The Las Vegas thrift shop housing priceless music memorabilia
The streets of Las Vegas are paved with music, and that’s not always a good thing. As you walk up and down the strip, you hear the booming sound from bars, pitchy performances from street performers, and the off-beat patter of pissed-up punters pacing.
Sound is inescapable in this city. Not only do you have this mosaic of music that follows you around everywhere you go, but there are also adverts put up on every corner showcasing the different gigs happening in the coming weeks. The likes of Def Leppard, Sammy Hagar and the Eagles are all going to be playing within a mile of each other soon, and distortion will ring through Sin City walls to add to the chaos on the street.
Head slightly out of the strip, and that sound follows you. Fremont Street is laden with tourists, carrying large frozen alcoholic drinks, wallowing or celebrating in the direction a roulette wheel spins, and dancing to the inescapable music that paves this stretch of walkway. Bands are strategically placed on every third of the street, and with each group comes a range of popular covers that get everyone within earshot dancing.
Of course, while all of this music may well help contribute to the history that seems to surround you in Vegas, the real gems are hidden away slightly. Around the arts district, an area made more for locals, where the casinos are replaced with independently run restaurants and the overpriced cocktails are swapped out for $3 dive bar beer, you have the Antique Alley Mall, a clutter lover’s dream and the home of priceless music memorabilia.
Amid the records, clothing and trinkets that sport band logos and iconic lyrics, you have a glass case, with a range of tickets held in plastic and kept safe under lock and key. These authentic tickets, once used by eager fans, ripped and scanned at venue doors, now act as tiny relics which capture the specific moments which made music what it is today.
One is for The Yardbirds, a show they did in the mid-60s, a small token for a band that fundamentally shaped what we now consider the modern rock guitarist. By having Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page as lead guitarists throughout the band’s lifespan, The Yardbirds, through the power of live performance, helped tailor exactly what people could achieve through the unrelenting force of a six-string.
There’s also a ticket for Eric Clapton’s next band, Cream. Not only were these pioneers within the world of rock, but they also helped to pave the way for subsections of the genre, as people have previously cited the power trio as being a precursor for prog. Ian Anderson said as much, while Geddy Lee from Rush admitted that they were the most influential band he had ever come across.
Perhaps one of the hall’s prized possessions sits on a lower shelf, still behind lock and key, fairly unassuming, and yet one of the most sought-after tickets in the history of music. Three stubs for the original Woodstock festival in 1969, signed by none other than Jerry Garcia. Grateful Dead were a band who thrived thanks to their live performance, and perhaps there was no show better than Woodstock.
“The Grateful Dead has some kind of intuitive thing – I don’t know what it is or how it works, but I recognise it phenomenologically,” said Jerry Garcia when discussing the secret to his band’s captivating live sound, “It’s been reported to me hugely from the audience, and we’ve compared notes about it among ourselves in the band. We’ve agreed that we’ll continue to keep trying to do this thing – whatever it is – and that one’s best attitude toward it is a sort of stewardship.”
Musical history is contained within the shows that happened, and remnants of those shows are tucked away, hidden on the outskirts of Las Vegas, in an unassuming antique hall.
