The Student Union Programming Council has made a $15,000-$20,000 offer to college-rock band Dispatch for the annual spring concert in the Armory, according to Programming Council Concerts Chair Josh Karpf. The concert will conclude the Union’s BUnited Springfest during the last full week in April.
Karpf, a senior in the College of Communication, said the band has not yet responded to the offer, which was made last week. He said the monetary offer is approximately what Dispatch normally charges for its appearances.
“We know they want to do New England dates that weekend, and we think the offer we made is pretty good,” Karpf said.
The concert will be funded by Programming Council and the Student Alumni Council, Karpf said. He said the council made a funding proposal to administrators before Winter Break and was granted none of the money it asked for. The council will approach college governments and other campus groups to help fund Springfest and the concert, he said.
Karpf said the concert will cost students at most $10 to enter the 4,000-seat capacity Armory, although the council hopes to charge as little as $5.
“That’s pretty cheap for the bands we’re going to be bringing in,” Karpf said. “It costs a lot to even make [the Armory] work acoustically.”
Karpf said if Dispatch agrees to come, the band could be part of a twin bill with hip-hop band The Roots. Other names SUPC has considered for the concert are Counting Crows, Ben Folds and Wyclef Jean, he said.
“Any of those bands are still a possibility,” he said. “Nothing is certain. Hopefully we’ll get a response from Dispatch this week and from there we’ll just see what happens.”
Karpf said if Dispatch cannot come for the date the council proposed, any night during the weekend of April 26 is a possibility for the show. He said the council is ahead of last year’s planning pace, when it made a late offer to the Mighty Might Bosstones.
“We’re ahead of the game right now,” he said. “We’ve been talking about this since November.”
The show will conclude the Union’s annual Springfest, a week of school-wide Union activities. Planning for the week will begin with a meeting in the College of Arts and Sciences tomorrow night. Programming Council co-chair Lisa Cosenza, a senior in the School of Hospitality Administration, had no comment on the concert last night.
“Students are always saying they want a big concert, and I think Dispatch is a big name — they’re sort of a hometown favorite,” said Union President Zachary Coseglia, a COM senior. “They sold out the Orpheum and Harvard, and I have no doubt they’ll be a crowd pleaser here too.”
CAS junior Jill Weiner agreed with Coseglia.
“I think it would be a positive thing, like when Bob Dylan came last year,” she said. “Having a local band come play is a good thing to promote the Boston scene and make BU more a part of the community. I know they’re a pretty college-based band, so I’d say it’s good.”
Other students weren’t as pleased with the Union’s choice.
“For a person like me who hasn’t heard of them, it’s not a big deal,” said CAS junior Sothy Chea. “I’d like to see someone like Linkin Park. UMass-Lowell got them to perform, and I think BU could get a lot of people.”
Griffin Coop, a second-year School of Theology graduate student said it would take cheap prices and one of his favorite bands to get him to come to a campus concert. He said Syracuse had Wyclef Jean and Redman perform for free during his undergraduate career there, though he said he did not know how much the university paid to have them come to the campus.
Coop said he also didn’t think Dispatch’s spring appearance would do much for Union publicity.
“I think there’s lots of anti-Union sentiment,” he said. “Spending $15,000-$20,000 on a band I’ve never heard of doesn’t convince me otherwise.”
“I’d think I’d like to see System of a Down,” said Robert Smith, a sophomore in the College of Engineering. “That’s deep, emotional stuff — they’re the type that could communicate well with college students.”
As for an ideal band, Weiner could only dream.
“If they could bring the Beatles or Jimi Hendrix back from the dead, that’d be good,” Weiner said.
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