Heads and tales: Make some noise
By Wade KwonThe last-minute City Stages roundup …
Festival of debt: City Stages is $530,000 in the hole — with no real plan to pay it off. So says music festival founder and president George McMillan. His latest suggestions include higher ticket prices, more corporate ticket sales, more public funds and more fund-raisers. Fans, public officials, heck most anyone not actually working for the festival have long suspected organizers were short on ideas on long on bills. (For example, an online charity auction with zero publicity.) The first step is admitting you have a problem, but it looks like the second step won’t be paying off the gaping hole of debt.
The three-day event starts tonight downtown; tickets are $28 per day. Headliners include Hank Williams Jr. (pictured), Los Lonely Boys, The Beach Boys, Cameo and Shinedown. The weather: tonight will be hot in the 80s; Saturday afternoon will be partly cloudy and hot, high in the upper 80s, with a chance of early evening thunderstorms, dropping to the upper 70s by nighttime; Sunday afternoon will be partly cloudy and hot, high in the upper 80s, dropping to the upper 70s by nighttime.
• Debt to fade in Stages [Birmingham News]
No vacancy: It’s not all bad news. The festival can take some credit in bringing in tourists to spend money at area hotels and restaurants. Also, on tap this weekend, more than 5,000 Presbyterians meeting at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex. Great, just what we need, all those Presbyterians crowding the after-party at the Nick …
• Convention, City Stages fill city hotels [Birmingham News]
Drop it like it’s Hicks: We swear, we’re not on the chronic when we tell you: The Birmingham News is reporting that on Saturday night, Miller Lite stage headliner Snoop Dogg and hometown hero/American Idol Taylor Hicks will be performing. Together. On the same stage. At 10:50. Our money’s on “P.I.M.P.” or “Let’s Get Blown.” Go, white boy … go, white boy!
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Complete City Stages 2006 coverage.
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In other Idol news:
- Ruben Studdard, Idol 2003, won a $2 million lawsuit against his former manager, who’s in bankruptcy and unlikely to have the cash. Studdard headlined Stages in 2004.
- Birmingham is finally being considered as a site for “Idol” auditions, after its stellar track record with Hicks, Studdard, Bo Bice and Diana DeGarmo. Tryouts could take place this fall at the BJCC.
- Taylor Hicks: People magazine’s Hottest Bachelor.
- And our pal and film producer Alan Hunter is a judge in a new reality show hunting for an acting “Idol.”
• Taylor Hicks will sing with Snoop [Birmingham News]
Also:
- City budget hinges on to-may-to / to-mah-to pronunciation
- Birmingham-Southern to field D-III rock, paper team, adding scissors squad by 2009
- It’s so on, chair people
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