The NYT Loves, Invents Stuff About Clint Holmes

Don't get me wrong here. I love Clint Holmes. He's an amazing performer and I wish he were still a Strip headliner. He's old-school and genuine and works so hard you feel lazy watching him.

So I'm thrilled that New York Times music critic Stephen Holden adored his performance at Feinstein's at Loews Regency in New York City. Among other superlatives, Holden wrote:

Vocally, Mr. Holmes is a solid belter who pays close attention to lyrics. He doesn’t simply recycle oldies with the blasé suavity of standard lounge singers. Rethinking them from the beginning, he turns them into personal dramatic monologues.

High praise. And, no doubt, well-deserved.

But Mr. Holden also shows an ignorance of Las Vegas entertainment that is truly boggling. Here's how he describes Clint:

But under the aegis of Steve Wynn, Mr. Holmes, now 64, has become a major Las Vegas attraction who might be described as the next generation’s Wayne Newton.

Uh, what? How many years has it been since Holmes was a Strip headliner? Almost five. He does the occasional show here and there at outlying locals venues, but is he, as of April 20, 2011 when Mr. Holden (left) published this, a Las Vegas attraction at all, let alone a "major" one?

And Steve Wynn? Huh? It took a little digging to realize that, yeah, Clint once toiled for The Steve at the Golden Nugget. It's hard to find; Holmes' own website bio doesn't mention that. But that was downtown; his big break was becoming the marquee star for Harrah in 2000. Wynn is responsible for a lot of major entertainment milestones in Vegas -- Siegfried & Roy, Cirque du Soleil, Danny Gans -- but Clint Holmes? WTF?

And what is this "next generation's Wayne Newton" crap? The Wayner is only four years older than Clint, and Wayne's honorific as Mr. Las Vegas was earned for an extremely long tenure that nobody else is ever likely to match. Also, Wayne was much more recently a Strip headliner (last year) than Clint (2006). With what wisdom, perspective or insight does Mr. Holden get to anoint Vegas stardom or historical relevance? None.

Then there's this:

Mr. Holmes, fortunately, has more talent than Mr. Newton.

Yes, Clint has far better pipes than Wayne these days. Fine. But I'm going out on a really short limb here when I suspect Mr. Holden has probably never actually seen Wayne perform either lately or in his prime. It's just an easy shot, and an unoriginal one at that.

I have no idea if Clint put these absurdities into his program or media material to entice The Times to cover his show, but anyone with a vague ability to use Google should be capable of separating hype from reality. Then again, accuracy rarely matters to the New York media when it comes to Vegas entertainment, so I'm sure Mr. Holden would shrug it all off anyway.

Naw, this is paint-by-numbers Vegas-As-Seen-From-2,500-Miles-Away scribble: (1) Sprinkle a dash of the only Vegas figure anyone in Manhattan knows/likes, Wynn; (2) Insult Wayne to bolster whomever has pleasantly surprised you; (3) Make a reference lounge lizards. Yep. Check this out conclusion:

If Mr. Holmes’s performance indicates a trend, the new lounge lizard has a trait not commonly found in the old: sincerity, or at least the appearance of it.

This is where even Clint ought to take umbrage. Holmes is not now and wasn't ever a lounge act in Vegas. He commanded -- and frequently filled -- a showroom of some 600 seats at Harrah's. Feinstein's in New York, too, is not a lounge but a nightclub/supper club. It's as though Mr. Holden seems to think that serious Vegas headliners still croon by casino bars rather than appear in lavish theaters. And, anyway, the Vegas lounge performers of old were among the most revered legends in the live music world specifically because of their dedication and sincerity. You know, folks like Louis Prima and Keely Smith, Sam Butera, Bobby Darin, Jackie Gleason and on and on. The "old" to which he refers is known for precisely the opposite of what he suggests.

Mr. Holden has no clue what he's writing about, so he goes for the cheap cracks. And that's too bad because I'm sure Clint deserved his plaudits free of insults and bizarre misunderstandings about his hometown.

Please go VOTE now!

Remember last summer when Erich Bergen and I knocked ourselves out to raise just an itty bitty bit shy of $100,000 for desperately needed public school music education programs? Remember how, at the time, Norm Clarkeof the R-J Tweeted that he thought it was "the best two hours of entertainment on stage in Las Vegas this year?"

Well, now you get to chime in, too. The Las Vegas Review-Journal's Best of Las Vegas voting is open UNTIL 5 PM PT on MONDAY and it dawned on Erich today that "Las Vegas Celebrates The Music of Michael Jackson" ought to be at least considered for Best Concert. And I agree.

So do this. Go here and write us in. It's category #43. And, sure, while you're there, go ahead and fill out the rest of the ballot.

Oh, and while we're at it, Erich posted some YouTube video from the show. I didn't even know this until today. Here's Erich and Holly Madison opening the show by starring in "The Way You Make Me Feel":



And here's Clint Holmes doing "Human Nature":



Oh, and just for kicks, here's breakout star Elijah Johnson doing "Dancing Machine."



