Giving a Shit
How an Anti-establishment Music Festival Brings the People Together
By Andrew Romanelli | Photos by Tyler Boshard
For several years now, as we get to the last week of September, people ask me wherever I go, what I’m up to that weekend. Any other time of the year I’m hardly ever asked this, and they never seem to be prepared for my answer. “Don’t you mean Life is…” A barista says to correct me, raising an eyebrow as I peek in the backroom where a giant taxidermied bear stands. “No, I mean Shit.” I responded.
I’m talking about Life is Shit, a music festival that has become a cultural staple in Las Vegas, putting out an experience that is unlike anything you’ve attended in this city before and it just wrapped up its twelfth year. With a tongue-between-cheeks name that counterpoints Life is Beautiful, it’s DIY origins are well documented (if you feel so inclined to research) so I’ll give you the short version: When corporate interests started buying up property downtown and started LIB they didn’t see the need to include the artist and musicians who were carving out a scene and apart of the culture downtown and went forth without them. Even the residents in the area were treated as an afterthought (I know this personally having lived off 8th & Ogden). A group of friends saw fit to put together a festival representative of the local scene and the people that work, play, and live in Las Vegas. I explain this and some people still get a little miffed about the word shit being so close to life, they’d rather the word beautiful but if we’re being honest with each other life is not always so. Where LIB is denial, LIS is acknowledgment that yeah most of us are trying to make rent, keep employment, battle mounting debt, not lose ourselves to our vices and find some joy while trying to navigate in an increasingly violent, divisive time.
“Life is Shit is no exercise in nihilism or a collecting of doomers (though they are certainly welcome). It’s a come-together community event that happens at the Dive Bar (4110 S Maryland Pkwy). It’s a place to be, exist, express shit, connect, get in the mosh pit, discover new music, fall in love with poetry (again or for the first time) have a blast, dance, laugh, see friends, make new friends, drink until your blood level is PBR (if that’s your thing) all of this without spending anywhere near the majority of your take-home pay.”
There’s no VIP package required to have one of the best times of the year on the cheap where experience is emphasized over profit. Life is Shit has also served as a fundraiser for Girls Rock Vegas, a summer camp and after-school program that works to empower girls, non-binary, queer and trans youth through music creation and performance which helps develop a positive self-image. Adolescents ages 9-17 learn to play electric guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums — most picking up their instruments for the first time. Campers form their own bands, and compose original songs that they then play at a showcase concert at the end of camp. Fundraising is achieved through donations at the door, and an instrument drive/raffle, with prizes donated by bands and Las Vegas businesses like recording studios, record stores, tattoo shops along with LIS regular attendees and people from the broader community.
My first exposure to Life is Shit was one I stumbled upon, arriving (not yet in a blackout) at the Dive Bar, surprised to find it packed and bustling on the outside. It was a time in my life where I was more connected to the bottle and the streets than what was happening and where. Seeing all the people gathered talking, a few shouting across the parking lot, a band exiting with their instruments, someone adjusting a microphone in the parking lot, a girl in a studded choker lighting a cigarette butt dangling from a homeless man’s mouth; there was immense energy radiating that I just had to get in the mix of. I was worried about what it would cost to get in, all I had on me was drinking money, but the music from the next band was rolling out from the doorway and into my chest. I explained my dilemma to the guy at the door and found that they were taking donations, he welcomed me in without hesitation. Small courtesies like these mean the world to me. I can’t tell you that night who was playing only that I became possessed by the music, the atmosphere, the people.
