Record label owner. Filmmaker. Photographer. Communications guru for the UNLV College of Fine Arts. Shahab Zargari wears more hats than almost anyone else in Las Vegas’ creative community.
His films have screened at San Diego’s ComicCon and won awards at other festivals. His recent project with the UNLV Shoah Survivors Project won best documentary-short in the London Indie Short Festival last year.
At the same time, he has a record label called Geykido Comet Records. For 24 years, it’s highlighted local and international bands.
And this month, it’s doing something different. Zargari has produced a compilation album in honor of another local arts advocate, with part of the sales going to The Trevor Project, which addresses suicide in the LGBTQ community.
On the success of the label
We do have a bit of a cult following, I would say. What ended up happening in 2003, Napster and the stealing of music hurt the big guys in a big way. All of the big record labels, Sony, Capitol, they were really scared of this digital frontier. For us, it was almost akin to mixtapes in the '80s, it was actually kind of a good thing for us. What if people downloaded something online, they could then catch the band when they came through town, pick up a shirt, pick up a CD, that kind of thing. But because the big guys got scared, three of our distributors shut down. Only one of them sent our merchandise back. And none of them paid us what they owed us. At that point, you know, we were like, what do we do? How do we go from here? We kind of shifted and now everything that we do is a project-based.
On dedicating the album in Emily Matview's memory
Emily was a photographer … and so I bumped into her in photo pits, shooting photos of bands and concerts and music festivals. So we saw each other quite a bit. Brock, who I mentioned earlier, frontman for Go Bold, actually created the Punks in Vegas logo, the first logo. … The thing that stood out to my wife and I about Emily and the Punks in Vegas crew, is the amount of support that they would give to local acts, to national acts coming through Las Vegas, whether it was on the website or on the YouTube channel. … Emily, she didn't take money, she just supported the arts in any way, shape, or form. By 2021, by the time she took her life, she did believe that she was a part of the LGBTQ community. The Trevor Project [has] been around since 1998. So we really wanted whatever we did for Emily to be something that there's no red flags, there's no questions about what they do or how they do things. But it really does focus on suicide prevention efforts of LGBTQ youth. … Why the cover album? … Over this 24-plus years of doing this record label, we've done a lot of compilation albums. … A lot of bands, they either give an old song [or] they record a new song. Sometimes when they record the new song, they record a cover song, so we went through and almost like doing like a radio hour. This is all covers, we curated all of the cover songs that were used on the compilation.
On his day-to-day with UNLV
It's a lot; it's seven academic units. It's the Performing Arts Center. It's Barrick Museum of Art, Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery. And not just those units, but the promotion of the performances and exhibitions, as well as the student alumni, faculty news, groundbreaking projects, things of that nature. Between the lectures, performances, exhibitions, events, like the hall of fame, and UNLV Art Walk. The Fine Arts College is the most event heavy college on campus. So I do have my hands full, not only with the amount of things that are to be promoted, but the algorithms that we are fighting on, you know, social media and all of that.
Guest: Shahab Zargari, filmmaker, owner, GC Records and communications specialist, UNLV
