In support of First Avenue's year-long celebrating their 50th birthday last April, we present you with a few more fun facts commemorating the historic contribution First Avenue Productions has granted the music industry over the last 50 years!
"Roughly 10 percent of the stars on the outside wall are left blank, for the staff to add to as they see fit. The newest addition was Macklemore.
Speaking of the stars, they are repainted every 10 years, most recently in 2010. “Don’t be scared in 2020. It’ll be ok,” joked Dayna Frank.
The stars were painted as a way for the club to market itself to a larger audience. First Avenue’s former general manager Jack Meyers recalls the decision vividly:
“Bands in clubs were new in the ’80s. But we fell into the national network, where these bands were trying to get on the radio. And come on, new wave was big, we were new wave, but nobody was gonna play your record in the market. So you played First Avenue. They would play here, and then after a few years some of them were playing over there [points to Target Center], like U2. And they go, ‘Oh U2, they were so good!’ And I’d go, ‘They played First Avenue four times.’ That’s our business. No, you’ve never heard of them tonight, but you WILL! So we started putting the stars on the wall, and then they would walk by and go, ‘Wow, U2!’ I thought that was a good idea, to teach our audience. So that’s why we have the stars. It really did catch on. And then the bands would get mad if they didn’t get up there. It was just a marketing effort, obviously. A sensible marketing effort.”
Andrea Swensson, - The Current
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