In concert, though, is where Cheese goes from novelty artist to entertainment giant. Based on the number of  "I 'heart' Dick" T-shirts being worn, many audience members were, like me, repeat fans ready to get, as one flier read, "Down with the Dickness!" 

Of course, enormous credit for these amazing shows he does in Vegas belongs to Cheese, despite his one-trick-pony concept. If others could rip off his gimmick, so simple on the surface, Vegas would have 10 versions of what he does here. But he has an updated repertoire and totally road-tested shtick that allows him to move easily between hardcore punk, grunge, techno, gangster rap and "American Idol" styling, all while staying in character.

Dick Cheese may give songs a factory treatment, but he is not doing it on an assembly line. A lot of thought has gone into crafting a show that carefully culled audience participation helps enhance.

 

Cheese lands in that weird space between stand-up comedy and performance art that usually results in my favorite entertainments in Vegas. He is Vegas entertainment mocking Vegas entertainment; yet, beyond that, he is showing that Vegas entertainment is what even the most committed and politically charged music winds up becoming in the end. These days the Clash are regular background music playing in resorts to accompany the gambling and partying when I walk on the Strip. The same night I saw Cheese play last month at Hard Rock, I also heard the lounge band at the luxurious Bellagio offering a cover of one of Rage Against the Machine's Marxist anthems with a straight attack. Cheese and his audience all  know this sort of thing requires an ironic '90s wink, while realizing that in 2008 even that wink is the pose of music geeks. Try to grasp how wrong and funny and yet totally fitting it is that Cheese does a great Vegas cover of Nirvana's "Rape Me."

I don't want to give the idea that seeing Richard Cheese is an intellectual experience. He is wonderfully vulgar and not above physical comedy and slapstick. But he also shows how little difference (despite the changes in decades, fashions and styles) there can be between the maudlin self-pity mixed with misogyny in songs from Trent Reznor to Jimmy Van Heusen/Sammy Cahn.

Even more than the songs, the true power of Cheese comes from how his lounge-lizard persona has avoided feeling like an old "Saturday Night Live" routine; he incorporates those elements into a lounge lizard fitting for the new wave of Vegas entertainment. Maybe that is why, as with most great lounge acts from the past, the studio has never been where he shines as bright as the late-night Vegas stage.

 

I've never quite understood why Cheese has not been given his own room by a casino, as he is one of the few lounge acts who can do a ticked show. But, of course, his not-frequent-enough visits to Vegas keep demand for Richard Cheese high. Holidays usually bring him out, when tourists pack Vegas. But in addition to his national following, he also has a substantial local following, and I have seen him pack the far less glamorous Sunset Station.

 

Anyway, for Saturday's show the biggest drawback is that the size of the Joint (with capacity well over 1,000) will make it hard for Cheese's crowd-working, twisted vibe to be established with an audience so large. But the idea of Richard Cheese and a Lounge Against the Machine film made in Vegas seems so right and natural that if you can make it down to the Hard Rock, this is an essential, must-see show.

(Photo courtesy of Richard Cheese)