Extra, extra, read all about it! Weezer and Ben Folds are coming to the university, and students are pumped.
In the face of all the excitement about this year’s Art Attack and remembering the near-religious fervor that swept College Park last year with Ludacris, I am forced to wonder: Why don’t we do this more often?
The enthusiasm that has greeted Art Attack each year I’ve been here tells me that ours is a concert-starved university. A college campus is a ready-made stage with an almost unlimited audience potential. A campus like ours, especially, situated among well-populated cities including Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis, as well as being the home of about 40,000 music-crazed, iPod-using students, would be a manager’s dream come true for filling seats.
And we are a setting made for large gatherings: Cole Field House, Comcast Center and Byrd Stadium are all perfect stages.
Money being tight is no reason against it. Granted, Jay-Z and Rihanna are probably out of our price range, but there are quality performers who are on their way up or down the hill of popularity and would put on a show for fans for a bargain. We got Luda, a longtime favorite of our generation whose songs we all knew, on his way back to the top for a good deal. It will forever be counted among the best times I’ve had at college.
And let’s not forget the little guys: College campuses used to be the main mode of building a fan base for up-and-coming bands. My dad, for example, had Fleetwood Mac visit his campus weeks before they hit it big. He didn’t go and will rue that decision until the day my brother and I pull the plug, but the fact remains: that’s an experience.
To say you saw Eminem or Justin Bieber back when is a story you’ll brag about for years. Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you about a cousin or friend or roommate who has a band that’s actually pretty good, and why, yes, they are available to perform next month.
Genuinely enjoyable bands such as the increasingly popular Needtobreathe or Griffin House would draw a sizable crowd at a bargain price and have remember-when potential.
You could even charge $5 more per ticket: Kids who would pay $5 will pay $10, especially if such a small jump can snag a markedly more popular artist. You’d be able to get a wider array of genres, instead of trying to pick the one artist who’d satisfy the majority of listeners. Few people go crazy for the genres of both Ludacris and the Weezer and Ben Folds combo. Somebody is going to get left out in the cold each year, and it doesn’t need to happen. With five slightly smaller concerts you’d be almost guaranteed to make everybody happy. With today’s soaring ticket prices, on-campus concerts would prove an oasis for the checkbooks of concert addicts as well as local couples: It’s a perfect date.
Bands love college kids. We’re their target marketing audience because we consume massive amounts of music. Plus, because we also consume massive amounts of alcohol, we’re usually drunk and easy to please. Ludacris could have sung the alphabet, and we’d have gone absolutely nuts for it.
Up-and-comers, past favorites, one-hit wonders, all would fit the bill: The Cranberries, Gavin DeGraw, Wale, Iyaz, Zac Brown Band, Band of Horses, etc.
There are tons of legitimately good bands out there looking for a huge audience of rowdy, screaming, singing, jumping, fist-pumping fans. Let’s be those fans.
Bethany Offutt is a sophomore criminology and criminal justice and psychology major. She can be reached at offutt at umdbk dot com.
