This week's LVW col: Matt Goss v HN

Here's this week's very controversial column comparing the rollout of Matt Goss to that of Human Nature in Las Vegas. Enjoy. -sf

Mishegoss
Why Matt Goss could learn something
from Human Nature

By STEVE FRIESS

The act was big. Really big. Millions-of-records-sold big. But that was then and that was somewhere else and almost nobody knows about it in the United States, so the act landed in Vegas hoping that America’s entertainment crossroads would provide the introduction necessary for broader success.

That’s the setup, anyway. And in the past year, much to my fascination, we’ve seen that hand being played out in two dramatically different fashions on the Strip, with significantly different outcomes.

The Australian group Human Nature and British singer Matt Goss both largely started from zero in their career second acts after boy-band successes in their homelands. Both even found well-regarded names to stand up behind their incursions onto the Strip scene and a classic musical trope to emulate.

The results, however, have been starkly different. Human Nature is rounding the bases to their first anniversary at the Imperial Palace, having proven to be a rare smashing success during the city’s most challenging economic era. And Goss? He was bounced from the Palms after about five months during which he couldn’t quite fill a tiny lounge, only to relocate to Caesars Palace’s 160-seat Cleopatra’s Barge, which, again, he is not filling up without the help of casino comps.

So what does this tell us? The answer, dear readers, is in the Gossiness of it all.

What, perhaps you ask, is “Gossiness”? Well, nobody exactly knows, except that it is very likely in coming years to be an Urban Dictionary entry synonymous with an act that thinks it can burst on the Vegas scene and expect everyone to revere its awesomeness before it’s actually even bothered to prove its awesomeness.

Read the REST at LasVegasWeekly.Com