Sex to Love and Perfect Strangers – A Double Header of Live Rock at the Tuscany Copa Room!

Perfect Strangers Deep Purple Tribute and Sex to Love played the Tuscany’s Copa Room on Friday, March 6, 2026.

Leave it to the good people at the Tuscany’s Copa Room to continue booking some damn fine rock shows for the headbangers of Sin City! Mike, Brian, Grayson, and Mitch continue to deliver the goods at this spot just east of the Las Vegas Strip, keeping classic rock, hard rock, and metal alike, serving as one of the hot beds for our local music scene in these uncertain times with so much competing entertainment. Seldom a week passes I don’t go to a gig here… and that’s a good thing.

Friday, March 6 saw the arrival of two different but equally impressive bands. These are Sex to Love, a group doing new and original tunes their own way, and Perfect Strangers, a tribute to the legendary Deep Purple, featuring some of Vegas’ finest paying homage.

I’ve been meaning to catch a Sex to Love show for quite some time (with how many shows I’ve seen in Vegas over the past two decades I sometimes lose track of who I have and haven’t seen), and that moment finally came on this Friday night (though again, I’m not totally sure if I’d see the band before; I possibly did at Vamp’d back in the day). This rock and roller is pleased to say that this was one of the pleasant surprises of the evening. The vocals were great, and so was everyone else on stage. One of the real surprises was seeing Patrick Vitagliano on stage, who Vegas knows for his own band, the Bones, in which he serves as frontman. This time around, he was primarily a guitar player, but this gave him an opportunity to cut loose and shred away! We even got some dueling leads near the end of the set, which was fantastic. I’ll be keeping these guys on my radar going forward.

I hold the music of Deep Purple in very high regard. Although the band is far more massive in Europe than the United States, where they’re only known for like three-or-so radio hits, there’s little in their catalogue I don’t like. Yeah, you’ll see the occasional band covering “Smoke on the Water” or “Highway Star,” but what about a whole set paying tribute to England’s finest? This was my second time catching Perfect Strangers, following a July gig out at the Sand Dollar (to date, the only time I’ve been in that venue). No one was more delighted than me to see the likes of Mark Lewis and Joe Calitri taking the stage here, shedding some light on a back catalogue criminally ignored and underrated by American audiences.

Perfect Strangers takes their name, of course, from the band’s 1984 reunion album that brought back together the classic MK II lineup of vocalist Ian Gillan, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, bassist Roger Glover, keyboardist Jon Lord (RIP), and drummer Ian Paice (Paicey being the only man on every Deep Purple album). You won’t mistake the guys in Perfect Strangers for the actual members of Deep Purple, but I’m a hell of a lot more concerned with musicianship than appearances. And they deliver on the front that counts.

Choosing a setlist for a band with a huge back catalogue of hits is a challenge. I’d argue it’s even more of a challenge for a band like Deep Purple, given that very little of their catalogue is known in the United States outside of a few minor hits here and there (yes, everyone’s heard “Smoke on the Water,” but I challenge any entry-level headbanger in the USA to name 10 Deep Purple songs). Personally, I found this setlist to be incredibly satisfying, with it including the obligatory American rock radio hits, but also some deeper cuts, primary from the classic 70s Ian Gillan period. Songs were played that ranged from the cover of Joe South’s “Hush” from their 1968 debut SHADES OF DEEP PURPLE (the lone track from the Rod Evans era played) to the 1984 PERFECT STRANGERS reunion album, although the band did throw in a cut from Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow years when Deep Purple was on hiatus, that being their 1982 hit “Stone Cold” from the Joe Lynn Turner-fronted STRAIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES record. The era of the band from future Whitesnake founder David Coverdale was represented in the title cuts of the first two albums he did with the band, BURN and STORMBRINGER. By far the biggest and most welcomed surprise for this Deep Purple fan was the inclusion of one of my favorite deep cuts from 1972’s MACHINE HEAD album, “Pictures of Home.” Are there some other tracks I would liked to have heard? Of course there are (“King of Dreams” from the 1990 Joe Lynn Turner-fronted SLAVES AND MASTERS album comes to mind) but these guys did a damn good job putting a set together than does justice to the Deep Purple catalogue… with them doing justice to the music.

The one issue I had with this evening had nothing to do directly with the bands themselves. Shows at the Tuscany typically start fairly late at night; this is the result of the Copa Room being shared with other productions, including a Rat Pack tribute show that’s been running for several years. A show at the Tuscany’s Copa Room, as a result, doesn’t usually start until after 10pm, with too many shows running until well after midnight as a result. Sex to Love’s set was fairly short, but Perfect Strangers attempted to play a full-length set; this would’ve been appropriate if they were only band on the bill. This should’ve been two separate shows on two separate nights. With the late start times, we should either be getting a) one band doing a single full-length set, or b) two bands doing short sets. Having a band playing a full-length set is fine… but again, if they’re the only band on the bill. When a band has to ask mid-set how much time they have left/how many songs they have time to play, there’s clearly a disconnect somewhere. That said, though, the performances on this evening were damn fine ones, and I doubt anyone in the Copa Room thought otherwise.

This was two great bands delivering some amazing rock and roll at the Tuscany’s Copa Room. Sex to Love’s originals are top-notch, and Perfect Strangers does a great job keeping the music of Deep Purple alive. Fans of rock and roll in Sin City would be doing themselves a favor checking out both bands!

PHOTO CREDIT: Live photos by Dave Childers for ZRockR Magazine – © 2026 – All Rights Reserved.