Hootie and the Blowfish’s major-label debut Cracked Rear View outsold Dave Matthews Band’s Under the Table and Dreaming by 7 million copies.
PUBLICITY PHOTOS

When both Dave Matthews Band and Hootie and the Blowfish burst onto the national scene with their major label debuts in 1994, it seemed there wouldn’t be room for the two of them on the charts. Both came from southern college towns (Charlottesville and Columbia, South Carolina), both played a folk-infused brand of feel-good music, and both had captured the attention of mainstream radio listeners with an infectious debut single.

DMB’s “What Would You Say” didn’t crack the top 10, while Hootie’s “Hold My Hand” went all the way to #2 on the Billboard singles chart. Three more top 10 singles propelled Hootie’s Cracked Rear View to sales of 11 million copies in the U.S. alone, tied with Boston’s self-titled album for the best-selling debut release of all time. DMB’s Under the Table and Dreaming sold an impressive– but not as earth-shattering– 4 million copies.

Indeed, there wasn’t room for both.

Hootie’s follow-up, Fairweather Johnson, sold (more)

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Although early reports suggested that there could have been two fatalities in this morning’s blaze at 3200 Long Acre Road in Fluvanna County, Fluvanna fire officials now say the residents were not home at the time of the fire.

“They were on their way to North Carolina,” says Fluvanna Volunteer Fire Chief Mike Brent, who was still on the scene today at 10am as smoke continued to rise from the structure’s charred remains, and investigators from Virginia State Police and Fluvanna County Sheriff’s Department picked through the detritus. Authorities initially announced plans to use cadaver sniffing dogs to search for victims, but a public plea for information about the whereabouts of the residents on this morning’s local television news resulted in a phone call from a friend who gave firefighters the good news.

Now, investigators are “trying to eliminate any possibility that it was intentionally set,” Brent says. The cause remains a mystery, but what is known is that by the time a neighbor called 911 at 1:45am today, says Brent, the two-story wood-sided house (more)

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Bandmate Carter Beauford arrives at the church on Park Street.
PHOTO BY WILL WALKER

As a soft but steady rain– the first in more than a month– fell on his hometown yesterday morning, friends and family of LeRoi Moore filed into Charlottesville’s biggest church to remember the late Dave Matthews Band saxophonist, who died August 19 from injuries suffered June 30 in an all-terrain vehicle accident on his farm outside town.

Eulogizing Moore was the Rev. Dr. William Guthrie, the former rector of Moore’s family church, Trinity Episcopal. Guthrie revealed that the accident had put Moore into a coma, but that he occsionally awakened to greet well-wishers, both in Charlottesville and in Los Angeles where he had a second home and was to begin a long rehabilitation program.

“In Los Angeles,” said Guthrie, “he suffered a fatal embolism that would eventually take his life.”

Though nearly 1,000 people turned out to say goodbye to Moore, only the four men seated (more)

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Looking for a multi-million dollar fixer-upper? Your search may soon end. Recently, board members of the Chi Psi Fraternity house on Rugby Road, known as “The Lodge,” voted to put the 100-plus year old property up for sale for “north of $2 million,” says board member Paul Wright. The fraternity bought the house in 1950.

“The Lodge is at a crossroads,” wrote fraternity president Rob Robertson in a fraternity newsletter last August. “Its very survival is at stake.”

The fraternity had just five pledges earlier that spring, and Robertson wrote that over $200,000 in repairs and upgrades (the Lodge is currently assessed at $903,700) were needed to remain competitive with other housing options for UVA undergrads.

“Structurally, it’s in good shape,” says Wright, “but it needs some work.”

Although the fraternity’s board considered other options for the Lodge, Wright says, they eventually voted to sell the property– the option Robertson described as the “most drastic” because relocating the fraternity would “disassociate us from our rich history and unique location.” With the proceeds from a sale, says Wright, Chi Psi hopes to find a place closer to the other fraternities on Grounds.

If the 10,000-square-foot house could talk, it would have plenty of stories to tell. It was originally built around the turn of the century as a private residence (it has a pool constructed in 1908, as inscribed in the concrete), and the building was later expanded and redesigned by famed local architect Eugene Bradbury in 1914 for the Charlottesville Country Club. According to a 1915 article in the Daily Progress, the Country Club quickly became the center of society and fashion in Charlottesville, hosting lavish dances with a guest list that included Mr. & Mrs. Edwin Alderman and nearly every other distinguished member of the legal, business, and academic communities.

Much later, according to Wright, the Lodge played host to other notables including Prince Albert, Ted Kennedy (who is rumored to have crashed his car into the white pillars out front, says Wright), and the Dave Matthews Band, who played a gig there in 1992. (more)

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Same houses, new logo, now that Eagle Construction has taken Church Hill Homes under its wing.
COURTESY CHURCH HILL HOMES

Mark Twain famously said “the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” and it seems the same quote may hold true for Church Hill Homes. Although the local residential building act known for its craftsman-style construction has been rumored to be in trouble for the past several months, leaving the fate of several developments in question, there’s good news now that a bigger company has swooped in and taken Church Hill under its wing.

