Musical acts hard to find, expensive

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.