Don here. When Eagle Eyes and I submitted our “Twenty Questions” to CenterStage earlier in the summer, I thought we were being very easy on them.
We didn’t ask about an artists endowment — there isn’t one — or the rumors that ticket sales for the CenterStage grand opening weekend have been slow. And we didn’t ask why there is so little of substance announced on the initial event schedule (BTW: Bringing in The Oak Ridge Boys is actually a good idea. In the context of a full and diverse schedule of events, that is. So where’s the rest? Or is this it?)
We didn’t ask about the parking situation, although there seems to be some problems there too. And we didn’t press too hard on how the Foundation intends to respect the history (ahem!) of the historic Richmond theatres they’ve been handed the keys to, and given considerable public subsidy to oversee and to safeguard. Perhaps, in light of recent events, we should have.
[Incidentally, it's always worth reminding people that this project is, was and will be funded by public tax dollars. So anyone who tries to tell you that CenterStage, or RPAC, or VAPAF — whatever you want to call them — should be able to do with its "history" what it wants — like a private company reworking a new sales brochure — has an awfully broad and somewhat shitty view of both history and what it means to be a leader in the public trust.]
No, we didn’t press Jeff and Jay at Capital Results PR (who officially handled our inquiries about the project — thanks guys!) about such things as the lack of an artistic director — we assumed there would be one. After all, wasn’t there a guy named Joel Katz? And didn’t he run the Carpenter Center successfully for ten years with very little city subsidy? He was fired for truth-telling too.
Why does having an artistic director — a “vision” — matter? Let’s take a look at a reputable arts venue named CenterStage — Baltimore’s CenterStage — which does not take city tax dollars and is overseen by a staff that includes a seasoned artistic director. If you want a good example closer to home, take a look at the diverse international arts programs that the director of The American Theatre in Hampton, Michael Curry, brings to Tidewater each season in a former second-run movie house (click here for the 2009-10 schedule).
Gee, let’s get even closer than that. Think of Kathy Panoff and what she accomplished in building UR’s Modlin Center.
Make no mistake, folks. This stuff matters. You can’t pass your programming and your artistic direction off to a hockey arena promoter (in this case, SMG) and expect to have a “world class performing arts center.” It just doesn’t compute.
Anyway, we promised the boys at Capital Results that we would print their official answers “as is” with a very minimum of linking and editorializing. But forgive us for pointing out facts when the answers fail to do so, and please allow us the opportunity to tell you why some of these questions might just be a wee bit important, and especially to those people who say they support this thing and want it to work.
There was also one “followup” question that we are still a little unclear about.
But you’ll read all about it… as you wade through…
And for those of you coming in late to the CenterStage / Virginia Performing Arts Center story, feel free to plunder our archives. And start asking your own questions. After all, you are paying for this particular “serious fun,” whether you like it or not.
Elvis Presley takes Richmond’s “folk music addicts” by storm in 1956.
Don here. If there’s one thing we haven’t indulged in at Save Richmond, it is a lot of shameless self-promotion. So you haven’t heard a great deal on these pages about my travails as a paid writer and journalist, working on subjects ranging from the 1907 Jamestown Exposition to the state of America’s coastlines to a history of Virginia’s drive-ins to a profile of R&B legend Swamp Dogg (to name a few). It would be a tough shoehorn to fit any of those topics — save Swamp Dogg. More on him later — onto the pages of Save Richmond. Agreed?
Plus: In my paid work, I normally work in something called print. You youngsters don’t know anything about that. But it’s tough to link to a print magazine lying in a doctor’s office. (OK, OK, I did have to bite my lip when my Virginia Living interview with Dr. Ralph Stanley hit the stands. Ralph has played Richmond many times, after all — surely he is relevant to discussions about downtown redevelopment)
But this time I have to make a big exception. I have to point at myself and whoop it up and do a paradiddle. I’ve got to get real gone for a change.
It seems word is spreading about the Virginia Rocks! 2-CD set and museum exhibit that I helped to research and put together along with the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum at Ferrum College. The project took nearly two years and was partially funded by a grant from the Virginia Foundation For the Humanities. I, along with my fellow rockabilliologist Brent Hosier, wrote the 72-page essay of liner notes enclosed with the CD box set, and Grammy-winning sound specialist Chris King mastered the discs.
