Las Vegas Weekly

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Break out your black leather jacket and steel-toed boots and warm up your vocal chords. This Friday at Wasted Space, punk-rock fans can channel their inner frontman and head up a band of seasoned punk vets—for three minutes, at least.

Conceived by Greg Hetson (Bad Religion, Circle Jerks), Eric Melvin (NOFX), Derek O’Brien (Social Distortion) and Steve Soto (The Adolescents), Punk Rock Karaoke offers the caterwauling potential of a standard karaoke setup with the added excitement of singing in front of a live band—and not just a track with the vocals turned down.

“It’s audience participation,” Hetson says. “For those three minutes, they get to be in the Sex Pistols or Ramones or Buzzcocks or Black Flag.”

The band offers a songbook of more than 50 punk-rock standards—everything from the Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.” to Black Flag’s “Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie.” Attendees simply sign up for the song they’d like to perform, then wait their turn to step to the mic and experience a brief brush with rock-star glory.

“We’ve had people break bottles over their head, put cigarettes out on themselves, jump into the crowd,” Hetson says, and most of them aren’t complete train wrecks on the vocals, either. “We’ll help them if they need it, [but] for the most part, people are really good.”