Entries associated with the tag "live music":

UPDATE: Jam Productions has just been announced as the Uptown's new owner, with a winning bid of $3.2 million. Surprisingly, there were no other bids was only one other bid.

It seems likely that the Uptown Theater's years of neglect will be coming to an end. For years, ownership of the building has passed through so many different entities that it's been hard to tell at times who exactly it belongs to. The city's finally taken over, and today it's being sold to whoever drops off the highest bid at the Judicial Sales Corporation downtown. 

The Uptown will probably end up in the hands of one of the major concert production companies working in the city, since nobody without a lot of capital to throw around--and the clout to squeeze public funding out of the city--could finance its renovation. On a short list of likely buyers, locally based Jam Productions ranks pretty close to the top, but they'll have to compete with mega-promoters like Live Nation--current owners of the House of Blues chain--and AEG Live, which produced the recent Rothbury Festival and has started to book big acts at the Horseshoe Casino over the bridge in Hammond, including Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots. (Back in the day the Uptown hosted the likes of Frank Zappa and Bob Marley, so it certainly has the potential to operate on that level.)

Obviously it'll be great for the city to have another big venue--the Uptown's an enormous 46,000 square feet--but I'll be happy just to see such a cool old building shined up and put back to use.

While we Chicagoans still have the specter of the wrongheaded--and thankfully still unpassed--independent-promoter ordinance hanging over our heads, Baltimore is looking to strengthen its city's live music scene by taking the radical step of not treating people who want to put on shows like criminals.

City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake has proposed relaxing zoning restrictions on bars and restaurants looking to host shows and setting up a panel to deal with venues on a case-by-case basis, a much more flexible and intelligent system than the two proposed independent-promoter ordinances, which could've been applied to pretty much any instance of people gathering to watch live entertainment. The Baltimore plan also calls for the creation of an office to "coordinate police, fire, health and other city departments and act as the initial mediator between communities and the businesses," which makes more sense than hassling the cops with advance paperwork for every single event happening in their neighborhood, which both iterations of the Chicago plan have called for.

If her words on the matter are any indication, Rawlings-Blake is motivated by a level of clearheaded logic that's disturbingly rare in city government:

"One of the ways that we can really be competitive is to create a city where people want to live," said Rawlings-Blake. "There's an economic component to enhancing our arts, entertainment and dining in the city."

If Chicago's City Council could approach the city's music scene in the same manner, it might be able to produce something aside from free-floating resentment, like maybe an actual plan to keep live music strong and safe in our city.

Kinda doubt it though.

(Baltimore Sun, via Idolator)