The box set was released on July 14th. And the museum exhibit is up and hooting now at the Blue Ridge Institute in Ferrum, which is near Roanoke. Get directions here.
Writing about the project, David Maurer at the Charlottesville Daily Progress flat gits it in a recent feature article”:
In the early 1950s the pounding, driving wheels of a new kind of music came highballing up out of the South like a past-due locomotive.
Called rock ’n’ roll, it had the transformative power to alter one’s musical sensibilities with a single song. But rock had an older twin with a flipped-up-collar attitude and a good-natured sneer.
This first-born rebel was called rockabilly. Its blistering, slap-back beat set primal nerve endings aquiver that most teenagers hadn’t known they possessed.
No one did more to teach and spread rockabilly throughout the land than the “Hillbilly Cat” himself, Elvis Presley. Other superstars of the genre include Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Virginia’s own Gene Vincent.
Orbiting this galaxy of rock’s founding fathers was a phalanx of talented singers and musicians. These satellite artists provided live music at local sock hops and maybe cut a record or two, but never ascended onto the national stage.
Rambunctious rockabilly never died per se, but by the early 1960s, when the Beatles started taking rock to another sphere, its golden era had passed. Most of the Virginia artists whose early rockabilly recordings epitomized the raw exuberance of the music slipped into obscurity.
Everybody’s heard that absurdly catchy “Woo-Hoo” song from Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill,” later made more popular through a national TV campaign for Vonage broadband. But did you know the original 1959 song came from an Oregon Hill-based group, the Rock-A-Teens, featuring longtime local ad man Jess Duboy?
If you did, another “woo hoo” for you.
Thanks to a double CD set, released just last week, “Virginia Rocks! The History of Rockabilly in the Commonwealth” (on British label, JSP Records) — unsung local rockabilly acts such as the Rock-A-Teens are finally getting their due. The collection, part of a larger exhibit from the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum at Ferrum College in Southwest Virginia, features the likes of “female Elvis” Janis Martin, Roy Clark, Patsy Cline, Link Wray, Wayne Newton and Norfolk legend Gene Vincent — hero to future rock gods John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison.
There have been other swell feature writeups here and here, and some nice early reviews here and here. If you can’t find it locally (always support your local record store FIRST), you can order the box set here on Amazon.
The idea to document Virginia’s early rock ‘n’ roll had been in the works for a long time, and this whole project was really the brainchild of Roddy Moore, the Blue Ridge Institute’s tireless director. He can well remember the local teen dances and sock hop shows of the late ’50’s — he was there.
Seven years ago, Moore convened a “Rockabilly Roundtable” to meet at Ferrum and discuss the possibility of getting something like an “Early Rock in Virginia” project off the ground. [Now that should be something that Richmond can really appreciate: a Rockabilly Board of Directors.] Convened were record collectors, writers, folklorists, geneologists and archivists — exactly the kind of people you’d want to advise on a project like this.
After its initial run at Ferrum College, the Virginia rockabilly exhibit will travel across the state to various museums and cultural institutions over the next few years. A warning to readers— I’ll be updating the progress of the project, and the box set, from time to time on these pages. Because, sometimes, a little shameless self-promotion (like loud rockabilly) is good for the soul.
Gene Vincent’s biographer Sue Van Hecke served on the “Rockabilly Roundtable.” You can check out her excellent blog here and find out more about the book she just co-wrote with Norfolk rocker Dean Kohler.
For more on Brent Hosier and his excellent Arcania International label — unearthing lost R&B, soul and rock from Virginia’s complicated past — click here.
And for a taste of what you’ll get if you check out Virginia Rocks!, get an earful of the original version of “Woo Hoo” by the Richmond-based Rock-A-Teens via this inspired fan video:
There are philanthropists who give money to things and then there are genuine community heroes. Retired real estate developer W.E. Singleton, a huge fan of Richmond’s underappreciated Parks and Recreation Department, has offered to pay for the restoration of the burned playground at George Mason Elementary all by himself. We salute you, Mr. Singleton. If we had ten more like you around here, Richmond might actually be going somewhere.
