Twenty Minutes To Vegas steals audiences, dragging crowds into their rapidly expanding fan base by fastening a tight grip on their minds and souls. The key to understanding what throws this process into unstoppable motion is watching the first 20 minutes of a Twenty Minutes to Vegas opening set. - The kids think they are there to see someone else, but then Damon Boelte plugs in and commences to shouting in a fevered, Wilson Pickett-style soul bellow, twin brother Dylan Boelte rolls off fluid bass lines worthy of the best mod acts, and Eric Green double-channels Tre Cool and Clyde Stubblefield, flipping his sticks and turning his time-keeping duties into a flurry of movement, a one-man dance revue. Hipsters go from casually bobbing their heads to uncontrollable mass bouncing as TMTV beats down all walls that separate punk, rhythm & blues and garage rock. After 20 short minutes, the crowd has taken up residence in Vegas. - Damon and Dylan, who have played together since they were 10-year-old kids growing up in Lone Wolf, Okla., started working with Green in 2001, at a time when Oklahoma City's punk scene was ramping into a genuine movement. Those early shows, played at epochal OKC punk clubs like the Green Door, displayed a band fueled more by passion than perfection, but as TMTV gained experience and reputation, the punk sounds began mixing and matching with surf instrumentals, the MC5, the Creation, the Zombies and the Jam, along with the effortless rhythm panache of the Funk Brothers. - Around this same time, Green was pushing beyond the confines of rock drumming, becoming a third focal point in a band demanding full attention. His showmanship, which occasionally involved flammable materials and turning his kit into a vaulting horse, kept time with his reputation as one of the areas most indispensible drummers. - Twenty Minutes of Vegas serves up that potent and powerful rock-soul on its debut CD, "Hit It!" The disc, produced by Trent Bell and recorded at the former Chainsaw Kittens guitarist's famous Bell Labs studio, is a perfect calling card for TMTV's grand evolution. - "Hit It!" was a self-released debut that had the feel and intensity of a band with much more experience. This is perhaps the most promising and potentially frightening aspect of TMTV: with each recording and every show, the band is better by leaps and bounds. As the group prepares new material for another disc in mid-2005, Twenty Minutes To Vegas is evolving into the band that only a fool would bet against. If their bravado and self-confidence seems outsized at first, there is no reason to doubt that these three exceptional musicians will meet every goal. Whatever happens in Vegas will not stay in Vegas for much longer. - George Lang, music journalist - the oklahoman
