Who is that guy singing?

We advance as a society, allegedly, and yet the more things change...

The concept of bands performing with little or no connection to their origin, or at least their commercial heyday, is nothing new. I don't know when the first known instance of a bunch of identity thieves selling their act under the name of a famous group of musicians occurred, but I know it became an issue in the 1980s and '90s with bands from the early '50s or '60s. 

I don't know if there were knockoffs of the big bands of the 1920s, but if your band The Influencers had a hit in 1957 with the song "Please Like and Share," some form of that band might have existed on the oldies circuit in 1987, playing to small crowds who wanted to hear those sweet vocal harmonies of yesteryear. Was anyone who sang on the hit record 30 years earlier still in the band? Maybe. But not always, so the story goes. 

Times change, and some bands are more savvy than the groundbreakers that influenced them. Some bands know that they not only have to protect themselves and their music rights from the preying tactics of the companies that promise to record, distribute and promote a band's original music, they also have to protect themselves from each other. They have to set up a business and define who owns what when it comes to the business interests of the band. I have to imagine it's rather complex. 

The business aspects of a band lend themselves to interesting situations. Despite the efforts to detail who is entitled to what, under all circumstances, there are plenty of legal messes that result, despite the best intent. As a fan of the late '80s rock known as the hair band era, we've seen it plenty of times.

To this point I have yet to see a hair band performing with no original/classic members, as best I know. But that day is probably coming. Arguably it has happened with a hair band or two already, as well as a  '70s rock band or two. The internet is quick to suggest several bands that have lived in perpetuity sans original members during the past decade. 

The topic of bands performing sans their original/classic era members, sometimes all of them, came up recently in an article by Sam Novak, who writes for Vegas 411, the best website out there these days for a variety of Las Vegas topics beyond the standard internet trappings.

Sam shared an article looking at some of the acts that are a shell of what they were when it comes to personnel, with an eye toward the Vegas showrooms. I loved it, as it's a subject I have pondered many times. 

The question is not limited to musical acts, of course. We accept that the stage performers are not always going to remain the same for longtime productions. The Blue Man Group, which has toured the world and had a long Vegas residency, is not the same three guys every night. The creators have hired others to play the parts in their shows over the years. I've never heard anyone suggest that a Blue Man Group show is a tribute because the guys who created it aren't performing on stage at every BMG show. 

A band doesn't cease to exist automatically because one member dies, retires or is fired. So why do we place authenticity expectations on The Beach Boys, Foreigner or any act that has the legal right to the band's name? 

We don't expect the same three guys to perform as the Blue Man Group for the next 50 years, but some form of that show will exist as long as there's money to be made and an ownership interested in making money. Shouldn't the same apply to KISS, Motley Crue or U2? 

Sam does a nice job of explaining what makes a band different than the Blue Man Group or other entertainment entities in the second paragraph of his follow-up article. 

That article includes a hefty contribution from me. I've followed Sam's work via numerous Vegas outlets for more than a decade, was fortunate enough to have met him nearly a decade ago on the closing day of the Riviera and have since been privileged to call him a friend. As a friend, I have access to him via social media, (we all do, to some extent, I know,) and when I saw his post about the original article and read it, it brought several examples of similar situations to mind, as it's a topic I suspect many of us have pondered when it comes to our favorite music of yesteryear. 

I have familiarity with some examples Sam might not be familiar with, and opinions on what is and isn't fair when it comes to the business of music in the 21st century. I rambled off plenty of those opinions, with great haste, and Sam enjoyed some of the thoughts and examples I shared in response. Suddenly I'm featured in his second Vegas 411 article on the topic. Me, a guy who is famously not an expert on anything. Go figure. 

I may double back to this topic in a few days and share thoughts on a few bands that have divided their fan bases regarding fair use of the trademarked name. Nobody is demanding this, of course, but I have avoided writing with passion for far too long. I write about crime and local government nearly every week of my life, and it's not easy to make time weekly for all the things I'd like to pursue creatively. There are plenty of reasons for that, which is a topic for another day, as well.

The tantalizing talent that was Joe Chavira

As a kid, I loved the NBC show "Unsolved Mysteries." 

If featured great stories that often left you with plenty of questions and an opportunity to draw your own conclusions about what happened, and how. 

I still love a good mystery, and there's an intriguing one that floated through Vegas this past winter. It's a story that didn't gain a lot of media attention and scrutiny at the time, and will likely be lost in the annals of Vegas history. But damn, it's a spectacular tale that left me with plenty of questions I cannot answer. Where's Robert Stack when I need him?