The emails are still coming in to SR H.Q. about this. We can’t explain it, except to say that it is further evidence of the impending apocalypse. For the record, “Eagle Eyes,” who wrote the cited Save Richmond post, had this to say: “I guess it is just cranks that read our site.”
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I hope all of you who came out to Broad Appétit on Sunday had a great time stuffing your faces. I know I did. And I hope everyone enjoyed those CenterStage hand fans that were being passed out. Just to remind: Three months away from its grand “gala” — on September 11th!! — the performing arts center still doesn’t have an artistic director, or a complete calendar of events. What has been announced on the schedule are programs that would have played the Modlin Center For the Arts if there had been no Centerstage. (Think about that for a minute). So enjoy those fans, folks — they may be the only windfall that Richmonders ever get out of the city’s ongoing boondoggle.
The much-anticipated Richmond Region Cultural Action Plan has finally been released in full. This “call to action” — sponsored by the area’s arts organizations — is the product of more than a year of independent research, surveys, community meetings and interviews.
In this week’s Style Weekly, I contributed a “Back Page” essay on the proposal, “Call to Arts.” It begins:
The key components of a new and ambitious study on Richmond’s arts and culture were released to news media last week. And, so far, this Regional Cultural Action Plan has failed to garner much audience interest. Instead of the future of the Richmond Symphony, or a discussion on the popularity of the local theater scene, the blogosphere is awash in other cultural discussions over issues such as a possible Shockoe baseball stadium or whether the contemporary rock venue Toad’s Place will ever reopen.
Clearly, relevance is one of the challenges before the region’s premier arts organizations.
But this new study, a 111-page document facilitated by the California-based consulting firm WolfBrown, is worthy of attention. The most revolutionary aspect of the plan is that it was produced by the arts community itself — not a sector known for speaking out, especially with a shared sense of self.
Jim Cramer, the wired and manic host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” has been taking a lot of hits lately for his less-than-stellar record of financial punditry.
Can YOU protect this irrationally-exuberant commentator from the likes of “The Daily Show” and Barron’s Magazine? Give it a try (if you can stop laughing long enough).
A big thanks to our pal Dan P. for passing this fun along.
“We got broads out there to make sure your kids don’t get run over by some hard on.”
Who says the GOP can’t put forward an intelligent, forward-thinking and clear-headed alternative to President Obama’s economic stimulus package? I guess the above clip is what 7th District Republican Congressman Eric Cantor means when he talks about “Working for America.” (Parental discretion strongly advised.)
As first reported by The Plum Line, Virginia Republican Eric Cantor is in hot water after his office responded to critics by sending out a profane web video.
The House whip’s office reacted by sending out an ad of their own (but not created by them), depicting AFSCME workers as curse-spewing bullies.
“On your way to work tomorrow, instead of sitting around with your finger up your a**, look around,” the voiceover says. “There’s a union out there called AFSCME and they’re busting their balls doing a lot of s**t work you take for granted. For example, we pick up your f**king garbage.”
“We don’t take s**t from nobody,” the voiceover finishes. “You got that, a**hole? AFSCME — the f**king union that works for you.”
AFSCME President Gerald McEntee isn’t amused. “Eric Cantor may think the greatest economic crisis in seventy years is a joke, but we don’t,” he said in a statement. “He should talk to the people in Virginia who are losing their jobs, health care and homes.”
Brad Woodhouse, President of Americans United for Change, responded more forcefully:
“Does Eric Cantor believe that peddling profanity-laced filth around the Internet is consistent with the values of the people of Virginia or the country? This is childish, inappropriate and disgusting behavior from someone who is supposed to be a leader in Congress and a role model to others. Eric Cantor’s response to one of the most serious crises facing America in our lifetimes is to spread this filth, denigrate government employees and treat the current economic crisis like a joke. This video has been floating around on YouTube for years - but Eric Cantor’s use of it in this context shows how completely and utterly out of touch he is with the current economic crisis and the lives of his constituents. Eric Cantor should be ashamed and he should apologize.”
And AFL-CIO President John Sweeney added: “During these tough economic times the last thing hard working Americans need is to be ridiculed by a member of the Republican leadership. Rep. Cantor should apologize for insulting America’s workers with this profane video.”
