Musical acts hard to find, expensive

Musical acts hard to find, expensive

By Megan Waitkoff · The Johns Hopkins News-Letter · April 24, 2003

Bidding, begging and booking is what bringing musical acts to Spring Fair is all about. The agonizing fight for Blackalicious and Pharcyde, or for any group for this year, began all the way back in October.

The first task on the docket, way before even discussing the bands, is securing funds. Christopher Gregg, the Nighttime Entertainment Co- Chair for Spring Fair, was one of the brains behind this year's planning. "Basically, you get money wherever you can," said Gregg.

In October, the Spring Fair committee began working with the Graduate Representative Organization (GRO), Homewood Student Affairs (HSA), Student Council, and the Hopkins Organization for Programming (HOP) to get funds together. Donations ranged from a couple hundred dollars and topped off with Dean Boswell's Entertainment Grant, cashing in at $10,000. From there, with a better picture of the budget, Gregg and his committee members began drawing up a prospective band list.

"[Picking a band] is a lot of back and forth with whose schedule fits who," said Megan McCann, one of two Spring Fair Chairs.

According to Gregg, it's also influenced and directed by sponsors. HOP put on concerts last year that mainly featured rock groups. "We were looking to satisfy people that may not have been satisfied previously by this past year's concerts," said Gregg.

Eliot Coz, a junior who attended The Roots last year and plans on attending the concert this year, doesn't see Pharcyde or Blackalicious as that much of a departure from the music choice last year. "The Roots are a band known for their hip hop, rap lyrics and jazzy sounds," said Coz. "They wound up playing a lot of rock covers just so people would recognize what they were playing. Pharcyde's music will probably be even less known."

"Pharcyde has a definite underground hip-feel with witty lines and rhymes," said Coz. "It's not the typical rap group you'd see on MTV."

The next step after narrowing down the choices is an unending game of who's recording, who already has preset tours booked and who's even on tour.

When the list was finally narrowed to about 10 groups, the real collaboration between the Spring Fair committee and Adam Tobey, a booking agent out of New York's "Concert Ideas" company, began. "They take your money, they take your wishes, and they do what they can," explained Gregg. Spring Fair has used Tobey in the past, and has always found him easy to work with, not to mention easy to get a hold of.

Tobey began throwing out bids to groups such as Jurassic 5, Common, Telib Kweli, George Clinton and of course, Blackalicious and Pharcyde, although the groups were confirmed separately. The true test came in February and March, when almost all of the prices for bands were inflated. Gregg suggested that it was due to the fact that, with winter weather bringing a lot of concert cancellations, schools were developing a larger and larger pool of money to bid.

Jurassic 5 was a real consideration. With the group already scheduled to play at a college in New York for $30,000, the entertainment committee and Tobey figured that with them already traveling to the East Coast, booking them for Friday night at the same price wouldn't be a problem. After bidding, however, the New York school came back with a counterbid of $40,000 to keep the group for the whole weekend, and so Jurassic 5 was scratched off the list.

With persistence and a lot of money and scheduling up in the air, Blackalicious was a done deal by the beginning of March, with Pharcyde falling into place a couple weeks later. "A lot of it's luck, getting out there, and having the financial girth to throw your weight around a little bit," said Gregg. Once the musical acts were secured, the mass frenzy of flyering, postering and ticket-selling took off at break-neck speed.

Even though the groups might not be as well known as students might like, most are still planning on attending. "It's a Friday night, there's a concert on campus -- how often does that happen?" said sophomore Greg Brunner. Coz had the same sentiment. "It's a concert, it's an experience, it's there," he said.

If you haven't picked up your ticket yet, they're $5 for students and $1 with a Hopkins entertainment pass. Tickets will be sold outside the dining halls during dinner hours, or on the breezeway during the day. If tickets don't sell out, they will be sold on Friday night starting at 6:30 p.m., when doors open at the Athletic Center.