Fans miss Smith Center’s musical days

UNC alumnus and basketball fan Dalton Mayo loved living on the 10th floor of Hinton James Residence Hall in the early 1990s.

“Everyone was complaining it was the farthest from campus but, for me, it was great. I could look out of the window of my dorm room and the Dean Dome was right there.”

But being a stone’s throw from the basketball team was just one thing Mayo liked about living on South Campus.

The Smith Center regularly held concerts for artists like Pink Floyd, R.E.M. and Fleetwood Mac. Mayo listened to some of the performances and watched fans gather while standing on the 10th floor balcony with his suitemates.

In particular, Mayo remembers interacting with fans when the Grateful Dead visited Chapel Hill in 1993.

“From the balcony, you could look down at the lot and you knew what it was,” he said. “There was a haze over the lot for the entire weekend. We would just walk around for the experience of it and you could just about get a contact high from walking through it.”

From 1986, the year the Smith Center opened, until around 1995, the center was known as both a concert venue and a basketball arena. The center continued hosting concerts until 2008, but they were mostly children’s shows like Sesame Street Live.

Angie Bitting, director of the Smith Center, said the number of concerts began to taper because the arena struggled to keep up with the production demands of some performers

“We couldn’t do Metallica because they had this thing in the middle of the stage that had a hydraulic lift in it that we couldn’t put on the floor because we couldn’t sustain the weight on the floor,” she said. “That show went to Greensboro I believe.”

Bitting said the Smith Center can’t compete with amenities offered at other venues in the area.

“People go to concerts now and expect to be able to buy a beer and expect to be able to maybe go to a restaurant in the venue,” she said. “We weren’t built that way. We were built for college basketball.”

The Smith Center’s last concert was in 2008, when the Carolina Union Activities Board brought Boyz II Men to the arena

Gabe Chess, president of the Carolina Union, said hosting a show at the Smith Center comes with a price tag.

“To merit opening the doors to a 20,000 person arena, we have to have an act that can bring in more than 10,000 students,” he said. “Certainly there are those acts out there but they are so, so expensive to bring out.”

In the past, CUAB has hosted concerts at Carmichael Arena, which can seat over 10,000. But Chess said smaller venues like Memorial Hall are better suited for musical acts.

“Because Carmichael (Arena) wasn’t designed for performances, there are lots of bad seats where you can’t see and just up top there’s really bad sound,” he said.

For his first concert, Mayo saw Janet Jackson perform in 1990 at the Smith Center. Mayo went with his roommate, who grew up going to concerts at Madison Square Garden.

“At the end of the show, he looked over at me and said, ‘I don’t know if you’ll see any better than that one,’” said Mayo.

Though he has fond memories of the musical acts at the Smith Center, Mayo said he prefers visiting to hear the sound of a dribbling basketball.

“There’s a place in my heart for the concerts, but at the end of the day it’s always gonna be home of the Tar Heels.”

arts@dailytarheel.com

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