Wait for it…
ThinkProgress points out that Cantor himself is an anti-obscenity crusader who has said “the use of obscenity” in television “should not and cannot be tolerated.”
Cantor himself has railed against obscenity, voting for the Broadcast Deceny Enforcement Act that allowed fines of up to $500,000 on broadcasters for airing any “obscene, indecent, or profane” material. Speaking on the House floor in support of the bill, Cantor condemned “offensive television” that will “damage our society” and “cannot be tolerated“:
CANTOR: “The use of obscenity…should not and cannot be tolerated. As a parent, I share the concerns of many regarding the level of offensive television and radio programs that are transmitted into our homes. The recent violations that have occurred disgusted not only me, but damage our society.”
He added that “we will not be satisfied until those responsible” for disseminating obscenity “have been reprimanded.
But, really, is anyone surprised by this? Making fun of the folks who fix our roads, collect our garbage and care for our elderly — it’s all in a day’s work, right? That’s the irony of this: Cantor’s staff person was on the clock on the public dime when he was surfing YouTube looking for funny videos to send out. Talk about a lazy, do-nothing government bureaucrat!
More fun with video: To watch Rep. Cantor being taken to the woodshed on MSNBC and CNN for spreading falsehoods and avoiding direct questions, click here and here and here.
The final public meeting designed to solicit input and ideas for the Richmond Regional Cultural Action Plan will be held on Monday night at the Visual Arts Center (1812 W. Main Street) at 5:30 PM.
On Monday, February 9 at 5:30pm, we will have another opportunity to hear from, and work with consultants WolfBrown on this historic effort to create a comprehensive plan for our arts and cultural community. Actually, this will be the last time that WB will be in town, so this is your last chance for that in-person opportunity to say what’s been on your mind. And remember, this isn’t just for those directly involved in the arts/culture. It’s for the entire community to be engaged with! We need everyone’s ideas and support in order to make our community a thriving cultural destination and leader in the creative economy. Whatever your vision, bring it on!
So what’s happening on Feb 9?
WolfBrown will start with a brief review of key comments from earlier public meetings and interviews that have taken place throughout this process since June 08. We’ll see the ways in which the Plan has evolved and how the community’s input is driving this process. Then, WB will present their key findings and implications from their research on arts/cultural education and on the financial information from many of the local arts and cultural organizations. We’ll then break out into working groups following the presentation so that the participants (you) can comment on these two important research areas. Everyone will have plenty of time to comment on what’s presented, ask questions, or address the strategies.
This event will be informative and interactive!
Also: Is it just wishful thinking or is there an increasing awareness in the local blogosphere about the importance of art as both a community signature and as an economic engine? Check out these recent pertinent blog posts:
As I walk about in my neighborhood, along with the displays people put out on their front porches and such, I see the bronze statues of Confederate States of America heroes up on marble pedestals on Monument Avenue every day.
What did those statues mean when they were installed? What might they mean to people looking at them now. Yes, I think about those things sometimes. And, why not?
While, what was intended by the creators of art and what the public will make of it later are two different things, both things matter. With public art the reaction is usually all that matters, regardless of what the artist may have intended. In the art gallery world the artist’s statement, which sometimes includes their intentions, carries some weight. Not so much on the street.
As you read this — until they come down, for whatever reasons — there is an unfolding statement that’s being made by someone here in Richmond…
The piece goes on to point out that public art, taken seriously at street-level and viewed as street-scape enhancing, goes a long way to increasing real estate values, encouraging foot traffic and sense of neighborhood/community pride.
[Heaven forbid we'd want to spend our financial bailout dollars on something that actually works and actually gives something back to the community. Besides, Merrill Lynch needs more private corporate jets. So nevermind...]
And, of course, there is Save Richmond’s “Richmond Arts Flashback” series. Look for new installments in the series this week. The “Richmond Arts Flashback” seeks to provide some context to the city’s forthcoming Cultural Action Plan… because the past is prologue to the future, whether we want to learn from it or not.
A couple of years ago, on April Fools Day, we put a practical joke up on Save Richmond and pretended that we had been hacked. Ha ha ha!
Be careful what you joke about.