“This is a great opportunity even without the challenges we’ve been facing,” says Church Hill owner Josh Goldschmidt, of the deal with Eagle Construction, a 24-year-old privately held construction company based in Richmond. Eagle, Goldschmidt says, has purchased the 11 lots Church Hill owns at Belvedere, the massive green development off Rio Road, as well as two houses already under construction there. But despite those purchases, the Church Hill name isn’t going away. Instead, Goldschmidt and his Church Hill partner, Jamie Spence, have become Eagle employees (more)

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UVA President John Casteen is waiting for “evidence” before agreeing to sign the Amethyst Initiative.
FILE PHOTO

Should the drinking age be lowered from 21 to 18?

That question is being asked around UVA Grounds– and around the country– thanks to the Amethyst Initiative, an effort by a group of college presidents to open an “informed and unimpeded debate” about lowering the minimum drinking age. On Saturday, UVA prez John Casteen told parents of incoming first-year students he still didn’t know whether he’d ink his own name below the 128 college presidents already on the list, according to a transcript of his speech.

“It depends on whether they’re able to develop and publish the evidence,” he said, “to prove there’s not a negative difference in the impact on young people.”

Some people intimately acquainted with the drinking habits of UVA students are hoping Casteen will soon see that evidence.

“I would like to see Casteen sign,” says John Crafaik, owner of Littlejohns, who believes the drinking age should be lowered.

“From my experience, they’re going to (more)

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LeRoi Moore: 1961-2008
PHOTO COURTESY OF DAVE MATTHEWS BAND

One song into his band’s set at the Los Angeles Staples Center on Tuesday, August 19, Dave Matthews managed to silence the nearly 20,000 fans.

“We got some bad news today,” he told the crowd. “LeRoi gave up his ghost.”

Hours before Matthews had uttered the words, Dave Matthews Band saxophonist and founding member LeRoi Moore passed away in a hospital bed at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, just six miles from the Staples Center, from complications from an accident. In June, Moore suffered broken ribs and a collapsed lung in an all-terrain vehicle accident on his farm outside Charlottesville. He was 46 years old.

The news hit his native Charlottesville hard, especially those who knew Moore well.
“It’s been an incredibly difficult couple of days,” says Peter Griesar, keyboardist and original bandmate of Moore’s in DMB. “He was (more)

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Reyn Snelling alleges the door to Miller’s was unlocked.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Her late-night arrest inside Charlottesville’s venerable jazz bar and restaurant provoked the Hook to name Reyn Louise Snelling the “most dedicated Miller’s patron.” The 46-year-old UC Berkeley grad, however, says the events the night of May 25 are no laughing matter, and there’s a perfectly good explanation for why police found her inside the downtown restaurant and bar about three hours after closing time.

“The door was open,” says Snelling, “and I went inside.”

For Snelling, what followed turned into nightmare and she was charged with what she says is someone else’s crime. And because she’d just had a tiff with her boyfriend, there was nobody to post her $250 bail, so she remained in jail for eight days, including her birthday.

The police report for May 25, which her attorney copied at the Charlottesville Commonwealth Attorney’s office, indicates that Officer G.E. Wade responded to an alarm activation at Miller’s at 4:42am. After a manager arrived to unlock the front door, the officer found evidence of a crime.

Police spotted a broken window in a door on the third floor, another broken window in a second-floor bathroom, and drops of what appeared to be blood around the cash register drawer. Police seized the drawer and a carton of cigarettes for forensic testing.

Snelling says she’s looking forward to the results of such tests because they’ll exonerate her. Police say results have not come back from the state lab. (more)

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The sight of a modern day Bluto Blutarski stuffing his cafeteria tray like the immortal Animal House character may be coming to end. In fact, UVA students gathering up their melange of fruits, veggies, and entrees this fall might find themselves performing a juggling act. At semester’s start, all three major dining halls will be missing a venerable cafeteria staple: the trays.

UVA Dining Services’ decision to go trayless at Observatory Hill, Runk, and Newcomb is part of a growing national trend to save water as schools such as the University of Florida and UNC have already ditched the plastic carriers.

“We’ve been encouraging it for close to two years now as a voluntary program,” says the director of dining, Brent Beringer. “There’s a positive interest from the students in doing it.”

Already, UVA’s become know for water conservation. Despite ten years of growth, including a vastly expanded medical center, the university has slashed (more)

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Two employees from the Pantops Food Lion said they started to smell something burning about 7pm this evening and looked out the window to see smoke wafting across the grocery store’s parking lot. When they went outside and followed the smoke, they saw the nearby Taco Bell in flames. “Somebody musta really burned a chalupa,” one of the employees said.

Though the Newsplex was reporting a total loss that “completely destroyed the building,” we noticed that only a large facade and sign on the side of the building had been destroyed. Indeed, the only thing that remained was the “taco” part of the torched facade.

Scott Goss, a chief officer for the East Rivanna Volunteer Fire Company, said no one had been hurt in the fire, including any of his own fire fighters. Goss said there was some additional burn damage in the kitchen, but that the rest of the restaurant appeared to be fine. Goss said the cause of the fire was under investigation, pointing to a fire marshal who was up on a ladder taking video and studying the damage.

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