The historic Gibson Amphitheatre located in Universal City right by Universal Studios will be closing down in September to make way for the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which is already a major attraction in the Florida theme park. Now being a big Harry Potter fan myself, I would love to see something that I’ve wanted to go to brought closer to me just a couple hours in a car, with traffic, instead of paying thousands of dollars to go to Florida and see it there. But not at the expense of seeing something musically historic as the Gibson torn down.
The Gibson first opened its doors back in the year 1972 and has hosted a variety of acts from Bob Dylan and David Bowie to acts from today like Pitbull and KROQ’s Almost Acoustic Christmas and even many Latin musical artist such as the late Jenni Rivera. Such a wide variety of musical talent have performed there it would almost seem insane to shut such an iconic place down.
The news of the closure came very sudden back in April of this year and there seemed like there was no petition or anything to try and stop the closure unlike the huge outrage and attempts to save the infamous punk rock club CBGB a few years ago. Though not as iconic or legendary as CBGB was, this venue still has the rich music history in an age where most of the popular music is just things we just write off and more one hit wonders hit the top forty playlists more than back in the 1980’s and 90’s.
Now don’t get me wrong I’d love to see the Harry Potter Land come to the west coast but at the price of tearing down the Gibson. I would think twice and say “maybe they should find another place to put Harry Potter instead” but for now since it’s too late to do anything about and it’s not like it was the only amazing music venue. In Los Angeles, the Greek, the Paladium and Nokia Theater are still there not to mention the infamous Hollywood Bowl. It isn’t like we will be deprived of amazing live music. To quote Bob Dylan, “the times they are a changin” and we all have to just keep going along with it embrace the past and not forget it.