Ice Cube concert booked for Santa Maria creating buzz with local music fans

SANTA MARIA, Calif. -- Legendary rapper Ice Cube has been booked to headline a concert in Santa Maria next month at the Elks Unocal Event Center.

The event was announced early Monday evening and is already creating a buzz that can be felt with music fans around the Central Coast.

"It's something great for the community," said promoter Pablo Ramos. "We have a lot of people here so,  we're getting a lot of support. We posted it and social media buzz right now is on fire. It's probably the biggest event that we've had in Santa Maria for long time, so we're excited."

Ramos said people have been so excited with the news, many have said they don't believe it.

"People are talking about it," said Ramos. "This is the most feedback I've received for any concert I've promoted. My social media, I can't even go on it because there's so many notifications now. It's unbelievable. It's beyond what I expected. I had expectations, but the way people are responding to it, is like, wow, we did it. We made that flare go off and people are responding."

Ramos said he is expecting at least 9,000 people to attend the concert, which would likely be the highest attended musical performance in the city's history.

The concert, slated for Saturday, Oct. 22, is the second concert held by recently-formed 805Concerts.

The new company has been created by Ramos to book concerts throughout the Central Coast, from Ventura to San Luis Obispo, with an emphasis on Santa Maria.

"We can do big shows here. There's no reason for anybody to have to drive north or south, two to three hours to go to a concert," said Ramos. "We have the connections and we have definitely the population here that wants to see big events."

Local radio personality Jessica Carroll agreed. She's been on the airwaves for more than 15 years, and currently can be heard on 95.7 The Beat.

Carroll said the reaction to the Ice Cube announcement has been immense.

"This has been less than 24 hours and it's blowing up," said Carroll. "People are really excited for this show and I have no doubt that it's going to sell out. I think we're going to have a lot of fun with this one."

She also pointed out how significant having the concert of this caliber is to the Santa Maria and surrounding area.

Typically, the only time Santa Maria will host a concert with an artist as well-known as Ice Cube is during the Santa Barbara County Fair at the Santa Maria Fairpark in mid-July.

"I think this is very exciting to have an artist like this come to our area," said Carroll. "We're used to having to drive to LA or San Francisco or San Jose. We get our couple of weeks during the year during the fair to only have to drive an hour, but to do it where we can drive 10-15 minutes and see an artist of this caliber, it's a really big deal and I think this is something that we can start supporting, so this will continue to happen in the future. That's the goal. We all want to see these artists, but to have them come here, we have to support these shows."

Ramos added his goal is to have artists from across the musical landscape regularly perform at several different local venues.

"We're going to do different genres," said Ramos. "We're willing to bring different artists that drive past us. We're going to make this a stop. We have relationships with Fremont (Theater in San Luis Obispo), Arlington in Santa Barbara, Ventura Fairgrounds, so we want to be able to do stuff up and down the 805 coast and do different size events."

The first show 805Concerts held was the Funk and Soul Festival that took place in July at the Santa Maria Fairpark.

Ramos added he has a country concert booked at the Elks Unocal Event Center on Saturday, Nov. 19 that will headlined by a yet to named artist.

The Ice Cube show will be held from 1 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Ice Cube will headline the show, which will also feature several other still to be announced artists.

Tickets for the Ice Cube concert go on sale this Friday, Sept. 9. Prices will range from $40-$150.

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