OUR VIEW: Let the music play

Muncie has several music festivals every year featuring its many talented bands, giving the Ball State University and Muncie communities to opportunity the experience them.

However, other than those three or four times a year, the music scene around town is less than awesome.

The Village doesn’t have a definitive music venue anymore, and downtown has only a few venues that can’t fully support the weight of the entire scene.

The Madhatter has the occasional live band or disc jockey, but it’s a bar before a music venue. Charlie’s Library also has an act come through there once in a while but, once again, it’s a bar first.

Doc’s on Dill was the last place students had in the Village to see live music on an almost daily basis after the Launching Pad closed. However, Doc’s closed because it was competing with its downtown location. That’s completely understandable; two locations of the same company competing with each other is bad for business. But other competition would be great.

Doc’s pretty much has a monopoly on the downtown music scene. The Living Room made a comeback after a six-month absence due to lack of funds. The little-known Backstage Bar downtown has shows. But we should have more. The musicians should have more.

There’s only so much room for bands at a couple venues. The Village definitely needs an every day music venue, whether it’s a bar or just a venue.

If the music festivals we have every year and the dozens of bands that perform tell us anything, it’s that Muncie has the talent and dedication from musicians to have a great music scene. There also are a number of people working hard to make the music scene vibrant and widespread. But a handful of people can only do so much.

To those who have been working to keep the music scene alive: thank you. Please keep it up. But they could use help. Somebody should step up and help out. Open a new venue in the Village or downtown. Give people a place to go to watch and play music. The music scene may be close to a tipping point. It may take only one new venue to ignite an explosion of artists getting their stuff out to the Ball State and Muncie communities.

Students also need to show up. One of the reasons the Launching Pad closed is because not enough people went to shows. Students make up a huge percentage of the music community. We need to support bands and venues.

Until more people get involved and bring in new ideas for venues and other outlets for musicians, Muncie won’t reach its musical potential.

Comments

1 comments

Alex

Sun Nov 8 2009 23:18

Missing BSU talent?
"CAP's Got Talent"!
Ball State's own College of Architecture and Planning is doing a talent show, to showcase the musical, acting and dance talents of the already superbly creative sketch-artists of CAP.

The event will take place November 13th, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. in AB 100. Tickets are 3 bucks at the door.

For questions regarding registration: contact Brett Lezon at balezon@bsu.edu.
Questions regarding organization involvement: contact Branden Clements at bkclements@bsu.edu.

And now, for a bunch of initials,
AIAS, ASHP, SCASLA, SLA, SPA

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