Georgetown finally did the impossible: bring a performer on campus that students recognize, if not exactly respect. A dismal production, though, frustrated students who were not expecting the utter chaos that they found.
The Coolio concert, sponsored by the Senior Class Committee and What’s After Dark, was originally supposed to be staged on the Multi-Sport Field. However, the weather prompted a last minute move into Leo’s. While the planning for the original venue seemed well done, the back-up plans were lacking.
Most noticeably, the quality of the sound system bordered on offensive for the performers involved.
“Someone said that the mics weren’t on so people couldn’t hear us,” Andres Fuentes (MSB ’09), External Manager of the a capella group Superfood, said. “But we really didn’t care,” he added.
Superfood should have cared, though, and should not have accepted what happened to them. No one could hear them and the only way to know Superfood was singing was to watch their mouths moving.
A sound system which malfunctioned as badly as the one used for this concert is unfair to both the performers who prepared for the concert and the concertgoers who actually wanted to hear the performances.
Elsa Heffernan (COL ’08), Chair of the Georgetown Programming Board, which assisted SCC with the concert, said that normally they ask an outside company to do the sound system for concerts. This time Ted Parker, an adjunct professor from the Program in the Performing Arts was recruited to work the sound.
Chances are that the concert would have avoided the many problems which arose had they asked WGTB, the campus radio station known for its successful concerts.
Unlike Superfood, people could hear but not see Groove Theory. When the concert moved indoors, the stage size shrunk and it was too small for Groove Theory to perform on. Students had to be shuffled in order to provide a space for them on the floor. In order to see their dance, you either had to be in the front row or Roy Hibbert.
“The performance was stressful because of the area we performed in,” Groove Theory Administrative Director Elise Addington (COL ’08) said. “Students encroached on our area and a student was even poked during the performance,” she said.
While the effort to bring in someone like Coolio should be applauded, the standards of the production should not be tolerated. In order to keep students interested in future concerts and to persuade artists to keep coming to campus, the sponsors must do a better job organizing the concerts and keeping the crowd under some control, along with providing an adequate sound system.
Heffernan said that GPB will be sponsoring GirlTalk in November in conjunction with WGTB. “We’ll definitely be using a different sound system for that,” she said.
Organizers should learn from the many mistakes that were made. Since the next concert is being done in conjunction with WGTB, hopefully it will not be as poorly run.
