Concert free after sparse ticket sales

Spring Fair made its concert free of charge this year after it failed to sell enough tickets to fill the Rec Center.

Only 500 tickets were sold for the concert, which featured Blackalicious and Pharcyde, according to Dan Coleman, co-chair of Spring Fair 2003.

Miscommunication between the Spring Fair committee and Ticketmaster caused the concert to be posted online too late to attract many sales, Coleman added.

"Because of the short notice on Ticketmaster, most of the sales were from on-campus," he said. "We did sell several hundred tickets on campus but it wasn't a lot so we just felt it would be a bigger draw if we just opened it up to the public."

Events are usually posted on Ticketmaster months in advance, but the Blackalicious concert was posted online only a few weeks before the event.

"That kind of hurt some of the ticket sales," Coleman said.

Although Spring Fair spent about $25,000 on the bands and $10,000 on production costs, Spring Fair Nighttime Entertainment Chair Gregg said Spring Fair came out with enough money to put the concert on for free.

"Once we finally got out money in order on April 20, we basically realized we had enough money," he said. "It was the last minute but we decided that we were able to make it free."

But Coleman said the band's lack of its regular emcee also figured into the decision.

The Gift of Gab, the group's emcee, did not perform due to health problems, Gregg said.

"I [thought] the fans of the band might have just stayed away or might have thought $10 was too much if they weren't a student," so the Spring Fair committee made the concert free of charge, Coleman said.

Director of Student Involvement Jeff Groden-Thomas is overseeing refunds for purchased tickets. Those who bought tickets must apply to the University for a refund.

More than 1,200 people attended the concert, ranging from community members to students from the Maryland Institute of Art (MICA).

"The response at MICA was a lot more widespread than here or at Towson," Gregg said. "More people [there] seemed to know about [the band], and the people who knew about it seemed really excited."

Although many Hopkins students were not familiar with Blackalicious, Spring Fair 2003 sought to diversify the music offered on campus.

"We wanted to get a group that was dynamic to get a style of music on campus that was different from what we've seen this year," Gregg said. "We wanted to catch a popularity wave with [Blackalicious], not someone who had peaked in 1996."

Although the curtains in the Rec Center were down, Gregg said this was not to make the concert appear well-attended but to improve the acoustics.

"It just helps the sound and kills the echo," Gregg said. "That was the problem with the Roots show; they had loud, blunt sounds that were echoing in that large building."

The Roots show was sold out at 1,800 tickets, but only 1,200 people attended this year's concert. Gregg said this is partially due to the group's West Coast background.

"A lot of people [at Hopkins] come from the East Coast," Gregg said. "Blackalicious is from Los Angeles and draws a lot of popularity from the West Coast."

Spring Fair '03 considered holding the concert outdoors in order to bring several bands to broaden the appeal, but they eventually abandoned the idea as unfeasible.

"Outdoors poses a lot more problems that we didn't want to tackle with this concert, and it's never been done," Gregg said. "Production costs triple outside. When you're talking about putting on a loud, festival concert outdoors, you need [sound equipment] really powerful and that tends to be more expensive."