Though Spring Weekend will coincide with the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival for the third year in a row, Brown Concert Agency has booked and confirmed the acts that will be performing this year.
Spring Weekend’s coincidence with the festival has caused booking complications in the past, but this year BCA has not had major issues, said Emma Ramadan ’13, BCA booking chair.
Every year, the Undergraduate Council of Students conducts a poll among undergraduates to determine the most popular acts students hope to see at Spring Weekend. In accordance with the poll results, BCA then tries to book artists and groups using the same middle agents hired by popular concert halls in Providence, Ramadan said.
BCA aims to find acts with “realistic” price tags and from those choices determines “who would actually put on a good show and who’s actually available,” she said.
Zak Fischer ’13, chair of the Undergraduate Finance Board, which makes most of the decisions regarding funding for student groups, said this year BCA was allocated a record sum of $204,100. Most of that money goes toward Spring Weekend, by far the biggest and most expensive event BCA coordinates each year, Fischer said.
This year, Ramadan said, the top 10 results of the UCS student poll were all unavailable or too expensive. But Ramadan said BCA was able to book a good mix of acts for Spring Weekend. Though she declined to provide any information about the identities of these acts, she added that the board “did a really good job this year of balancing big names with some less well known but still recognizable names that are on the rise.” The official lineup will most likely be announced the week before spring break, she wrote in an email to The Herald.
Last year, BCA was able to book Childish Gambino even though he played at Coachella the next day. This year, Ramadan said the scheduling overlap with Coachella was troublesome but “not too catastrophic.” BCA was able to consider many of the acts that played Coachella last year, since most will not be performing there again this year, she said.
In 2010, when the dates of Spring Weekend did not overlap with Coachella, BCA booked MGMT and the Black Keys as the headliners, which multiple students described as a great show.
“That was the best year,” said Sheena Wood ’13.
Ramadan said if the event is outdoors, tickets usually sell out, and close to 6,000 students attend.
“It’s a good experience,” Fischer said. “I’m a senior, I’ve gone all three years so far and I’m going to go again this year.”
ADVERTISEMENT
