1 glass of booze and 4 glasses of water. Well the audience member filled up 2 shot glasses with booze, so the trick was bound to fail. Draper said he could devine which was water and which was booze. Needless to say, the trick did not turn out as well he Draper wanted.
So, if you enjoy acoustic guitar music with a touch of comedy, this is a good show to attend. It is family friendly and if you have a child who is learning or wants to learn how to play the guitar, this is the show for you.
You can find out more from Rayburn's web site: http://www.mikerayburn.com/

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