A Hot Fuss

Prior to that, The Killers were just that promising local band that admittedly went through a few lineup changes before ultimately settling into their groove. They had amassed a fanbase locally by playing at a transgender bar called Sasha’s, located adjacent from the Hard Rock Hotel on a one-way street affectionately known in the local gay community as “the fruit loop.” Ryan Pardey was hosting a night called TRASH, building up a local following by “just playing good music” in his DJ sets, spinning cuts from the likes of Morrissey and The Cure. His day job was working as owner and operator of Scaryland Parkway indie coffee shop Cafe Espresso Roma.

“My friend Manny approached me when I was running Roma, like ‘You want to DJ this night at Sasha’s?’ They were doing a drag show there, so there were a lot of transgender people. We had a few drifting through there on our night; that was the built-in clientele. But overwhelmingly, it was hot indie chicks,” Ryan Pardey tells Cuepoint. “I wanted to do something in an edgy club and what ended up happening was a three-to-one girl-to-guy ratio.”

Ryan had booked The Killers previously at Cafe Roma, where unenthused locals were unknowingly sitting in the presence of greatness. Or future greatness, at least.

“People were drinking coffee and reading the newspaper while The Killers played at Roma. Everyone was too cool for school and not paying attention to them when they played. That song ‘Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll’ was about Roma, basically,” says Ryan of the international Hot Fuss bonus track. “Their first performance there was when Brandon [Flowers] and Dave [Keuning] came to Roma, but back then they had a revolving door of people. They just weren’t very good then. They became a great band when Ronnie [Vannucci] and Mark joined. That’s when they finally became a cohesive unit. What Ronnie did — he was the discipline — and Mark was just a solid musician. He’s also just so solid as a human being altogether. They never had that before. They developed that rhythm section and they were really able to play.”

“That was kind of a magical time, because it was when we were getting tight as the four piece that is this version of The Killers, which became the main line up. As Vegas people know, Dave and Brandon started the band with two other guys,” Mark Stoermer told Cuepoint. “Once me and Ronnie joined the band, it changed. Once we started recording a new record, they ditched a lot of their old songs. We started writing together, it was around that time that we were finding this line-up and having some new songs.”

Once Pardey had developed a solid following for his DJ gigs at Sasha’s, the band took notice, asking if they could hop on the bill. In a strange turn of events, he had more of a draw as a local DJ than they did as a band.

“One night I had [DJ] John Doe on the bill, but Ronnie asked if they could play a show that weekend. The big show was the night this dude from American came, a few record labels came. But Rob Stevenson from Island Def Jam was there, so they asked me if they could play that show. They brought in their own sound system for that one as well,” says Pardey. “One of the reasons that wanted to do it at Sasha’s because I was already packing that room every weekend. It was obviously a Killers friendly crowd. I was drawing more of a crowd than they were at that point at the party, so they wanted to make sure it was a slam dunk. So they did and I remember it was packed to the gills.”

Take regular, sweltering 100+ degree Las Vegas summers and combine that with a small, filled-to-capacity room with a mixture of sweaty scenesters and drag queens and the picture begins to paint itself.

“Dave was wearing his fur coat, I couldn’t believe it, it was so ridiculous, some big furry jacket. It was obviously 100 degrees inside and it was hot outside. Then I remember the room just clearing out right after, with John Doe just DJing the set for absolutely nobody,” says Pardey. “I thought I was doing John a solid, like ‘Alright man, I’m putting you on at prime time when the crowd should be ready.’ But it was such a climax that it was too hot to stay in there. It was suffocating.”

“Super, super hot, jam-packed. Ryan had me come in to DJ after them. And it was so hot and sweaty in there, that as soon as the band was done with their set, everyone went outside and I played for an empty room. It was so hot,” says Doe, corroborating Ryan’s tale.

“It was also an exciting thing to play in Vegas [at Sasha’s] because — I don’t even know if it was even legal — but it was 18 and up. That never really happened in Vegas. Other cities like San Francisco had that kind of thing, but in Vegas that was special to be able to get college kids into a bar, basically to watch a band,” Stoermer continues. “That kind of made it more exciting because it wasn’t exactly all ages. We were drawing pretty decent crowds for a local band — 100, 200 people — which made the place packed. It was hot and sweaty, but we had some good shows there as the band was kind of spiraling upwards.”