Back in the day, the real Woodstock generation did not play Vegas much. But on Sunday, Byron Bordeaux played a tribute set dressed as Jimi Hendrix at the Fremont Street Experience. The downtown tourist mall hired him as part of its tribute to the Woodstock festival that took place 40 years ago. 

After his set, a Grateful Dead cover band took over the stage, leaving the dressing room reeking of pot. Bordeaux could not stand the smell and stood outside the makeshift tent behind the stage facing the huge Fremont Street Experience light canopy, which at night offered a 1969 tribute show to Hendrix and other stars of the era.

For five years Bordeaux has made a living impersonating Hendrix in Vegas. It was not a first choice of a career. “I was in California. A guy came down from Vegas. He wanted to put me in a show as Hendrix. I thought impersonators were garbage. Then he told me how much it paid, and I decided it was OK if we used the term 'tribute artist.'” So, he is a tribute artist and not an impersonator.

As the Dead cover band offered up “Alabama Getaway” (a song written years after Woodstock), Bordeaux chuckled at the ironies and baffling reality involved in earning a living re-creating an original talent like Hendrix. Take this night: being the entertainment at a huge collection of casinos linked by a lighted canopy that puns off the Jimi Hendrix Experience name. He sees his future as Hendrix in Vegas as bright as those lights on the Fremont Street Experience canopy. “Jimi is never going to die. I get to dress up like Jimi, play like Jimi and get paid for it. There is no way Hendrix could have imagined anything like this. Never, never, never.”

Photo credit: Sarah Gerke

So, much about Las Vegas seems to function outside the law for the rest of the land you can sort of understand some how local authorities have a hard time keeping things straight. Anyone ever see a male cocktail server in Las Vegas, for example? But some laws are too big to get around. Since 2006, I have been complaining on this blog about Las Vegas using taxpayer dollars in a futile effort to do battle with the 1st Amendment.  Actually, by 2006 the city had already been spending money on losing court cases for years. By then the city had been fighting for nearly a decade to claim that the 1st Amendment did not apply to people who wanted to hand out whatever under the Fremont Street Canopy, which back then frequently offered patriotically tinged shows celebrating American freedom.

After they lost that attempt to rid Fremont Street Experience of free speech, regulations were designed to do the same thing by working their way around the United States Constitution. Back in 2006 the city had their most recent round of regulations booted for being unconstitutional. With the endless optimism of Las Vegas, the city responded with a new set of regulations to attempt the same goal, and proving the triumph of experience over hope, after another few years of court time wasted, brings us to today where the Review-Journal  reports a federal judge has once again struck down the city ordinances as unconstitutional.

Besides money, this confusion Las Vegas seems to have about how aggressive laws can be in enforcing the vision of paradise we want to present to tourists can have a serious side for regular citizens.

Anyone want to take a bet that the city responds with an entire new set of ordinances and this continues on into the next decade? And, honestly, the way business is these days, if the folks handing out those antiwar or religious pamphlets stop for the occasional drink or to pull a slot at one of the casinos under the canopy, well, they can use the business, and should not be so fussy in this economy.

Photo by Sarah Gerke