Author: Justin Young
If you’re an avid reader of The Weekly (which I know you are) you might remember an Opinions article published on Dec. 9 of last year imploring you to take the Office of Student Life’s Spring concert survey. It was written in an effort to increase student participation in the often opaque process of booking artists for concerts at Oxy.
As I was the author of that original article, Tamara Rice and Devon MacIvar of the OSL shared the survey’s findings with me. The results and comments from the survey offered an interesting look at the musical tastes of Oxy students, but more importantly, revealed that the student body’s apathetic response to past concerts is our greatest obstacle to attracting artists to campus; an obstacle completely within our power to overcome.
The survey, e-mailed to the student body by Rice on Dec. 4, asked students to rank a number of genres on a scale from one to five. A higher score meant greater popularity. 528 students took the survey. Unsurprisingly, it found that Alternative/Indie Rock, Dance/Electronic, Hip-hop/Rap, Pop, R&B, Rock and Singer/Songwriter were among the favorite genres. They all averaged a score above 3, which means they are all under OSL’s consideration. Pop was the most, well, popular genre with a score of 3.60, barely edging out Hip-hop/Rap with a score of 3.51. Reggae barely missed the cutoff, with a score of 2.97. Blues, Classical, Country and Jazz averaged in the 2 range. Finally, Christian/Gospel was the least popular genre, with a score of 1.39.
The genre results don’t mean much. After all, those seven favorite categories probably represent at least 90 percent of the music in Oxy’s collective iTunes library. Instead, the survey’s value is in its summary of which acts Oxy wants to see most. Strangely, Gym Class Heroes topped the list in the Pop category, making Oxy’s most desired band the only one on the list that we’ve already seen. I guess we really like that Supertramp sample. Other favorites included Kid Cudi, Lady GaGa, Blue Scholars (we’ve tried that before), Andre Nickatina, Mos Def, Beyonce, Maxwell, Alicia Keys, David Guetta, Passion Pit, OneRepublic, Atreyu (I’ve never heard of them either), Animal Collective, LCD Soundsystem, and Santigold (or Santogold or Santo Gold or whatever she calls herself now).
However, identifying an artist the community wants to hear is the easy part. It’s no secret that Oxy is at a disadvantage when booking artists, but it might surprise you to hear that money is not the limiting factor when putting together an event like this. Instead, our size and, ironically, our location in L.A. make it harder to attract artists. According to MacIver, no more than 500 students are usually expected to attend a big-name concert here. That’s less than a third of our school. Oxy has a history of dismal turnouts at concerts, meaning the school doesn’t exactly present itself as an appealing venue. Because Oxy has, as MacIver put it, a culture of free student events, it’s not worth fronting the cost of a concert if students won’t show up. This problem has a simple solution: go to the shows we have on campus.
Our proximity to the heart of the music industry actually complicates the concert-planning efforts of a venue like Oxy, according to MacIver. Concerts held in L.A. require artists to sign a “radius clause,” preventing them from performing at another venue nearby within a certain period of time. As an artist, would you rather play a 500-person concert at some small liberal arts school or would you rather play before a packed crowd at the Wiltern? According to the OSL, Oxy has apparently made some “competitive offers” to a number of artists that students are excited to see, but so far we haven’t heard back from any of them.
But even if Oxy managed to wrangle an artist students want to see, how many of us would actually go? Sure, if Blue Scholars finally played here, the Pacific Northwest natives would show up. But if you voted for OneRepublic would you be a part of that crowd? You should be. If a majority of students showed up for every concert, including KOXY shows, Oxy would strengthen its reputation as a venue.
We’ve had some pretty buzz-worthy bands play here, including YACHT and We Are Scientists, but we would rather do homework while listening to them on our iPods than go see them live. That is what the survey was about: asking students what kind of concert they actually want to see. Now it’s up to us to be actionable. Even if you don’t like Gym Class Heroes, go to the concert when they play here again this spring (. . . thanks everyone), if only to tell the administration and concert promoters that yes, we do want concerts here. Our numbers will speak for themselves. Who knows, you might actually have fun discovering a new artist.
Justin Young is a senior UEP major. He can be reached at jyoung@oxy.edu.
This article has been archived, for more requests please contact us via the support system.
