Booking the Sting Break band: quite a balancing act

Fuel, Bubba Sparxxx, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish - all are bands that have played during Sting Break, Tech ' s annual student appreciation celebration.

Though the Sting Break concert is the culmination of a week of events, planning and preparing for the concert starts months before.

" What we try to do first is get student opinion for the concert, " said Matt Trinetti, the Concerts Committee chair for the Student Center Programs Council (SCPC) and a third-year Industrial Engineering major.

" One of the first things we did was to design a poll...to try to pull some ideas [such as] the types of genres people would like to hear, " Trinetti said.

The poll, which was on the SCPC website for a week, listed different genres and artists for students to choose from. This year, about 2250 individuals responded to the poll.

" We try to take as much as we can from the poll and just from us talking...to other students, " Trinetti said. " We realize not everyone ' s going to take the poll. One of the big things that I want to try to do is to get as many people to take this as possible, because it ' s one of the best ways to gather student opinion. "

" The poll is pretty much a gauge; you can ' t make everybody happy all the time, " said Kasey Helton, associate program director of the Student Center. " If the response to country music...was that only 20 percent of campus would go see a country show, then obviously we would stay away from a country act. "

To find potential performers, the committee uses Pollstar, an online service that shows whether an artist will be in the area and available.

They then contact the artists ' agents to get a price and see if they are interested in doing the show - and if they are in their price range.

As a result, artists on the poll were not guaranteed choices.

" A lot of it is who ' s available and who we can afford, " Helton said. " We also look at how they ' ve behaved at other schools. You know, if they tore up LSU, we ' re not going to book them here. Or if they went on late and were hard to deal with. "

Once they have chosen a band, the committee starts by making an offer. If the agent accepts, they send a contract, which is edited and also sent to Tech ' s legal department to ensure that it follows the Board of Regents policies.

The committee then sends it back to the agent, who initials the changes and sends it to the committee for them to sign.

Once the agent has signed, the process is finally complete - though the process can take many weeks before any band is confirmed.

Although the committee decides which bands they are potentially interested in having, they have to keep the budget in mind at all times. Artist fees are expensive, especially for popular acts.

" We always hear, ' Book Outkast, book Outkast! ' and we ' re like, ' Outkast costs $250,000! ' We so don ' t have that money, " Helton said.

The artist fee is not the only expense: production also factors heavily into the total cost.

Last year, the concert portion of Sting Break cost $79,000, while another $30,000 was spent on production, including the stage, lights and the tent.

" Production for a concert this size is pretty costly, " Helton said.

On the other hand, Helton said, " The artist fee may be completely in our league, but their production may [not be]. "

Despite having to work with a limited budget, the process can also be rewarding, in a way. " It ' s kind of like a conquest; it ' s kind of like a game, " Helton said. " We ' re going to get the best band we can for the money that we have. "

So where does all the money come from? The budgeting process starts right after the previous year ' s Sting Break, with a proposal for Buzzfunds that is based on the amount needed for the previous year ' s event.

The Buzzfunds committee has said that " they believe in this event and they really want to do something fun for Georgia Tech students, " Helton said.

" They feel like Georgia Tech students work harder than any other students in the country and they deserve a fun day, and [Buzzfunds] really want to foot the bill for that, " she said.

The committee also seeks funding from SGA. Sting Break bills are scheduled to go before both the Undergraduate House of Representatives and the Graduate Student Senate next week.

A new source of funding this year is coming from the Greek community as well. IFC and Panhellenic are collaborating with Sting Break organizers.

As a result, this year the Concerts Committee has more money than ever before.

" We ' ve got really good leads for this semester, and I think it ' s going to be a great show, " Helton said.

" And there ' s more organizations involved, " Trinetti added. " They wanted to come on board and collaborate. I think it ' s great, because it involves more organizations, which means more students. And that ' s pretty much what the event is - student appreciation day - so what better thing to have than more groups on campus involved? "

The winner of a the campus-wide battle of the bands will open again this year. Sting Break is April 7; the concert will be sometime that evening.