Big Boi headlines Sting Break 2006

The Student Center Programs Council has announced that Outkast’s Antwan Andre Patton, commonly known as Big Boi, will headline the April 6, Sting Break 2006 concert. The concert is the main event of Sting Break, a week held each spring designed to give students opportunities to relax. Ludacris performed at the event last year, and other past performers include Fuel and Bubba Sparxx.

Matt Trinetti, a fourth-year Industrial Engineering major and chair of the concerts committee, said that Big Boi was booked during the fall semester.

“Someone [from Tech] who plans parties visited a committee meeting [during fall semester]…and mentioned that he might know someone who knows Outkast and that we might be able to get in contact with him,” Trinetti said.

A meeting with Big Boi’s manager followed, and the committee moved forward to book him as the headlining act, because they felt he would be popular with students. “When we polled students [in the past], Outkast always came up as a top choice. [Big Boi] is pretty much the closest we can get to Outkast,” Trinetti said.

Trinetti said that Andre 3000, the other member of Outkast, does not perform any longer and that Big Boi can perform Outkast songs.

This year’s event is scheduled to be held at Alexander Memorial Coliseum for the second year in a row. It will be the first time that students have been charged for tickets to the concert. “We are not sure what the ticket costs will be yet. We want to keep them as low as possible for the students. We are not sure what is going to happen because SGA is still determining funding,” Trinetti said.

Trinetti presented a bill for $40,000 in additional funding for the concert to SGA this week to help pay for another artist to perform at the event. The bill is currently in conference committee because the two legislative bodies passed different versions of the bill.

“This year we wanted to appeal to more of campus by booking two top artists of different genres,” Trinetti said.

The committee is still working on booking the opening act and is waiting until final funding for the event is known. Trinetti said that the total cost of this year’s event, including two artists, facility costs, food, publicity and security, is just over $180,000.

Results from a student survey on the committee’s website listed Cake and Collective Soul as the top choices for the opening act artist. Yellowcard, Sister Hazel and Jason Mraz were the next favorite choices. Trinetti said that the majority of 3,000 responses to the survey said that the second artist should be from the rock alternative genre.

“If we end up not getting the full funding from SGA, the only artist that performed in the top five of the poll that we could make an offer to is Sister Hazel,” Trinetti said.

Trinetti said that if the committee gets the full funding from SGA, it can book either of the top two bands if they are still available.

“Because of the Student Center policy, we cannot make offers for projected revenue but can only offer the money we have,” he said.