Tiki Oasis 2015, Crowne Plaza, San Diego, Part 3, Saturday August 15

Saturday seemed like the biggest day for the Oasis, which makes sense, of course. The pool was jammed at the Crowne Plaza right from the start, as were all of the events and vendor booths.

Starting the music off for the day were the fabulous Little Richards, featuring all of the Schizophonics in their regular capacities, as well as Robert (El Vez/the Zeroes on guitar and vocals), Diana (keys, guitar, vocals) and Brian (guitar, vocals). The band does super-charged versions of Little Richard tunes, from "Miss Anne" to "Tutti Frutti" to "Long Tall Sally" and plenty others, as well as AC/DC's "Rocker"! Everyone gets a chance to sing a number (except Lety, I believe) and all do it well and give it their all and Diana and Pat trade instruments when she takes lead vocals. Punk rock energy, frantic visuals and proper respect given to the material (and a love of polka dots!) makes for a fantastic set of pure rock'n'roll! Absolutely excellent!

Next up were the Phantom Surfers, mixing all sorts of themes with their regular costumes, from aliens to spacemen to cowboys to Anime characters (?!), while putting on a Phantom Surfers-styled show with bad jokes, balancing basses (their bassist does not use a strap so that he can throw around his instrument as much as possible) and rollickin' surf licks. I can't keep track of who is in the band "normally" but this day Russell Quan (Mummies, Bobbyteens and much more) was sitting in on third guitar. Wacky, irreverent surf psychosis fun!

Headlining Saturday night were the other-worldly Man or Astroman? Their high-tech live show provided lots of audience visuals, but did make it difficult to photograph. The band - for this show the group included a female keyboardist/guitarist - performed primarily in the dark with large screens behind them projecting all sorts of images, along with various other light shows. They also incorporated backing tapes for in-between song "banter", but unfortunately, everything seemed to break down during their set, which was distracting and kept things from running smoothly. But the lead singer did run through the crowd and jump in the pool during one song and played a mean theremin, which he proceeded to set on fire! While things were working, the people truly dug their space-age surf sound.

We wanted to do some more room party bouncing that evening, but the line to the "Lost in Space" room traversed the entire hotel floor, so we gave up on that, and were never able to find the other bands we were interested in. So, we hung out with the other Las Vegans at the Frankie's Tiki Room and dug another set by the Swank Bastards (Courtney Carroll played the entire night this evening [still no good pix of her - sorry!], as Clay proceeded to drink copious amounts of alcohol and Gerry played with his other band, the New Waves later). The room became jam-packed immediately upon opening the door and much rum was imbibed while surf licks filled the air and Szandora and Ivana once again danced the night away! Las Vegas debauchery was well represented!