Tuesday, May 13, 2008

where are they now?

The best summer job I ever had was working in the box office at Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts. We worked ten-hour shifts, four days a week. Almost all the employees were college students, like me. One of my friends, Jim Glancy, stayed with the business and worked his way up to a job in the programming department, hiring the various music acts who played concerts at the venue. Jim's best friend, Joe Kelliher, also worked a couple of summers at Wolf Trap. I've mentioned Joe before.

My favorite memory of Jim is a college radio show he once did at WGMU. All the songs were by rock stars who had died, grouped by cause of death. I think Jimi Hendrix may have been the transition from drug-related to food-related deaths. Or vice versa. At the end of the show, Jim gave honorable mention to Jerry Lee Lewis. Classic.

Eventually Jim moved to New York and took a job doing the same thing at Radio City Music Hall. He and I have lost touch over the years. I'm big on email, he said he would never get an email address. The last time I saw him was on a business trip to New York for the MTV Video Music Awards, which were held at Radio City that year. Before long he was president of Ron Delsner Presents. That company got bought a couple of times and is now part of Live Nation.

Over the weekend I got a new LinkedIn connection from another former WGMU colleague. Thinking about the old days prompted me to type Jim Glancy's name into Google. I was impressed to learn that he had left his job as president of Live Nation to become a partner in The Bowery Presents. He was featured in a New York Times article last year and recently won the Pollstar Concert Industry Award for Talent Buyer of the Year. Gothamist says he's part of the New York music mafia.

So what type of acts is Jim buying for the venues under his control? Mostly artists catering to the New York hipster crowd. I only recognized a handful of names on the Bowery calendar. The one that jumped off the page to me is scheduled for June 21 at Webster Hall. My friend Richard Cheese and his band will make the place swing.

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