Las Vegas Weekly

Our own private (Under)World

Underworld’s Hyde performing for a few appreciative Las Vegans.

Photo: Bill Hughes

In case we needed confirmation, we got it last Thursday: Las Vegans are officially lame. Okay, maybe not everyone. But at the very least, anyone who’s lined up outside a nightclub to see a DJ play other people’s tunes off a laptop but wasn’t there to hear one of the top electronic acts in the world play live.

So Underworld crossed the Atlantic to open its first U.S. tour in who-knows-how-long at the Joint, and a few hundred people bothered to check it out. You’d never have guessed from the performance—the outstanding setlist, the mesmerizing light show, Karl Hyde’s ace vocals and Rick Smith and Darren Price’s layers and layers of the kind of real body-moving electronic sounds you won’t find behind a rope. Or, judging from this sad turnout, in Vegas again anytime soon.