The full story
On March 22 and 23, 1993, before the Grateful Dead's shows at the Smith Center, State Bureau of Investigation agents stopped traffic on Interstate 40 at the New Hope Church Road exit, searching 265 vehicles and seizing small amounts of mushrooms and marijuana. An ACLU lawyer offered free counsel to anyone challenging the checkpoint. During the band's second show, on March 25, Drug Enforcement Administration agents arresting a man for selling LSD in a parking lot were pelted with beer bottles by a crowd the Daily Tar Heel put at 200 to 300 people, a scene it called a near-riot.
On December 10 Chancellor Paul Hardin refused to let the band play the Smith Center again, saying a 1994 concert would conflict with Bicentennial events. The Bring Back the Dead group rallied in the Pit on February 2, 1994 and at the Franklin Street post office on February 5; organizer Brian Felstein called the campaign an educational project. About 40 people came to the group's forum at Town Hall on February 21, but no town or University officials did. By October 28 Hardin had approved the Smith Center as a possible spring stop on the band's tour after center director Jeff Elliott asked to book it for the money it brought the building. Town Manager Cal Horton said he still opposed the band's return because of traffic, drug sales and crime, but called it the University's decision.
Background on Arts, Music & Performance
Background reading on Arts, Music & Performance. These works cover the broader subject and may not discuss this storyline. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Widely held
PlayMakers Repertory Company: a history
2021
Fifty-year history of PlayMakers Repertory Company, the professional theater founded in 1975 by Tom Haas with Arthur Housman on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill. Chapters by Bobbi Owen, Cecelia Moore and Gregory Kable follow the company leader by leader: Haas, David Rotenberg and Gregory Boyd, Milly S. Barranger and David Hammond, Joseph Haj and Vivienne Benesch. Appendices list productions, Department of Dramatic Art faculty, MFA graduates and administrators since 1975. Published by the department in 2021, 168 pages, online edition.
Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small
Cook, John · 2009 · Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
John Cook's history of Merge Records, the independent label that Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance of Superchunk built in Chapel Hill. Chapters follow the label year by year from 1987 to 2009 and pause for profiles of Butterglory, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Magnetic Fields, Spoon, Lambchop and the Arcade Fire, ending on how it managed to stay small. Advance reading copy of the first edition, published in Chapel Hill in 2009, 289 pages with twelve pages of plates.
Step It Up and Go: The Story of North Carolina Popular Music
Menconi, David · 2020
David Menconi's history of popular music in North Carolina, from the working-class roots of the state's traditions to the Chapel Hill and Carrboro rock scene of recent decades. Menconi, who covered music for the Raleigh News and Observer for nearly thirty years, builds the book on interviews and reporting, and Black musicians' contributions run through it. First issued in print by UNC Press in 2020; this is the online edition, 329 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2022).
The Ackland Art Museum: a handbook published in honor of the Museum's twenty-fifth anniversary (1958-1983)
Ackland Art Museum · 1983
A handbook to the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, published by the museum in 1983 for its twenty-fifth anniversary. It combines a catalog of the collection with a history of the museum, which opened in 1958. Includes a bibliography on pages xviii to xx. 170 pages with illustrations, 22 cm.
Woody Durham: A Tar Heel Voice
Durham, Woody; Lucas, Adam · 2012 · John F. Blair, Publisher
Memoir of Woody Durham, who called University of North Carolina football and basketball on the radio from 1971 until he retired in 2011, written with Adam Lucas. Four decades of Tar Heel games as heard from the broadcast booth. Subjects include radio broadcasters and sportscasters, North Carolina, biography.
The Forgotten First
Albright, Alex · 2013 · R.A. Fountain
Alex Albright's history of the B-1 band, the group of Black musicians drawn largely from students and graduates of North Carolina A&T who became the first Black sailors of the modern Navy to serve above the rank of messman, and the first of more than a hundred Black Navy bands in wartime. The band was posted to the Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, the book's Orange County link. Published by R.A. Fountain in 2013, 194 pages with illustrations and portraits.
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Frederick Henry Koch
Selden, Samuel ; Sphangos, Mary Tom · 1954 · University of North Carolina Library
Brief biography of Frederick Henry Koch (1877-1944), founder of the Carolina Playmakers at the University of North Carolina, by Samuel Selden and Mary Tom Sphangos, with notes by Jonathan Daniels and others. It reprints Koch's own essay 'Folk playmaking' on pages 59 to 68. Published by the University of North Carolina Library in 1954, viii and 92 pages with illustrations and a portrait.
Reviewed in Educational Theatre Journal (1956).
Catalogue Of The Collection, The William Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Center
Hertzman, Gay Mahaffy · 1971 · Herzig Somerville Ltd.
Gay Mahaffy Hertzman's 1971 catalogue of the collection of the William Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Center, the university art museum in Chapel Hill now called the Ackland Art Museum, printed by Herzig Somerville. William Hayes Ackland (1855 to 1940) left the bequest that founded the museum.
Pioneering a people's theatre
Henderson, Archibald · 1945 · University of N.C. Press
Archibald Henderson's short history of the Carolina Playmakers, the University of North Carolina's theater company at Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1945, 104 pages. Written while the company was still in its first decades, it gives a contemporary view of how the Playmakers saw their own mission as a people's theatre.
Working for A Living
Orange County Historical Museum (N.C.) · 2024
Exhibit publication from the Orange County Historical Museum for its special exhibit on working life, shown in Hillsborough from March to December 2024 and concerned with the county's trades and industrial arts. Produced by the museum in 2024, it documents Orange County and Hillsborough history through the work people did.
Hillsborough Artists Cooperative and Skylight Gallery, 1990-2020
Miller, Jennifer E. · 2021
Jennifer E. Miller's account of the Hillsborough Artists Cooperative and its Skylight Gallery across their first thirty years, 1990 to 2020. Topics include art in Hillsborough for that period and the history of both the cooperative and the gallery. Published in 2021, it records a local institution in the town's art scene that would otherwise leave little written trace.
The Federal Theatre Project in the American South
Moore, Cecelia · 2017
Cecelia Moore's 2017 study of the Federal Theatre Project in the southern states, with the Carolina Playmakers at Chapel Hill among its subjects. Topics include theatre in North Carolina in the twentieth century and the relation of theatre to society.
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