For this year’s KWUR Week, the student radio station dipped into its budget to provide three major live concerts, including performances by MadLib, Electric Skychurch and the Suicide Machines.

Unlike previous years, which featured four or five concerts, KWUR General Manager Nitin Bhojraj explained that the staff reduced the total number of performances to improve the overall quality of each show.

“This year, all the people that we have are big deals in each music genre, so they also fetch a pretty penny as well,” said Bhojraj. “Last year we got around [having three shows] by having a battle of the bands, but this year, more of our energy has been focused on these three shows. Rather that having four lesser-than-par shows, we decided to have three amazing, in-your-face shows.”

The first concert on Thursday, February 21, will be a dance show and include performances by Globoy and the front man from Electric Skychurch. The next show, on Friday, will feature Hip Hop groups Peanut Butter Wolf and MadLib. Both of the shows will be at the Gargoyle in the basement of Mallinckrodt.

The last show of the series on Saturday will reflect the station’s interest in rock, ska, and punk music with performances by Sick of It All and the Suicide Machines. Unlike previous years, KWUR is selling up to 300 tickets for the Saturday show through Metrotix, an online ticket dealer, for $12 apiece. At least 200 free spots will also be available for WU students at the door.

“In all honesty, we lose money on these shows, but we don’t care,” said Bhojraj. “We don’t make a profit, but we feel it’s a service to the WU community. People have a good time, and we’re trying to expand musical tastes. But at the same time, we had to be a little realistic for this show.”

The change in the ticketing policy comes largely as a way to deal with the popularity of the bands performing that night. According to Bhojraj, the final show is almost certain to sell out. While selling the tickets to non-WU attendees in advance might mean that students hoping for free admission will have to arrive earlier, the change was necessary to maintain an orderly event.

“The reason we decided to use Metrotix was because we expect to sell out the show, no problem, and there are to be lots of non-WU people attending,” said Vipin Gandra, who organized the week. “That means there would be lots of money around [if we sold tickets at the door], and we don’t need $3,000 in cash sitting outside.”

Bhojraj said that he hopes that they will not have to turn away any WU students that night, but considering the popularity of the groups, it could be a possiblity. He encouraged students who definitely want to see the groups to either arrive early or to buy a ticket through Metrotix.

Another change from previous years will be the addition of fundraising for a local non-profit choir that the station recently began helping. Meredith Karazin, non-music director for KWUR has been coordinating with the group.

“We’re currently in preliminary stages,” said Karazin. “We just decided that we are going to work with the St. Louis African Chorus, a non-profit arts organization. They hope to foster a better understanding of Africa’s cultural history and art. We’re going to do a philanthropy event and are hoping they’ll have someone at KWUR Week events. It will be a lead up to a bigger event later on.”

The station is spending nearly $14,000 on this year’s events during the week, and makes little of it back even after ticket sales to non-WU attendees. However, they plan on setting up buckets for donations around the Gargoyle, as well as having people come on stage in between the performances to encourage donations. Karazin even compares the event as a whole to be a charity event for WU students.

“KWUR week in general is kind of service event for the whole community because it’s free to all WU students.”

This year’s KWUR Week follows several recent moves by the station to increase its number of listeners and get them more involved with the radio shows. The station recently set up an account on AOL Instant Messenger that allows listeners to send in requests 24 hours a day. The screenname, “KWUR Radio,” has already received requests from people listening over the Internet from locations as far as France, and according to Bhojraj, the service has gone to substantially increase the KWUR’s number of online listeners.

Contact Bernell at [email protected]

Popularity: 1% [?]

 Print This Post

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2002 at 12:00 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.