Now go VOTE.

MJ Benefit: The Dirt

As you might imagine, I had to bite my tongue a LOT this summer for the good of the effort to raise $100,000 as co-producer of "Las Vegas Celebrates The Music of Michael Jackson." Biting my tongue, however, was not in my nature and now I'm ready to explode.

Tomorrow, I open up in my Las Vegas Weekly column, but there's more that didn't find a home or deserved more detail than I had space for there. Ready?

1. The Earl Turner Fiasco. I should have known that Earl Turner, the co-headliner at the Las Vegas Hilton of whom I'd heard little previously, would be a headache when KCEP's Patricia Cunningham tried to get him on her radio show. KCEP is a black-oriented FM radio station and Cunningham wanted Turner to come on to discuss the MJ benefit. Turner refused, I was told, because she had never seen HIS show. Yeah, that's the spirit, Mr. Turner! (Clint Holmes ultimately did the spot.) But it only got better. His producer, Angelo Giordano, called us the night before the show to demand 15 comped seats. We refused this request -- no other performer even requested more than a pair of comp'd seats and many paid full price for several more -- but decided to offer him the seats for $20 a piece as a good-will gesture. At that point, we had sold out of all but the $129 seats, so this was a heckuva deal. Giordano agreed to this and was asked to pay when he picked up his seats at the box office, but when he arrived at the box office he became upset that he had to pay anything and walked off. Result? Fifteen seats that could have raised $2,000 for Las Vegas kids went empty. Nice. [As a post-script, though, Turner and his co-star, Lani Misalucha, performed wonderfully in the show.]

2. Ready For His Close-Up. Or Something. We got a call one day on our Skype line from someone who said he was a casino host at a major hotel asking about the show. I called back thinking maybe he wanted to discuss what we could do for high rollers. Not so much. Rather, the guy tells me, "I do an awesome Moonwalk! I do a better James Brown, but my friends tell me my Moonwalk is pretty awesome." When I explained that this wasn't that kind of show, he was confused and deflated and I felt badly, so I told him to email us his YouTube clips and Web information and we'd take a look. His reply: "Oh, I've never actually performed on a stage before. I thought this could be a great place to get started!"

3. The Girls Will NOT Be Ignored. As the prior anecdote indicated, we heard from lots of acts who wanted to participate and my co-producer, Erich Bergen, carefully selected what would end up in there. (My contributions in idea or organization, by the way, included the Las Vegas Mass Choir, the Green Valley High String Quartet, Lion King representation and the Zumanity singers.) By far the most insistent and bizarre, however, was the lady out of New Jersey who manages The Girls, a trio of female singers who made absolutely no sense to include in a showcase of Vegas or Vegas-relevant talent. Erich let them down politely, but the manager kept coming back via email, more hysterically each time until this:

"Michael is and will always be the King of Pop not merely because of his skill, talent, and the execution of his performances, but specifically because he, more than any other performer truly loved his fans and people. That love was real and not just to impress others. His tribute should be ditto. He would've selected The Girls to perform. He was just that kind of a guy. He was real. He would not shove them away with a thanks but no thanks response. ... He would want The Girls to pay tribute to him, not merely the 'big names.' The Girls are heartbroken and feel additional hurt because Michael is being remembered under 'glory and pomp' and his real fans whom he adored are left out of the tribute."

Erich again replied that it wasn't personal, it just wasn't a fit. The manager quieted down for a few days before sending along this: "Do you know of other places where they can perform?"

4. CUL8R, VH1. At the outset, it seemed like working with VH1's Save The Music Foundation could have benefits. They have a big name and marketing potential and what they do -- provide funding for music educators' salaries -- was in line with what we wanted to accomplish. Except there arose a few serious problems. Besides for the fact that they were very bureaucratic and almost required us to beg them to let us give them our money, the representative told us they do not provide any funding for Nevada schools. Not only that, but if we pledged to raise a certain amount of money and we fell short, Erich and I would be legally obligated to make up the difference. But the kicker was when we suggested that we give some of the money to VH1 and some to the Clark County Public Education Foundation. VH1 would absolutely not be involved in any event for which they had to share in revenues. In fact, they wouldn't even allow us to have an instrument drive -- to collect slightly used instruments for local schools, an idea that didn't ultimately pan out -- in conjunction with something they were branding. And so in the end, they missed out on tens of thousands of dollars as well as all the international publicity we generated. Oh well. Keep all that in mind the next time the VH1 Divas concert returns to Vegas.

5. Hello, My Name is Erish. The beauty of press releases is that they're written down. Even better, when they come on the computer, you can even cut and paste the parts you like if you're that sort of journalist. So explain, someone please, how Erich Bergen became "Erish Bergin" in this ridiculously written piece? Yes, my name gets misspelled, too, although he (accidentally?) got it right once, anyhow. But better yet, given how I have repeatedly stated I was only a casual Michael Jackson fan, where would this fellow possibly have come up with this quote attributed to me: "I’ve been a huge fan of the Michaels music since I was a child."

