Halloween used to be considered a slow time in Vegas. That is why the promoters of Vegoose last year started the eclectic music festival that offers two days of great music followed by nights that can be spent on the Las Vegas Strip (as opposed to an evening like at most festivals, camping in a field with the bugs, drunks and portable toilets). This year local media have shown a lot of love for Vegoose. Yesterday, Vegoose made the cover of both of the Las Vegas alternative weekly papers (Las Vegas Weekly and City Life). The daily newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, offered a special Vegoose supplement.

But this year, even without Vegoose, Las Vegas has a very busy and memorable Halloween for all sorts of other reasons. First off: there are two funerals for two new Las Vegas ghosts. ICE, a freestanding nightclub, that once had its own reality show ("The Club") is calling it quits with a going-away party that begins Sunday morning at 4 a.m. and runs until noon. In addition to giving the clubs in casinos competition, ICE proved adventurous in its booking of DJs, offering big names behind the turntable most weekends.

Though expected, announced and planned for, the closing of the Stardust is generating a lot of attention and sadness too. The casino that was fictionalized in the movie "Casino" is going out right with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme onstage. This is an old task for them. They were the last performers at the Circus Maximus Showroom at Caesars Palace and before that, I think, they closed out the Desert Inn.

The elite resort nightclubs are also in promotional overdrive for Halloween weekend. Pure at Caesars, for example, has an event on Friday with Gene Simmons hosting the launch of his perfume line (gross!). Then on Saturday, Pure's advertising invites tourists to join a birthday party for the latest Paris wannabe: Ivanka Trump.

Over at the Luxor, the Spotlight Series shines on LeAnn Rimes for shows Friday and Saturday. I wish I could find the time to see her there this weekend. But it seems that the conventional wisdom about this holiday here is about to change. Las Vegas is becoming a very popular tourist spot for Halloween.

We are nearing the one year anniversary of the Movable Buffet. Writing this blog has been such a thrill for me, time has flown, and I can't believe it has been almost a year. But the return of Vegoose reminded me of those early days when I was just starting out writing the Buffet. I especially remember my confused and hopeless attempts during the two-day music festival to explain to the performers I interviewed their single question to me: What was a blog for the L.A. Times?

Thanks to all of you that is no longer a problem. This year the publicist for Vegoose, which takes place this weekend, has kept me posted all year and yesterday arranged for me to speak to Doug Martsch of the band Built to Spill. Of the dozens of performers at this year's Vegoose, Built to Spill is the group I'm most eager to see. (Last year it was Sleater-Kinney.)

Anyway, the reason I am excited to see Built to Spill (as well as the Mars Volta and Cat Power) is that indie music (or college rock or whatever you want to call it) has such a tiny following in Vegas that promoters usually pass on booking these types of bands. I was reminded of this reality Saturday afternoon when I went to Zia record store with my friend Elizabeth to see an in-store performance by veteran songwriter Bonnie "Prince" Billy (the latest alias for Will Oldham who has recorded discs for more than a decade under various monikers, including Palace Brothers, Palace and Palace Songs).

In every other city I have lived (Philadelphia, Madison, Minneapolis and Charlottesville) an audience of a few hundred people for someone like Bonnie "Prince" Billy would be a given. But at this Las Vegas record store on Saturday, Bonnie "Prince" Billy was offering a concert-length set of his music for free, and there were no more than a few dozen people there watching. I was thinking about this pathetic turnout for the in-store when Elizabeth whispered in my ear with surprise: "Where do you think all of these people came from?"

I guess, it is all relative. Elizabeth added a moment latter: "They don't look at all like they are people from Las Vegas." And it was true. The audience looked like slackers from Seattle, music loving co-ed's from Boston and hipsters from New York who all were somehow transported to a concert incongruously placed in the shadow of the Las Vegas Strip. In fact, immediately after finishing the Vegas performance, Bonnie "Prince" Billy and band were back on the road, off to L.A. for their real concert that night.

The point: Las Vegas audiences like bands with hits and only bands with hits. The more hits, the more audience, as simple as math. Music that gets critical acclaim or develops a cult following just doesn't draw people in Las Vegas. So to me, Vegoose is the most rewarding Las Vegas musical experience all year, thanks to its eclectic mix of acts who fall outside the Top 40: jam bands (Widespread Panic and Phil Lesh with Trey Anastasio), mainstream acts (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and the Black Crowes), a taste of hip-hop (Roots and Jurassic 5) and a few of my beloved indie acts.

Anyway, as blogged about earlier on the Buffet and reiterated in today's Review-Journal, this year, ticket sales to Vegoose are not as strong as last year. Certainly the lineup plays a major part in this. The main headliners both nights (Tom Petty and Widespread Panic) are tour veterans who fans have had many chances to see. So I think one add-on like Radiohead or Beastie Boys who are less regularly available on the tour circuit could have made all the difference in ticket sales. Getting those acts was probably out of the promoter's hands.

But among the problems that promoters have tried hard to deal with is that Las Vegas locals are not nearly as attracted to the event as folks from California. This year there has been a concerted effort to change that. The main difference is that Vegoose is now offering one-day passes, since in a tourist town locals often work part of a weekend. So now getting free from work for a day to go to Vegoose will not force locals to buy a ticket to both days of the festival.

The local media is chipping in as well. Tomorrow, the Review-Journal plans a Vegoose supplement and Las Vegas Weekly (where I am on staff) will put Vegoose on the cover. Las Vegas Weekly also is planning to blog Vegoose in real time this year. I will be doing so on the Buffet as well. Ah, yes, blogs have caught on in the past year!

Yesterday I blogged that I did not think CBGB would wind up coming to Las Vegas for a zombie existence like Studio 54 (at the MGM) has here. I just don't think the punk aesthetics of CBGB casts a commercial shadow large enough that Vegas would know how to capitalize on it.

Meanwhile, it looks like Vegoose, the eclectic (though jam-band heavy) music festival that takes place at the end of October, is not selling as well this year as last year. The Business Press looks in-depth at the economics of this year's festival which takes place Oct. 28-29 with performers including Tom Petty, Fiona Apple and the Killers. According to the article, 32% of last year's concertgoers were from Southern California and a mere 10% were locals.

I am really looking forward to Vegoose and can't recommend it enough, if you are considering it. Halloween is traditionally a slow time of year for tourism here, and so deals on rooms should be easy to find. In addition to being a wonderful musical experience, the ticket (general admission for two days: $146.50) is a relative bargain compared to entertainment on the Strip. In addition to the festival, there are sympathetic concerts booked around town (this year including Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds and Trey Anastasio) in the evenings.