Cindi Reed
A&E Editor
Contact: 868-4506 • Email
As a Texas junior high student, she once despaired over a career aptitude test that determined her only ability was in the impractical realms of arts and entertainment. At the time, it seemed like a curse to a life flipping burgers. She found a better fate as the A&E Editor for Vegas Seven. Previously, Reed freelanced for publications such as Las Vegas Weekly and Us Weekly, worked in a casino, got a master’s degree in communication from Arizona State University and worked as a copy editor for 944. She is currently writing a novel.
Recent Articles
Concert Review: Green Day’s 'American Idiot'
The Smith Center, June 11
June 17th, 2013
Can pop-punk be improved by professionally trained voices and choreography? If you can get past the oil-and-water pairing of punk rock with Broadway staging, then Green Day’s American Idiot is an OK show.
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Birth of a Festival Czar
In four months, Rehan Choudhry is supposed to stage a street spectacle unlike any Las Vegas has ever seen. How does he plan to do that? And how do you get that job, anyway?
June 5th, 2013
Born to a family of physicians who valued education, Rehan Choudhry had a sensible life plan when he was 23. It included graduate school and a 30-year climb through middle management in Homeland and Transportation Security. And then one day he was at the gym doing dips, and he felt a sharp pain in his neck. Choudhry consulted Drs. Mom, Dad and Sis, and they all agreed that he had simply pulled a muscle. But the pain didn’t stop.
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Concert Review: Fleetwood Mac
MGM Grand Garden Arena, May 26
May 30th, 2013
When it comes to shawls, the line between gypsy and grandma is a thin one. Performing on her 65th birthday, former ’70s-era ethereal goddess Stevie Nicks straddled that line with heavy feet. Suffering from a knee ailment, Nicks kept her famous twirling to a minimum and moved on and off stage with a slight limp. When the audience spontaneously sang “Happy Birthday” after “Landslide,” Nicks shooed them silent, saying that you could only wish her a happy un-birthday because she wasn’t celebrating her birthday.
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Concert Review: The Rolling Stones
MGM Grand Garden Arena, May 11
May 15th, 2013
Twenty years from now, some guy will brag to his twenty-something peers that he saw the Rolling Stones play at their 50 & Counting tour stop in Las Vegas. Or so his parents hoped when they bought a ticket for their small child, decked him out in protective earmuffs and lifted him into the air along to the beat.
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Robert Beckmann Has Found Creation in Our Desert Destruction
The artist stages an explosive retrospective at Vast Space Projects.
May 7th, 2013
Here’s what 71-year-old artist Robert Beckmann told the next generation of Las Vegas artists at a dinner party: “Do what you don’t know how to do as long as you can. Then finally do what you know how to do just to resolve the damn thing.”
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UNLV Prof Helped Keep 'The Great Gatsby' Costumers Accurate
May 7th, 2013
Deirdre Clemente combined her passion for vintage fashion with her love of Jazz Age chronicler F. Scott Fitzgerald to become the leading expert in the topic. Little surprise that the associate director of the UNLV public history program was tapped to costume-consult on the upcoming The Great Gatsby. No literary purist, Clemente loves director Baz Luhrmann and can’t wait to see his interpretation of the classic book. Fans of fashion past can visit Clemente’s website FitzgeraldAndFashion.com, or her Vegas Style show at Nevada State Museum at the Springs Preserve through May 31. And, no, she didn’t get to meet Leonardo DiCaprio.
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‘Led’ Tablet
'Sound and Fury' turns classic Zeppelin images into a multimedia experience. Is this the future of coffee-table books?
April 30th, 2013
Neal Preston, whose photos grace the hallways and rooms of the Hard Rock Hotel, was Led Zeppelin’s tour photographer in the band’s heyday. Now, more than 30 years later, he’s releasing an e-book for the iPad, Led Zeppelin: Sound and Fury (Warner Music, $10). This is like a traditional book turned up to 11. In addition to photos and text, there are video and audio interviews, set lists and memorabilia (tickets, backstage passes, press releases and Swan Song Records inter-office memos). There’s a forward by Stevie Nicks and testimonials from other bands (Heart, MuteMath, Corey Taylor of Slipknot, etc.) about how much they love to get the Led out. There’s also the fun of swiping and scrolling on a device that would have been unimaginable during those ’70s-era national tours.
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Stream of Musiek
Las Vegan Michael Williams is changing the way we watch concerts.
April 30th, 2013
Bottlerock is the next big music festival. The May 9-12 event is taking place in Napa Valley, California, and will feature more than 60 bands, three stages and, of course, food and wine. Highlights include the Black Keys, Kings of Leon, the Flaming Lips, Jane’s Addiction, Alabama Shakes, the Shins, Jackson Browne and Primus.
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Stage
Jaymes Vaughan's ‘Race’ to the Spotlight
Can the Chippendales host extend his 15 minutes of fame before the time runs out?
April 16th, 2013
It’s Friday night at Chippendales, so the audience of mostly bachelorette parties is rowdy and sloppy-exuberant. The emcee, Jaymes Vaughan—tall, tan, blond, blue-eyed, square-jawed with Indiana Jones regrowth and muscle-y muscles—is basically a human Ken doll with a goofy sense of humor. And I have spent all day following him around in the name of … um, research. Watching Jaymes cavort onstage, I realize the effort I spent politely averting my eyes when he changed clothes throughout the day was wasted.
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The Best of Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend
April 2nd, 2013
Viva Las Vegas is an exercise in endurance. Endurance of your ear plugs, your liver, your ability to fit into vintage shoe sizes. The 16th annual rockabilly extravaganza taxes even the most ardent fan. By the Sunday jiving contest, the host praised contestants for being able to dance, much less stand. But dance they did, and it was glorious. Here are some highlights from the March 28-31 weekend at the Orleans.
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