Despite my many complaints about the venue (10 foot high stage? sound booth on the side? EVER HEARD OF 18+ SHOWS!?), this is bad. Real bad. This weekend alone, I was planning on seeing the Gossip and Le Tigre on Saturday, and Death From Above 1979 on Sunday. Where are these bands, who went out of their way to book Minneapolis, going to play now, and why on earth would they ever plan on returning here?
A press release from earlier today:
First Avenue Nightclub Files BankruptcyAlso, the Star Tribune reports.
Minneapolis - Allan Fingerhut the owner of the business known as First Avenue, as recently as June changed general management stating, "I'd have to drop dead before I'd ever allow this club to close," is doing just that. After several months of mass confusion, Fingerhut has thrown in the proverbial bar towel and called it quits, leaving 120+ employees wondering what happened.
After agreeing to an order of eviction and conceding that First Avenue had no right to continue to possess the property due to the many serious uncured defaults under the lease, Fingerhut flew into town over the Halloween week-end handed out paychecks, filed Chapter 7 and walked away.
Owners of the building at 701 1st Avenue North had tried to reach a global settlement with Fingerhut making an easy transition for all parties concerned to no avail. Fingerhut turned down all reasonable offers and chose to close, leaving employees and customers without deserved answers and booked touring bands without a place to play.
Steve McClellan and Jack Meyers, who Fingerhut replaced in June, are going ahead with plans to open a concert venue at the 701 location in the near future, hoping to be able to re-hire a lot of good employees who unfortunately lost their jobs this week.
5 comments:
it is terminally hip because i cannot keep up. i am not cool. i am not part of any scene. i am not happy here for many reasons but it is relatively easy to blame it on the city's segments which i feel unconneted with. i love the MIA and the WALKER and FIRST AVE, but i am not cool enough for most of the people, they look right past me. i am not that ugly. that is why. i still like your site!
we must save it!
worry not, yo. from what i've heard (which is almost straight from the horse's patoot), first ave (a venue i personally love-love-love) will be back eventually. with fingerhut out, it will take steve & jack some time to get things back together, but it will almost certainly re-open (hopefully sooner than later). don't freak out, though i know it's tough to keep from doing so.
sound booth on the side of the stage?
just goes to show you, that you know shit about music.
that is the onstage soundboard, ONLY for the band, which the best venues all have. it makes much more sense for a venue to have their onstage sound mixed seperately than the house mix, and it's much easier to relay when something is sounding bad in your monitors, than to have to yell back at the main soundman.
the real soundboard (that controls the mix we all hear) is directly straight back from the stage, right in front of the center bar.
also...
"went out of their way to book minneapolis?"
also shows you are clueless. Minneapolis has long since been a must-stop for any band who is worth a shit.
if you'd grown up here in the 80's, Minneapolis was the best music scene in the country from 1981 to 1985 or so, hands down.
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