LAST SPRING, Satellite Ball room’s impending closing produced an outpouring of student grief. The Facebook group, “Coran Capshaw, Save Satellite Ballroom!” still has over 1,000 members almost five months after the concert venue closed. It wasn’t the only musical tragedy, as one student noted in a post to the group, “Losing Satellite would be bad enough anyway, but it’s worse now that Starr Hill closed last summer.” With Satellite’s closing, things looked bleak for the Charlottesville music scene, yet this loss is a potential opportunity for the University Programs Council.
With Starr Hill and Satellite’s passing, new venues have popped up and old ones have stepped up to try to fill the void left by Starr Hill and Satellite Ballroom. Starr Hill’s old location is the new home of Si, which promises to host “regional music” along with dance music and DJs, according to the The HooK. Gravity Lounge has started hosting a larger variety and greater number of concerts. Yet, as many student music lovers will attest, there is still ample room for more.
One of the biggest problems for music venues is balancing capacity and atmosphere. Gravity Lounge is a great space, but it fits a very limited audience. The Charlottesville Pavilion on the Downtown Mall has the capacity for big concerts, but it lacks the intimacy of the old venues and is further limited by its seasonal schedule. Starr Hill and Satellite Ballroom were so popular because of their intimate setting that was still large enough to entice well-known artists. Currently, according to Musictoday’s Chris Warnecke, there are no local venues that hold 400-1,000 concertgoers. In addition, during the Pavilion off-season there is no place for bands that could draw 1,000 or more fans but wouldn’t fit with the more formal atmosphere of the Paramount. Hosting acts from Of Montreal to They Might Be Giants to Girl Talk, Satellite Ballroom drew artists that simply have no place to play if they come back to Charlottesville.
Well, not exactly no place. This is where UPC comes in. Clay Reese, Director of UPC’s PKG Concerts Committee, takes the responsibility quite seriously, saying in an interview that his committee is “committed to filling the Satellite void.” UPC has access to a number of on-Grounds venues, which would otherwise be unavailable to artists. In addition, Reese says, a “UPC survey conducted last semester showed that students greatly prefer on-Grounds venues.” Reese cites the Amphitheater and Old Cabell Hall as two venues that are especially valuable in this effort. Reese promises “several shows for late fall and early spring” that will showcase this commitment to medium-size artists.
This is an effort worthy of the student funds from which UPC draws, yet it is still too low on their list of priorities. Instead, UPC also subsidizes student tickets for shows that are already coming to Charlottesville. For the upcoming Jay-Z and T.I. concert at John Paul Jones Arena, student tickets are $20 cheaper than the normal ticket price. That subsidy, plus “additional service charges,” is made up by UPC, according to Reese. In total, UPC is fronting over $20,000 to subsidize 1,000 student tickets. In other words, each one of you, every student at the University, is paying $1 for your fellow students’ Jay-Z tickets, even if you aren’t attending. (In the interest of full disclosure, I will be attending that concert. Thanks for the discount.)
How could your dollar be better spent? Though there is certainly value in making concerts more affordable, just making all students pay for concerts that only some will attend doesn’t seem like the wisest system. Some may argue that bringing new artists to Grounds has the same effect, but shelling out to attract new artists to Charlottesville is vastly different than simply making some tickets cheaper for an act that is already coming.
On the whole, UPC has a tough task: to find its niche in a very competitive entertainment environment. Students already have seemingly limitless entertainment to choose from at home. We can go to Clemons Library and check out, for free, almost any movie known to man. Or take a trip to the movie theaters on the Downtown Mall or down Highway 29. If we want to attend a concert, Gravity Lounge, Si, John Paul Jones Arena, Outback Lodge, the Charlottesville Pavilion and the Paramount Theater are all options. Yet this vast spectrum is still missing the type of entertainment that Starr Hill and Satellite Ballroom had to offer.
Medium-sized music venues are perhaps the most glaring omission from Charlottesville’s entertainment menu, but certainly there are others. This is the great potential of UPC. By filling in the entertainment gaps and providing more options for students, UPC can improve the University experience for Wahoos of all tastes and passions.
Isaac Wood’s column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at i.wood@cavalierdaily.com.
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