Here's the story on the new amphitheater's grand opening. Also, check out this photo gallery.

ADDENDUM (6/7/10): And here's a review of the first ticketed show there, Backstreet Boys.

By David Menconi
Staff writer

RALEIGH -- Following years of talk and a few frantic months of construction, downtown's new Raleigh Amphitheater opened to the public Friday afternoon. It was just barely ready to go by the appointed hour.

"Of course we're not ready," assistant Raleigh Convention Center director Doug Grissom joked a few minutes before the gates opened shortly after 5 p.m. "But we're opening anyway. The temporary things we've got will work until Monday."

Friday's debut was a low-key event, a free open-house preview that felt more like a cookout than a concert. Doug Van de Zande was among the first attendees inside, and he made a beeline for the beer stand.

"I got the first beer," he said happily.

The 5,500-capacity amphitheater represents Raleigh's latest attempt to boost downtown with an urban alternative to Cary's bucolic Booth Amphitheatre, and a more intimate setting than 20,000-capacity Walnut Creek. Friday's opening had seven local acts on the bill, beginning with gravel-voiced solo folk-blues player Th' Bullfrog Willard McGhee and ending with venerable alternative-pop band The Connells. The show revealed a venue that's still a work in progress with some kinks to work out.

Right up until the moment the gates opened, workers were bustling about setting up chairs and sweeping sawdust from the newly built (as in, that day) decks adjoining the bathroom trailers. The trailers and huge dirt pile behind the stage give the space a temporary feel that won't abate until there are more permanent structures on the site.

On the positive side, the venue already boasts a pretty solid sound setup. Even acoustic music carried all the way to the back of the venue, with nuances clearly audible. The amphitheater sits in a block bounded by Cabarrus, Lenoir, Dawson and McDowell streets, but traffic noise wasn't overly distracting except for the occasional passing train or ambulance siren.

"I like it so far," said Jonathan Lee as he listened to the twangy rock band Small Ponds play. "It sounds good. It's just weird to have something like this right in the middle of town, you know?"

Even when the uptempo guitar-pop band Sleep Control played, the volume was in the family-friendly range. Small children ran around playing on the grassy hillside at the back of the venue.

If the amphitheater's sound is in good shape, however, there are some issues with sightlines. The best view in the house is actually looking out from the stage, which gives a perfect view of the convention center's shimmer wall and the city skyline.

But viewed from the seats, the enormous stage feels out of scale to the surroundings. The roof is so high that it dwarfs the performers and makes them seem tiny. Also, tents over the soundboard and VIP area cut off the view from a lot of the fixed seats at the rear of the venue.

"Yeah, that's a problem," said Raleigh Convention Center director Roger Krupa. "We'll have to do something about that. But it still turned out all right."

The first ticketed show at the Raleigh Amphitheater happens Sunday. It's the Backstreet Boys, one of 12 shows on the scheduled booked by Live Nation. There will probably be another three to six more Live Nation shows there in 2010, along with live theater, a bluegrass festival and possibly ballet.

david.menconi@newsobserver.com or blogs.newsobserver.com/beat or 919-829-4759

Concert promoter Live Nation, eager to boost summer ticket sales as consumer confidence remains shaky, will waive its pesky service fees this month.

The company's "No Service Fee June" started today and runs through June 30.  In all, the offer covers 700 shows, 110 bands and 50 amphitheaters, Live Nation announced.

Around here, it helps customers who buy tickets at LiveNation.com for the Raleigh Amphitheatre's Backstreet Boys concert on June 6.

It will also cover June shows at the Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion at Walnut Creek, including Brooks & Dunn on June 5, Lynyrd Skynyrd on June 18 and Rascal Flatts on June 25.

Naturally, there are catches: The offer doesn't including shipping, parking and other "non-service fees." And you have to buy the tickets via Live Nation's Web site.

Take a drive down South Saunders Street in downtown Raleigh, and you can get a look at the city's still-unnamed amphitheater as it comes together. The stage is going up this week, and it shouldn't be long before photographs supersede renderings like this one. There should also be an actual name attached to it by the end of this week.

"Nothing is worrying us now," says Raleigh Convention Center director Roger Krupa. "We've got our permits, the inspectors seem happy with us about everything. It's gonna happen."

He'd better hope so. The first Live Nation show at the new venue is the Backstreet Boys on June 6 -- just 26 days from now.

If you want to have some fun, ring up a giant concert promoter -- Live Nation, say -- and ask to see the contract for a huge concert -- U2, say -- at a public facility. O.K., maybe "fun" isn't quite the right word. But the indignantion that such questions induce can be quite entertaining.

Entertainment value aside, however, the law says that such information must be divulged when it is asked for. It's interesting to see all the details, financial and otherwise, spelled out about a show like U2's Oct. 3 concert at NC State's Carter-Finley Stadium. And that's why we're here, to jump through the hoops of Freedom of Information Act requests to get those documents in order to pass the data on to you. N&O reporters have been asking to see the U2 contracts for months, and they finally hit paydirt this week. Check the results here.

