Hemisfair relaunching La Semana music fest. Count its original producers as skeptics.

Editor's Note: This story was updated to clarify how Galaxy Productions responded to the Current's request for comment.

Many San Antonio music fans were caught by surprise when Hemisfair officials earlier this week trumpeted the relaunch of San Antonio's decades-gone La Semana Alegre music festival.

Officials at the downtown park and entertainment development said the new La Semana Alegre at Hemisfair will take place April 25-26 — a two-day event rather than the original Fiesta event's week-plus blowout. Other than touting a bill "spanning multiple genres," organizers didn't share a lineup — even though they offered a "flash sale" of discounted tickets.

Among those blindsided were Bill Lee and Larry Rodriguez, who promoted La Semana from the early '80s until it ran out of steam in the mid '90s. The pair said Hemisfair officials neither contacted them about the plans nor sought their blessing.

"I'd like to think if they were enterprising people, they'd want to create their own name and make it famous," said Lee, who booked national and regional acts including Stevie Ray Vaughan, Peter Frampton, Cheap Trick and Motörhead for the original festival, a fundraiser for the San Antonio Jaycees that started at Hemisfair before moving to Market Street then to the Freeman Coliseum grounds.

The La Semana Alegre name itself translates to "The Happy Week" in English, which Lee pointed out is misnomer for a two-day event.

"In the end, it's pretty cheesy what they came up with," Lee added.

Galaxy Productions, which also books Hemisfair's annual Muertos Fest and oversaw the now-defunct Maverick Music Festival, is handling the new La Semana. In an emailed statement, Galaxy officials said they took inspiration from the original fest.

"The Jaycees hosted a great music event that holds lots of memories for all kinds of music fans, from metal to Tejano to pop," Galaxy chief Faith Radle said in the email. "This is a new version of the festival inspired by that legacy. The goal with this event is to offer a new, quality music experience in downtown that benefits the newly developed Hemisfair."

Rodriguez, who oversaw logistics for the original La Semana, said his phone has blown up this week with calls from past vendors who wanted to know whether he's involved in the relaunch. While he has no problem with someone reusing the La Semana name, he said he's bothered Hemisfair presented the new gathering as a resurrection of the original.

"The name is fine; the copyright on it ended a long time ago," Rodriguez said. "The problem I have is with them saying they're bringing it back. They're not bringing it back. They're doing something new with an an old name."

Rodriguez said he's also bothered Hemisfair officials didn't mention the Jaycees  in their original announcement. Rather than benefit the youth leadership organization, the new event will raise money for the nonprofit overseeing Hemisfair's redevelopment.

While comments on La Semana Alegre at Hemisfair's newly launched Facebook page were generally positive, some posters raised concerns that the new festival will skip over the heavy metal and hard rock central to the '80s and '90s bills. Others balked at buying tickets before a list of performers becomes available.

"Just a ride on. Not THE La Semana Alegre," poster Simon Ortega said. "And certainly not the lineups of the past."

In her email, Radle said a full roster of performers is coming shortly. She also said the bill will include acts recognizable to fans of the original festivals.

"The lineup will be announced in early March, and will be multi-genre, including acts that fans of the previous era of La Semana Alegre will recognize as well as bring in the next generation who didn’t grow up with this experience," she said.

"For this first year, the event will span two-days. Hopefully with time the event will grow and more acts can be brought in to fill additional nights. "

Hector Saldaña, curator of the Texas Music Collection at Texas State University's Wittliff Collections, said it's hard to imagine a new version of La Semana drawing the same kind of rock 'n' roll star power as the one put on during SA's hard-rock heyday.

It's also unlikely to embody the same kind of free-for-all vibe of the original, which sometimes drew as many as 30,000 people downtown, he added. Even so, Hemisfair's use of the name suggests memories of those wild nights hold a certain nostalgia for San Antonians who remember.

"It does say something about the mystique and the power of the brand that somebody wants to use all these years later, even if it won't be as crazy and memorable as the real thing," Saldaña said.

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