The first time I attended the Nightclub & Bar Show in Las Vegas was in 1987. I had just started writing for the magazine, which at that point was only two years old and still very much evolving and finding its voice, so to speak. If memory serves the convention that year was held at the Tropicana in an adjacent building at the back of the property. Despite being a fraction of the size of what it is today, I needed a minute or two to take in what I found. The smallish hall was rocking. Its walls reverberated from the hard driving music. Laser lights circled the room, strobes flashed and confetti cannons occasionally filled the air with streamers.