Last November I was introduced to a bizarre celebrity who had a colorful, and questionable, history. (To be fair, his celebrity status is debatable, as well.) 

He wasn't a longtime Vegas entertainer who toiled in casino lounges and turned up in variety shows up and down the strip during the glory days of Vegas. He was a longtime entertainer, allegedly, but relatively new to the Vegas scene. Yet somehow last December he was scheduled to receive a star on the Vegas version of a walk of fame. It's a thing, I feel like it's not well known, and its history seems to be as sketchy and ridiculous as the well-established version in Hollywood. (The most important criteria for both seems to be somebody's willingness to pay the inclusion fee for the celebrity being honored with a star.) 

I learned about this multi-talented sensation by reading two articles from Vegas 411. I've linked to them before, and I will do so again. Writer Sam Novak did a great job of collecting info about this new Vegas legend who had burst onto the scene and was already lined up to receive a star along the Las Vegas Boulevard sidewalk. 

Read about the legendary Joe Chavira here: Part one

And here: Part two

I won't rehash everything Sam wrote, but I will sum it up for those in a hurry. Joe was a legend in his own mind. 

He could play the guitar and piano. And the drums, too. He has had all kinds of odd success, allegedly, in his life. He was a stand out high school athlete, a military serviceman and allegedly created a cartoon character that was published in the Los Angeles Times newspaper, among others. He was a child prodigy when it came to music, and he somehow befriended Trini Lopez, a singer and actor who was most notable during the 1960s and 1970s.

Joe was a songwriter who performed regularly, or so we were told. He had big plans to promote his brand, whatever that was, upon his arrival in Vegas and he was good at dropping names of prominent people. 

And Joe seemed to be in the good graces of a widow who may have been financing his bizarre ascension to Vegas sidewalk royalty. 

Joe Chavira was a stage name, and it appears he chose a name that has a thin connection to Vegas history. How convenient. 

Sam is well plugged into the Vegas entertainment scene, and  received a lot of feedback in response to his articles about Joe's well-deserved honor. He also received comments suggesting that Joe's history was a little less than honorable, including a suggestion that Joe may have taken financial advantage of his friendship/working relationship with Trini Lopez. It's all in Sam's articles. If you didn't read them, you're missing out on great stuff. 

Joe got his star on Dec. 7, it appears. There was talk of a protest by real Vegas entertainers, but I don't think that happened. Joe has a very public Facebook page, and why shouldn't he? He's beloved and a Vegas treasure. The following photo is courtesy of that page: 

Weeks of toiling in the Las Vegas entertainment industry paid off for "Joe."

Sam stopped chronicling Joe's story prior to that memorable day in Vegas history. As he noted in his second article, ol' Joe had legal muscle that was trying to pressure Sam into removing his reporting from the Vegas 411 site. That legal muscle has failed to this point. It's almost as if facts, the truth and fair comment and criticism are difficult to suppress. 

But I was hooked. Who was this guy who had an odd history and lackluster music on YouTube? Sam embedded YouTube videos featuring Joe's music in his articles, including "Tantalize." I'm not a music critic, and I'm not a musician. In my uneducated opinion, it ain't good. But the video and production of it are on par with the music, that's for sure. 

After a December social media break to accept his prestigious award, Joe started celebrating his hard-earned Vegas star a few weeks after the fact with multiple Facebook posts. And he teased that he'd be appearing on the cover of My Vegas Magazine. He was very proud of this achievement. And why not? 

Joe, never one to shy away from dropping names or boasting about his incredible accomplishments, was not ashamed to tout that he was good friends with the publisher of My Vegas Magazine, and would be on its cover. Just a coincidence, I'm sure. 

And sure enough, he did make the cover of the magazine earlier this year, based upon pictures from the My Vegas Magazine Facebook page. (They do a real lousy job of putting a month, date or issue number on any issue the produce. And by lousy, I mean they don't appear to do it at all.)

My Vegas Magazine strikes me as a promotional vehicle that might produce copies with multiple covers. While it's hard to say definitively, photos on its Facebook page certainly suggest that's the case. They have a website, of course, and you can download PDF copies of the magazine. That's what I did, as I wanted to read the magazine's article celebrating the golden boy of Vegas entertainment. 

I'll get to that article in a moment. What I noticed first was that Joe wasn't on the cover of the PDF version of the magazine I downloaded. That only affirmed my belief that the magazine produces multiple covers for each issue. 

I eventually realized that I wasn't looking at several back issues that were available to download, I was looking at several covers for the same issue. Had I looked at the webpage for downloading the current issue, all confusion would have been cleared up immediately, as the page spells it out nicely: "CHECK OUT ALL OUR AMAZING COVER CLIENTS BELOW!"

