Paul Ray writes that the music series project for the Lander Festival Street has another organizing meeting on Monday, January 25 at 7:00 pm, at ROCKiT Space, 3315 Beacon Avenue South.
Since the first meeting we have decided to create an Ad Hoc group called “BeHi Music†to try and organize a series of 4 music events over the summer of 2010, performed at the Festival Street next to the Beacon Hill Link Rail station. This series would feature musicians who live, work or attend school on Beacon Hill or groups that contain members that fit that criteria.
This is still in the early stages, still trying to establish the feasibility and identify the steps necessary to make this work, and hoping to start working on actually implementing those steps soon.
Anyone interested in this project is encouraged to attend.
Frankly, you’ll probably generate better neighborhood goodwill and support if you don’t call the group “BeHi Music.”
Ahh, yes, the BeHi term is one that people either seem to like or don’t seem to like. BeHi Music would just be a name for the organizing group, we were thinking that the music SERIES we hope to run at the Festival Street would actually have another name, probably “Beacon Rocks!”, and it’s the series name that the promotional materials would emphasize.
I kind of like the term BeHi, but some people don’t like it because its kind of “cutesy”, others because phonetically it has other conotations. I didn’t want to excluded the south end of the hill, but the anticipated activities so far are all on the north end of the hill, so we could have called it “NoBeHi Music”, if you wanted to have other phonetic implication.
Perhaps we should make t-shirts that say “BeHi Music” AND some that say “NoBeHi Music” and people can choose their own implications. By the way, in this use of the term “BeHi” we don’t actually imply anything beyond Beacon Hill, any other implications fall totally on the person reading the term…
Anyway, come to the meeting and we’ll be happy to discuss names and whatever, as they say, “speak now or forever hold your peace…”
I’m not a fan of the nickname “BeHi” myself. But we’ve been over that one a few times.
Yeah, I don’t really want to sidetrack the comments, but I don’t think people object to it because it’s cutesy or it sounds like a drug reference. People object because it sounds like like something a real estate agent would come up with to re-brand a “questionable” neighborhood so gentrifying hipsters will move into it. It marginalizes the people with deep roots in the neighborhood they call “Beacon Hill” and they understandably don’t like it.
But, aside from that, I’m going to make an effort to go the meeting. I’ve long been interested in the idea of a Beacon Hill music festival, although I’d hate to see the pseudo-jazz-mariachis who practice at El Centro on Thursday nights excluded because they don’t “Rock!”.
I wish you luck in pulling this together and I think it’s a great idea. I’m sending at least one band your way and I hope you will keep us all updated with your progress. I’m curious how it will go working this all out with the city. You might be the first real test case for holding a big event like this on Festival Street so I hope we all will get a chance to learn from your challenges.
p.s. I have deeper roots on Beacon Hill than 99% of the people that live here and I think the term Behi is great. Call it whatever you want, your not marginalizing me at all.
I just don’t see the point in deliberately using a term known to annoy some people in an open invitation for community participation. Likewise, if the events are to showcase Beacon Hill musicians, using “rocks” in the title sets an expectation. At the moment, the message being sent is that this is an event to showcase rock musicians who think the term “BeHi” is funny. It’s fine if that’s what the idea is, but if that’s not what the idea is then maybe these words aren’t the best ones to be using in promoting the idea.
And just for the record, you could call yourselves anything without offending me. I’m trying to offer constructive advice, not be a jerk.
Thanks for the clarification, Brook. We will definately revisit the naming issue, to consider the points made in this thread.
And just to make my own clarification, this music series would definately not be confined to rock music (but it would include it), we were thinking of “Rocks” as more of a generic term, as in “Light rail really rocks!”, but names do make a difference and if we think of the right names here at the start, that just makes it easier.
An even more important part to getting the project going is getting event permits and getting power to the site…
The important thing is the the project gets going and that it is awesome, no matter what it is called. Anyone who would refuse to support it just because of the name is misguided, I think.
(I don’t know if I can come to the meeting, but I will if I can.)
I totally agree about supporting the project Wendi. I hope to make it to the meeting.
I had to stay late at work last night and couldn’t make the meeting. Even though my time is limited I’d love to see this happen. It’s been a long time, but I used to work as a sound engineer and in event production, so I might have some skills that would be useful.