Also, here's an interesting piece about the finances of the whole U2 tour.

As of today, the proposed new downtown Raleigh amphitheater remains nothing more than that, a proposal. Negotiations are still ongoing between the city and concert-promotion giant Live Nation to build and operate the venue, which would stand right next to the convention center, and nothing is settled. But the Raleigh city council did address a technicality about the issue on Tuesday.

The council voted unanimously to obtain a release on the property lien on the parcel of land where the amphitheater is to be built. The move was necessary because the city sold tax-free bonds to acquire that property as part of the convention center complex. That limits private use of the land -- such as a private company like Live Nation running a concert facility there.

Whether or not it helps the amphitheater actually get built, we'll see. At this point, it would take a minor miracle to have a facility up and running anytime this calendar year. So maybe 2010.

"Live Nation to acquire Ticketmaster for $2.5 billion, plus $700 million in convenience charges."

-- Drew Curtis' fark.com (found via Lefsetz)

If you tried to buy Jimmy Buffett tickets online when they went on sale Saturday morning, chances are good that you found it to be a frustrating experience. This was the first big local test of livenation.com's new ticketing system, and... well, it didn't exactly pass with flying colors. There were widespread reports of delays and glitches, with numerous fans shut out -- you had better luck going old-school, lining up at the venue box office.

"We had a tough weekend," sighs Nathan Hubbard, CEO of Live Nation ticketing. "We had 63 great shows go on sale, and the combination of Jimmy Buffett and Phish traffic just overwhelmed us. Friday and Saturday, we had more than 10 million requests, and it just overwhelmed us. We sold out a lot of shows, but during that huge blast of traffic, a lot of fans had trouble getting access to tickets. In Raleigh, a lot simply could not get into the system. We never want our customers to have that experience. By way of apology, the best news for Jimmy Buffett fans is that tickets are still available."

Another complaint ticket-buyers had was the service charges. When Live Nation announced it was leaving Ticketmaster to handle its own its ticketing, there was much talk about "creating more transparency so the fan can make the decision whether the total amount is worth it." But for Buffett, online buyers reportedly couldn't see either the face price or the extra fees until after the tickets went on sale. And the parking, service and handling fees added $19 to the cost, bumping a $29 lawn ticket up to $48.

Here again, Hubbard pledges improvement and transparency.

"For us, it's a first step in a longer process of bringing more transparency to the process," he says. "The Eagles with their single all-in fee, data tells us that's what the fan wants. So we're moving in that direction, listening to fan feedback. This weekend, it came through loud and clear that we did not do as good a job as we should have."

ADDENDUM (2/3/09): Live Nation and Ticketmaster may merge!

Word to the wise: If you're planning on buying tickets for Jimmy Buffett's April 23 Raleigh date, which go on sale Saturday, don't try to do it online at LiveNation.com. A number of Phish reunion tour dates went on sale today and the debut of Live Nation's online ticket-vending system did not go well, with widespread reports of malfunctions and delays. Since Live Nation's outlets in Blockbuster stores won't start up until next month, your best bet will be to go directly to the Walnut Creek box office.

Monday's paper has a somewhat wonky story about Cary's Koka Booth Amphitheatre at Regency Park (site of last summer's triumphant Avett Brothers show, among others) leaving the Live Nation fold and changing to a new promoter for its roadshows. Nashville-based Outback Concerts is Booth's new "preferred promoter" and will present at least 10 shows there this year. Live Nation, which did 13 shows at Booth as last year's "pp," will concentrate its energies on Raleigh's Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion at Walnut Creek.

Since Booth is about one-third the size of Walnut Creek, the two venues should be able to keep out of each other's way this year. Come next year, however, things might get interesting in a competitive sort of way if the proposed downtown Raleigh Amphitheater is a reality by then. Check here for some further background on that.

When 2008 ended, so did Ticketmaster's contract with Live Nation as the concert giant's exclusive ticket-vendor. For its major venues -- which includes Raleigh's city-owned Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion at Walnut Creek -- Live Nation is taking its ticketing in-house.

So when Walnut Creek starts putting its 2009 shows on-sale, you'll still be able to get tickets at the venue box office just like before. But online orders will go through LiveNation.com rather than Ticketmaster.com. And for phone orders, call 877/598-8698 (a number that covers all Live Nation venues throughout the Southeast: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North/South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee).

Also, some Blockbuster stores will be Live Nation ticket outlets. No word yet on which Triangle-area Blockbuster stores this applies to; but it should be sorted out by next week.

ADDENDUM: Here are the Blockbuster stores that will have outlets, starting sometime in the second half of February:

Raleigh -- 4112 Pleasant Valley Road
Cary -- 2030 Kildaire Farm Road
Durham -- 3438 Hillsborough Road
Durham/Chapel Hill -- 202 NC Highway 54