"I was able to get down one tall can of PBR before donating my body to the mosh pit for much of the remainder of the night. I took some hard spills; I tasted the heel of a vegan oxblood Doc Marten. After losing my glasses a few times and finding them again on a sticky splattered floor uncrushed, I asked people I didn’t know standing on the edge watching bodies collide in release to hold them for me. “
I helped people up from the floor, people helped pick me up and collectively we even threw out a guy who decided to use the pit to try and get away with flat-out swinging on people. The comradery experienced could make your eyes perspire. As the festival winded down in the wee hours, I walked a few blocks to a friend’s house to crash. In the morning he was sure I had been in a fight against a group of people (it’s happened before) as my flesh told the story of the mosh pit. Early in the afternoon I was up like a man who found religion for the first time. I was telling everyone at The Garage (nearby bar) about my night as I sipped on two-for-one Bloody Marys for breakfast, I went to Cash 4 Chaos (longtime punk store) to buy a shirt to wear (because I was still wearing the night before) telling the guy behind the counter all about it. I went back to the Dive Bar and told them all about it. They each already knew about Life is Shit but humored me, nonetheless.
It was with great excitement and surprise to find out that it was a yearly event. That next Life is Shit I was invited to read poetry on the Outhouse Stage. I showed up promptly at the beginning, 4:20 p.m. as the first band was getting started, the outside Outhouse Stage was getting set up: A microphone, PA system, a giant inflated PBR can, and a toilet was what it comprised of. I wouldn’t go on to read for another 8 hours or so, but I wanted to be there for the entirety of it, to re-experience what I had the year before. I didn’t know most of the bands but that didn’t matter. Each brought their own energetic sound from the stupid vulgar to the melodic. Guitars crashed; bodies followed. After each band played, we stepped outside for the Outhouse Stage where acoustic sets, comedians, and poets enthralled the people. The evening went on, the crowd got larger creating an intimate, connected feel and I threw myself into the pit each time it took off until it was my turn to read outside.
“I had stashed a couple of drinks in the toilet, triple-fisting at one point while I read my shit to the blotto-eyed, amped-up crowd with crushed cans in their hand taking deep draws from vapes, blowing thick clouds of sweet-smelling smoke into the night. It was a twelve-hour, memorable experience.”
The next year we were all in the midst of COVID, isolating and everything was getting canceled. Life is Shit stepped up for the community and gave people a reprieve by doing something special, a twenty-four-hour Shit-A-Thon. You could stream the event live which consisted of music videos from local bands, artists across the country, and bands from around the world. Some of the videos were made specifically for LIS. There were mock MTV Cribs moments, poetry read and filmed at locations around the city, surreal commercials from sponsors, even bits of history about the festival itself. For many viewers, they were introduced to the trio behind Life is Shit for the first time. Jack Evan Johnson (Founder), Tsvetelina Stefanova (Director), and James Howard Adams (Artistic Director) hosted the event for the entire 24 hours, chatting between videos, and playing calls from viewers who could leave voice messages. People tuned in not just locally but from all over, even internationally. Aside from the videos I had sent in reading poetry, I vowed to stay up the whole twenty-four hours with Jack, Tsvet, and James — tuned in, leaving voice messages throughout the day, night, and into the next day blurring the line between annoyance and amusement; I became a voice for the twenty-four-hour gang (which we were affectionately named) offering poems, love letter writing, divorce paper writing, whatever, provided they donated to Girls Rock. That experience uplifted many people. To this day I still receive messages from friends, family, and others I don’t know personally expressing how needed it was for them to laugh, be entertained during a time of uncertainty, and to see the community gathered in that way considering the circumstances. Life is Shit was there in it, with everyone. That year the money raised for Girls Rock Vegas reached a record.
LIS resumed in person the next year and the Outhouse Stage became officially all poetry which was a great success.
“I loved to see people come outside between band sets, talk about the performance they just watched, then get pulled in by the words of the poet standing there before a toilet, behind a microphone speaking visceral vulnerability, poems that brought voices from neighborhoods and groups often ignored, poems that expressed the pressure of working in the service industry, poems of abuse, of fighting back, of love twisted up in hot sex, poems with purpose that resonated with the audience who had previously associated poetry with archaic verse they were taught in school, with academic ivory tower woes, with trite cliché journal poems, all that, to the people’s surprise was shattered for something honest. “
I watched poets get approached with tears. I heard people say for the first time they liked poetry. Shit is beautiful. It was only fitting that the toilet, later that night, was raffled off — sharpie-marked with our symbols and signatures.
