The disputes, speculations and expectations have finally been silenced: The Cool Kids and Young Ivy are the two hip-hop performers that will try to carry away Alumni Hall Wednesday at 9 p.m. in a concert sponsored by Programming Board. According to Anne Elise DeBelina, the board's programming chair, the concert islikely to attract crowds smaller than those that came to see artists like Maroon 5 or Third Eye Blind performing on campus in the past.
Although the concert takes place today, its promotion did not begin until yesterday.
"We had a fixed date for the concert that we couldn't change, and we did not feel like we could do a lot of promo prior to the break because people would just forget," DeBelina said. "Our game plan for the promo was to get it on heavily after the break."
The Programming Board's plans for the fall term concert have changed several times since the beginning of the year. Programming Board's attempts to book bands such as The Shins and Spoon for the concert were plagued with booking problems, DeBelina said in an interview with The Dartmouth earlier this year.
According to DeBelina, the booking problems are hard to avoid.
"We don't have an actual concert space, and we had to rely on the availability of the sport arenas," DeBelina said. "We have to wait until the sport schedule is set and then hope we can book the bands we'd like."
Students are given a chance to express their preferences before the final decision regarding the concert booking is made through a survey set up by the Programming Board, DeBellina said.
"This time, the band that people really, really wanted didn't get through" DeBellina said. "We didn't want to settle with the second or third band [in the survey] so we decided to try something new."
According to DeBelina, booking problems gave Programming Board an chance to try something different.
"Spending a big amount of money on the band that's only going to appeal to a limited amount of people doesn't really seem fiscally responsible," DeBelina said. "We want to try bring some smaller bands from the different genres instead."
The first of this year's bands chosen by Programming Board, The Cool Kids, were chosen in a new way.
"The decision was made by the Concert Committee, Friday Night Rock and couple of other people [Programming Board has] blitzed" DeBelina said. "They gave us a lot of band names, but we needed to book them quickly so we didn't have time for the regular survey."
According to DeBelina, The Cool Kids were the first band from the list that were available and had a fan-base on campus. Since chosen, the band has been rising to considerable fame, she added.
"There is a core group of kids that are very excited about the concert," DeBelina said. "We booked them earlier, and now they're one of the Artists to Watch 2008, they're in the Rolling Stone, and their music video is getting played."
"Aggressive, risky decisions pay off," she added.
Several students were asked of their opinion of seeing a band they were unfamiliar with. Daniel Volgenau '10 seemed particularly intrigued by its name.
"I'm excited because they are called 'The Cool Kids,'" Volgenau said. "I'm a cool kid. Maybe I'll go."
Young Ivy is the other artist who has been invited to perform. According to DeBelina, the costs of Young Ivy's performance are "minimal comparing to those of the other bands", and his style "should fit well" with that of The Cool Kids.
Fans of the previous concerts should not panic: the spring concert will most likely involve a more famous band, DeBelina said.
"We still hope the students will give this idea a shot" DeBelina said.