6. Husband of the Year Joe Jackson: I told most of the story of my encounter with Joe Jackson, father of Michael, the day it happened. But there was one little bit I left out. When we met, I told him I was sorry for his loss. He thanked me. I asked how his wife was faring. His response: "She keeps bursting out in tears every so often all of a sudden, but I keep telling her if she'd only gone over there [to Michael's home] to check up on him like I kept telling her to, he'd still be alive today."

Thin-Skinned Sin City

I begin this post by stating, for the record, that I admire Clint Holmes. He is a terrific song-and-dance man, a tireless supporter of many important causes in the community and a genuine, all-around nice fellow. Even the requisite self-promotion all of us who make our living on the brand equity of our names and reputations must commit to flows out of him with about as little egotism as I've ever known from a celebrity.

So I'm a fan and have promoted his now-gone Harrah's show on many opportunities, most notably when I offered it as an alternative to Celine Dion is a L.A. Times Travel Section cover piece called "Vegas' Seven Deadliest Sins."

Which is why I'm disappointed to hear from more than one source that Clint confronted one of the few truly honest theater critics in a city full of hacks willing to write praise in exchange for dinner and/or a show about a scathing assessment of Clint's autobiographical musical, "Just Another Man." The show had a three-week run at UNLV in June in an effort to see how it works on stage and, perhaps, move it along to London or Broadway.

Critic Anthony Del Valle of Review-Journal hated the show. Intensely. He rendered it a D+ under the headline "Holmes' 'Just Another Man' not legitimate theater." You can read it for yourself; I'm not interested here in debating Del Valle's critical abilities or flaws. That's besides the point.

The point is, Del Valle takes his job extremely seriously and is despised by many for it. He's as likely to give a lousy (or terrific) grade to a high school production as to multimillion-dollar Strip show, pulling no punches and sparing no feelings. He honest to goodness only cares about giving his unfettered evaluation to the people who pay for it, the readers of his newspaper. Many of those hacks I referenced above will actually suck up to the talent and the PR folks involved with the shows he pans by attacking him.

Clint was understandably disappointed by Del Valle's review. It no doubt threw him off guard. He'd been enjoying uninterrupted showers of praise from his many friends in the local media for the admirable nature of the ambitious project he was undertaking. He'd dreamed for years about "Just Another Man" and now it was being realized on a Vegas stage with a lineup of terrific talent, including former "Mamma Mia!" star Tina Walsh.

Yet what Clint did next was wrong: He angrily stomped up to Del Valle a few weeks later and expressed his dismay. Strangely, he did it at a reception in plain view of a fleet of theater critics who were in Las Vegas for a critics' convention. Here's Del Valle's account, which has been corroborated by others who were there:

Clint "came up to me and said, 'Do you have any idea what it's like to work hard for years with people you love and then be told by a critic that all your effort is only worth a D+?' I was too surprised to say anything. And then he said, 'We need encouragement. And you know we get standing ovations every night.' "

Del Valle responded that as a critic, the response of the audience is not something that ought to impact his own judgment. Clint apparently backed off a mite, suggesting the two have coffee and discuss the show. That date hasn't happened as yet.

Now, I can't speak to whether Clint's show was any good because, quite regretfully, I didn't get to see it. I was overwhelmed by work on media night, then June zipped by and suddenly the run was over. But even if I had -- and even if I had enjoyed it more than Del Valle -- I would still have been surprised that a seasoned pro like Clint had such a thin-skinned reaction.

On a personal level, I empathize. As a new book author, I cringe at the likelihood that someone will tear apart what I just worked so hard to create. But I also know that that is the risk that all creative people face when we attempt to sell our creations to the public for money, and it's something that folks on Broadway and in Hollywood understands is part of the bargain. The implication here, though, is that Del Valle should have sugarcoated his critique or not written about it "Just Another Man" at all because such ambition and creative industry deserves unmitigated "encouragement."

I shudder to wonder how Clint may respond if the show does make it to London or New York or another entertainment capital where Clint hasn't built up all the good will he's earned in Las Vegas. How will he deal when dozens of Del Valles render honest assessments of it, uninterested in how earnest or kind a person he may be?

I take on this topic because it reflects a broader problem here in Las Vegas, one that harms every tourist who visits. If there is one thing this city sorely needs, it is a robust league of genuine, beholden-to-nobody critics in a variety of arenas - art, theater, food, architecture, etc. If this city is ever to truly join the ranks of any of those disciplines and ever be seen as a city with some cultural -- and not merely commercial -- impact, we will need to develop that. There are a few I admire, to be sure, but they and I are drowned out routinely by the cacophony of faux reviewers, frequently paid in cash or in kind to write happy talk and have it published for the purpose of obtaining those ecstatic blurbs meant to deceive those who would spend their money.

Just a thought.