Charlene Stegman Moskal reads from the toilet as the sunset fades over Maryland Parkway
Stephi Blue reads from the Outhouse Poetry Stage.
Growing up in Vegas you get accustomed to the changes, the death within expansion. The transient nature of this city has made community a challenge. Though more people these days are sticking around, calling Las Vegas home. Still, this is a city that serves others, and we are its workers, preservers, its caretakers. While our Arts District is more about shopping, booze, and dining than art, the price of concert tickets and residencies might call for you to dip into that 401k (if you’ve managed to keep one), and for years Life is Beautiful enacted corporate occupation on a neighborhood a few weeks (set up, the event, then takedown) out of the year pushing out my homeless neighbors, making the seniors that live in my building walk a few extra blocks to a bus stop, car lot or shuttle and just making life, in general, difficult instead of beautiful. We persist. What made the area vibrant of culture and character gets stripped and is reminiscent of scenes from the original film version of Red Dawn or drone footage of North Korean streets you can find on YouTube. If you live in one of the buildings impacted by LIB they give you a wristband for free entry. So, for a few years, I went to check it out being that I was living in it anyway. I saw some good performances, and a lot of not-so-good performances, but felt little connection outside from friends I ran into. It was commerce, not community in any way shape or form. Total opposite from the experiences I was having at Life is Shit. You can get a lot of perspective standing outside the Murder Mart on Fremont with a $3 canned drink that costs $12 inside LIB with people who will never be able to afford getting into a festival like that. This city is like no other.
This year (2024) at Life is Shit I was honored to take over the Outhouse Poetry Stage from my friend and fellow poet James Norman, hosting and curating the poetry lineup. The opening set on the stage was The Jewel Tones, a young group of musicians who met at Girls Rock Vegas which was wonderful to see what community effort can bring about. In reflection of past Life is Shits I thought about the synchronicity of time in it, to happen upon an event years prior, not knowing what it was and years later being a part of it, playing a role in sharing the experiences I have enjoyed each year. This time around I would run inside to watch part of a band’s set then back outside to ensure the next poet was present, ready to read. I felt a parental connection to the younger poets, beaming with pride at how well they took to the audience performing brilliantly. I observed Jack, Tsvet, and James in a new light as they too went back and forth keeping the festival rolling, calling out raffle numbers, tending to various things, even getting their own bands ready to perform (Jack Shit, Same Sex Mary) and James Norman too, who this year brought his poetry to the main stage with a band and helped me with sound on the Outhouse Stage. I’m looking forward to next year.
James Norman reading his poetry to live music with band (Ol’ Jimmy Vagabond and the Peanut Gallery) formed just for Life is Shit .
“I know it is difficult these days to trust in people, to believe when it is easier to stay on one side, you on the other but I believe in my city, your city, which is our city. I see what can be shared, what can be accomplished together without having to buy our way into anything.”
Our tourism industry grows but so do we as our contributions unfurl our stories. I see in events like Life is Shit that when you put heart and soul into something it returns and reverberates in abundance. In the close tightness of the festival, I have watched true diversity without orchestration, I have seen art thrive in spite of everything. I don’t need to see the band lineup to know that Life is Shit will be amazing. I look forward to the bands I know, the ones I will get to know – later adding their songs and albums to my playlists. Perhaps a testament to the festival is the growing number of poems that are being written about it. I already envision an anthology in the near future containing the memories, stories – all the shit, all in one place.
If you’ve never been I encourage you to come check it out. If you think the music isn’t your thing, the poetry, the bar, come anyway. If you show up and feel out of place, come find me. I won’t let you stand alone. All you need to do is show up.
Stay regular with the freshest shit on the festival by following via Instagram @lifeisshitfestival or visiting BadMoonBooking.live/
Andrew Romanelli is a slot machine raised in a supermarket, a writer, poet, and consummate flâneur.
He remains in service to his community as an activist for the disenfranchised and a teaching artist. His first poetry collection, Rotgut, (Zeitgeist Press) was released in 2022, followed by two poetry chapbooks Supermarket Poems and One More Night.
