In less than a month, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones will return to perform in Boston. But this time, they won’t be ‘Live from the Middle East.’
The Student Union Programming Council announced Monday the Boston-based ska band will highlight the University’s annual Spring Thaw concert on Friday, April 27 at the Armory.
The Spring Thaw has featured several smaller bands in past years, mainly due to Programming Council budget restraints. According to Co-chair of Concerts Joshua Karpf, a junior in the College of Communication, having two smaller shows to begin this year gave the Council some financial flexibility.
“We had a decent amount to put a big show together,” Karpf said. “When we saw the Bosstones were available and wanted to do the show, we dropped everything else. Everyone knows them; they’ve had a lot of exposure on the national scene.”
The April 27 weekend is the biggest weekend for colleges to put on shows, Karpf said. He and fellow Co-chair Darin Bresnitz began planning the Spring Thaw following Winter Break, working with New York-based Concert Ideas to find an act.
“They’ve got a list of bands looking for dates to play that you can search,” Karpf said. “They have a lot of experience dealing with bands and agents. It helps, because a lot of acts will try to lowball you on the price.”
In addition to the Bosstones, the Programming Council contacted acoustic rock act The Pat McGee Band and rap/R’B act The Roots before the Bosstones committed to play the Armory roughly two weeks ago, Karpf said. Since then, everything has moved quickly. However many arrangements are yet to be made.
“We need to make arrangements for a stage, lights and generator to be brought in, since the Armory has almost no power to do anything,” Karpf said. “We still have to deal with the [Boston University Police Department] also. Security is obviously an issue, especially with the Bosstones.”
Though the SUPC won’t have the 4,000 tickets in their hands until early next week, details on sales have been set. Tickets will be $10 each, and will go on sale through Residence Hall Associations and the Local Students Union on Tuesday, April 10.
The next day at 10 a.m., University-wide sales will begin at the Student Center Lounge in the basement of the George Sherman Union. Anyone buying tickets will need their Terrier Card, but ID holders will be able to purchase more than one ticket.
“We want to ensure this is a BU event, that our students can get tickets,” said Perri Shapiro, Assistant Director of the Student Activities Office and adviser to the Programming Council.
While there is no set limit on the number of additional tickets a student can buy, Shapiro said they will keep individual sales “within reason.”
“I don’t know if we’d let a student buy 50 tickets on their ID,” Shapiro said.
Following initial sales, remaining tickets will be available at the SAO office in the GSU and at the second floor candy counter. Karpf said while the Programming Council sought to keep prices as low as possible, sales were necessary.
“This was the lowest price that would still allow us to put on the show,” Karpf said. “Chances are we’re not going to break even. We usually don’t on concerts.”
The top priority now is marketing. After a concert featuring The Push Stars and Uncle Sammy earlier this year drew only 100 students and criticism for lack of publicity, the goal of the Programming Council is to make sure every student knows about the Bosstones concert.
“I anticipate the show will sell out; maybe not on the first day, but it will,” Karpf predicted. “We’re going to do our best to give the students what they want. If it takes putting a letter in every student’s mailbox, then we’ll do it.”
The Programming Council will hold an informational meeting about the show tonight at 6 p.m. at the Student Union office in the GSU basement.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