"Cover clients," you say. Thank you, My Vegas Magazine, for removing all doubt.

As I looked through the magazine index, I didn't see a reference to Joe's story. Wouldn't a cover client be highlighted in the index? 

As I flipped through my virtual copy of the magazine I noted several things. There were a ton of contributing writers and photographers listed, but only one full-time employee for editorial or advertising, and that was a director of photography. That seemed rather odd. 

No editor, no ad director, no staff writers, no account executives. The only other "employee" I could identify was the publisher, who has a column at the beginning of each undated issue. 

The mag had sections about doctors, real estate agents, fitness, legal resources and restaurants. It was hard to determine what was an ad and what was supposed to be an article. Some pages of text had a writer listed. Others didn't. And the photos looked like publicity shots provided by the subject.

You want to talk about blurring the lines between reporting and advertising, My Vegas Magazine does a great job of it.

I finally got to the entertainment section, and there, on page 154, is our cover boy. The new star of Vegas. 

I read the article, and it read like a poorly written biography that Joe would have put together himself, featuring plenty of stunning accomplishments and incredible twists of fate. Joe was a survivor, fighter and champion who succeeded at everything he did, according to the one-page article with no writer's credit. 

Here is a screen capture of the first paragraph of his story.

Yes, that's the first two sentences of an "article" in a "magazine."

Yeah, it's that poorly written. And lacks editing. And the whole article is that way. It's not professional work, to state the obvious. 

If you haven't figured it out by now, My Vegas Magazine is not a news magazine. It's just a fancy advertising vehicle disguised as a magazine. Is there content in there that's not paid for? Perhaps, but the line between paid advertisement and actual journalistic effort does not exist. I see no evidence that the magazine attempts to denote what is paid content and what isn't. Perhaps there's no denotation necessary. Hard to know, but the articles look like text heavy ads in most instances. At least in the issue I reviewed. I didn't bother to seek journalism in any other edition. 

Are you shocked to find out Joe was profiled by this prestigious magazine? Probably not. 

But damn, Joe was mighty, mighty proud to be on the cover of this magazine. That strikes me as rather sad and pathetic when I realize what this magazine is, and more importantly, what it isn't. 

Hell, I could be on the cover of it, at least for a couple dozen copies, if I want to fork over the dough to have my seldom-used blog site highlighted as the most important voice in Vegas tourism. (I'm trademarking that phrase.) 

Recently I was reading comments on some of Joe's Facebook posts, and some of his acquaintances wanted to know where to find his My Vegas Magazine profile online. As people discussed Joe's big splash in the mag, a few people shared interesting tidbits about the mag. 

I don't need Robert Stack to solve this mystery for me. 

But there is an unsolved mystery in all of this: Who paid for Joe's big splash in My Vegas Magazine? 

I didn't see a lot of Facebook posts by Joe suggesting he was gigging around town, actually getting paid to perform for his many fans and eager tourists. How does a Vegas star make money if he's not performing night after night?

I have no idea how much Joe was earning on a daily basis selling his mediocre music or licensing his talent to film or television, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess he wasn't cashing many checks. (He claimed in an odd video interview that he had written music for one film and intended to do more of that, as well as get into acting.)

Joe's media blitz was likely funded by the same benefactor that funded his well-deserved Vegas star. I've seen no confirmation of that, but I'm at a loss to come up with a better explanation. 

Joe is an enigma. He was welcomed personally to Vegas by none other than the mayor, Carolyn Goodman, in a video Joe is proud to share on his YouTube page. His YouTube page has very few subscribers, but lots of self-promotion mixed in with an occasional song you'll likely never listen to twice. 

And he has plenty of pictures of himself with folks who are important, or at least give off the impression they are, on his Facebook page. 

And then there's his poorly maintained website that offers an outdated fan club package with a 2019 calendar. 

But a lot of people think he's swell. Really.

How do I know? Joe died March 19 at the age of 64. There's a web page dedicated to his memory, although it conveniently says little about him. Yet there are plenty of people who posted testimonies to what a great guy he was. You can find similar comments on the last post to his Facebook page. 

The guy seemed like a character from a low-budget '80s flick that went straight to VHS. Everything about Joe Chavira is so preposterous that you'd swear he is a thing of fiction. Like a good pro wrestler who sells his character both in the ring and everywhere he goes outside the ring, Joe's career seemed to be a work. 

What's real, what's fiction and who did Joe manipulate to achieve all his success and fame? Those are great questions I cannot answer. I wish Robert Stack was here to help me solve the mystery.