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It was announced on the local news last night, and in the local newspaper this morning.

Oak Mountain Amphitheatre, located south of Birmingham in Pelham, at the foot of Double Oak Mountain and near the entrance of Oak Mountain State Park, would become known as the Verizon Wireless Music Center-Birmingham.

I have seen the Dave Matthews Band and The Allman Brothers Band there, and it is a great venue to see a concert in.

The venue, owned by Clear Channel (and what isn’t these days) , will go through a series of upgrades, including jumbotron-type screens and luxury boxes. I can see smaller venues needing to take on corporate sponsors to help pay for upgrades and regular maintenance. Oak Mountain had plenty of corporate sponsors already, including Coca-Cola, who had a Summer Star Series.

Oak Mountain is another casuality in the corporate takeover of nearly everything. There was once a time when the name of a venue gave a visitor some sense of where it was located, what was around it, etc. Oak Mountain was the namesake of a state park located nearby. Now, the only way one would know that it is even in Birmingham is because of the tag on the end.

This will be the sixth Verizon Wireless Music Center in the country. Other great venues that have fallen victim to corporate sponsorship are the Lakewood Amphitheatre in Atlanta (now HiFi Buys Amphitheatre) and Deer Creek Amphitheatre in Noblesville, Indiana (yet another Verizon Wireless Music Center).

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 29th, 2004 at April 29,2004 @ 1:09 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.