For nearly a month, this web address has been out of commission because — yes — someone hacked into our most private dealings and rendered us moot. I don’t want to sound all “Black Helicopters” about it but could our hard-hitting installments of the “Richmond Arts Flashback” have ruffled some feathers??! [That's the power of art for you]. Readers should probably go back and read those entries and make the call. Previous installments of the Flashback can be found here, here, here, here and here!
But no matter. Thanks to our favorite internet ninja Ross and the Pharr-Out Team, we are back in business and ready for 2009.
And, in a way, these hackers did us a favorite. This site was long overdue for a re-tooling and this gives us the opportunity. As we make the transition to our new theme, things will look a little funky from time to time here at Save Richmond, but bear with us. In the meantime, we’ll resume regular programming — and the “Richmond Arts Flashback” — very shortly. We’ve also got some special and very illuminating surprises in store (coming quite soon, in fact) so make sure to check back often.
And I gotta say thanks to all of those concerned Save Richmonders who called and sent in emails wondering and worrying about our online status. We really appreciate it.
Richard Florida:“When you think of new forms of artistic and cultural expression, where do they come from? They don’t come from yuppie, gentrified neighborhoods, they come from the streets. And one of the points I try to make in the book is that Arts organizations and cultural organizations, as well as economic development organizations and state and local government, have to get their eyes off the one ball or two balls they know how to focus on. They know how to support the Symphony, the Opera and the Ballet, and in addition build convention centers and stadiums. But what I’m trying to say in the book is that you have to support local-level, street-level creativity. The more investments we make in street-level culture arts, music, writing… not only the more creative that community will be, it will be the kind of community that all sorts of creative sorts will want to move to, and that will be the community that will attract new innovations… new companies.”
This installment of the Richmond Arts Flashback shines a spotlight on the arts as a vibrant and complex economic engine. And what better way to do that than to re-introduce Richard Florida, the man who put “street-level art” into the lexicon along with the term, “Creative Class.”
It’s interesting how many times those phrases, and Florida’s name, have been bandied about over the past half-decade — not least during Richmond’s last Mayoral election, where no fewer than three of the candidates cited him by name (including our current Mayor-elect). Dr. Florida has been a popular reference point for local politicians and movers and shakers ever since his much-ballyhooed appearance in 2003; his buzzphrases have been dropped into the public conversation over the past years to justify everything from new condos to a downtown arts center to the latest coffeehouse opening up down the street.
These days, Florida is the head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto, and he has his own consulting and lecturing firm, the Creative Class Group. He’s written several books on his theories of the economic revitalization of cities. and has often argued against the building of huge cultural centers and sports stadiums in lieu of fostering a diverse, inclusive community where new ideas and voices can more easily “plug in.” His prescriptions include encouraging an indigenous, organic “street-level” arts and music scene — galleries, restaurants, clubs, coffeehouses — and emphasizing quality of life issues such as the cultivation of green space, bike lanes and parks.
Save Richmond has been intigued by the good doctor’s work ever since we started blogging five years ago, but we’re equally as intrigued by his critics. Steven Malanga, in a piece called “The Curse of the Creative Class,” warned that Florida’s theories were often so open-ended that they could be used to justify almost anything “artistic.” Little ol’ towns like Richmond can easily hear one visiting lecture and get confused something awful:
It is exactly because Florida is an exponent of this kind of aggressive, government-directed economic development (albeit with a New Age spin) that liberal policymakers and politicians have latched on to his theories so enthusiastically. To them, an expanding government is always more interesting than an expanding economy — especially if economic growth depends on something so very uninteresting as low taxes and small government. But it is just as likely that the Floridazed brand of aggressive governing will get things as wrong as the builders of sports stadiums and convention centers.
One clear example of how things are likely to go wrong is in Richmond, Virginia, where the city fathers and local economic-development types (touting Florida’s ideas) are trying to revive their downtown by making it a trendy arts district. To finance its efforts, the town recently passed a restaurant tax and is now contemplating raising its hotel taxes — to the howls of local businesses. “They haven’t figured out that those tax increases will probably kill as many jobs as their plan will create,” says Scott Moody, a senior economist with the Tax Foundation.
In 2003, I wrote a Back Page for Style Weekly following Richard Florida’s local appearance and noted how he and Richmond weren’t exactly a natural fit. An excerpt:
The Jan. 31 speech prompted advance newspaper ads that sought personal stories from Richmond’s “gays, rock bands and weirdoes.” All to satisfy the visiting keynote speaker, a professor of regional economic development at Carnegie-Mellon University and in-demand social planner. Richard Florida has isolated an emerging sector of societal movers and shakers in America — the creative class — and citizens like these, normally shunned or ignored by powerful business consortiums, are an integral part of the professor’s theories on city revitalization.
Inside the newly-renovated Greater Richmond Convention Center, at the region’s annual business meeting, Florida laid out his findings. “I feel a little bit like a preacher,” he laughed after one particularly breathless monologue that argued for more emphasis on bike paths, music scenes and gay tolerance and less on big downtown renovation projects.
The sermon was based not on platitudes but on carefully-calibrated data and numerous real-world examples, all documented in “The Rise of the Creative Class” (Basic Books). Florida’s research shows that flourishing cities — Austin, San Francisco, Boston — have “low entry barriers” where visionary entrepreneurs (like, say, former “weirdo” Bill Gates) can plug in easily. Successful cities share common traits but Florida doesn’t just isolate the phenomenon, he instructs cities on how to lure and keep creative talent. Out: Fake downtowns, mall-like structures and closed-door environments. In: tolerant, eclectic places that hold a range of recreational options, lifestyles and cultures.
Pacing and bobbing, well-armed with anecdotes, preaching inclusion and diversity, Florida did come off like a preacher. He’d done this before. And with the wide-eyed sincerity of a repentant Sunday morning pew, there was rapture from the distinguished Richmond congregation. Heads nodded, books were sold, and everyone — from successful businessmen to the mayor himself — concurred enthusiastically during the Q&A period: “Yes, Professor”… “Where do we throw money?”… “What ideas!”… “Tolerance”… local music!”
Apparently, Southern hospitality was at a premium. Matching key points in the professor’s presentation with Richmond reality — before and after the applause — a sensible person would have to wonder if this crowd really understood what they were clapping for.
The Cultural Alliance, whose job it is to “strengthen, advance and represent the arts and culture sector as an essential asset for growing a vibrant, attractive region” is either unwilling to challenge Milwaukee’s obsolete establishment or else they aren’t even aware of how the creative class relates to economic growth. They focus all their attention on…big organizations, as though these are the only existing relevant cultural assets, when, in reality from the creative class perspective, they are the least relevant.
In the next series of posts, Save Richmond’s Richmond Arts Flashback, will document the city’s rich and colorful history of community “street-level art,” including several of today’s successful examples. And it’s all in anticipation of Richmond’s forthcoming “Cultural Action Plan.”
Previous installments of the Flashback can be found here, here, here and here
On Monday night, at Visual Arts Center of Richmond, area artists, arts companies and arts patrons can hear from the consultants firsthand, find out more about what their research has yielded and inquire about the status of the Plan, which hopes to re-structure how organizations of culture in the metro area get local funding. John Sarvay at Buttermilk & Molasses has more here. Podium time is 5:30PM.
Christina Newton of Curated Culture (the fine folks behind the First Fridays Artwalk) is on the Cultural Action Plan Task Force and fills us in on what’s going on. In a recent mass email, she wrote:
The focus of the meeting will be an update on the research for the cultural plan for those in the arts and cultural community. It will include a detailed presentation of the findings of the cultural census survey of over 2,500 Richmond area residents by the consultants working on this project with us, WolfBrown (Alan Brown and Rebecca Ratzkin), as well as updates on the other research areas - financial data from cultural organizations and cultural education programming. There will be an opportunity to ask questions and comment.
Please come to this important meeting and spread the word to friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.
I admit that I originally had some reservations about the Regional Cultural Action Plan — especially their (now closed) Cultural Action Survey — but after having a meeting with WolfBrown’s Rebecca Ratzkin a short time ago, I felt more positive about this new (hopefully fairer) re-jiggering of the limited number of regional arts dollars currently available. What I worry about now is that a good plan will actually emerge, and then it will rot on top of the pile with all the other consultant-driven studies that get commissioned around here and never acted on.
But if you are a Richmond artist, or arts-related professional, you probably owe it to yourself to attend the meeting on Monday and hear some feedback, and also find out more about what’s being proposed.
