Throughout coverage of this year’s Finals Fest, the message has largely focused on addressing student feedback from previous years. In an effort to cater to more musical tastes, Vandal Entertainment put together a show this year that will attempt to solve the problem of too-focused headliners.
While there is much to be applauded in Vandal Entertainment’s lineup of four different alternative artists, there are some pretty clear self-imposed restrictions that come along with such an approach. Some are the result of unfortunate circumstances, but some choices may turn out to be avoidable mistakes.
The first piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit is the date. The festival falls on the weekend before finals week, which does make the name “Finals Fest” quite accurate at the cost of possibly competing with students’ last-minute study sessions and projects. In each of the past two years, Finals Fest has taken place the weekend prior to dead week, whereas this year it is the weekend after.
Jonah Baker | Argonaut
Pushing the event up until it takes place right before finals week begins is a bad idea for a couple big reasons, chief among them that some students will have to choose between studying or attending a concert that their student fees contribute to. It is entirely possible that this particular date was the only possibility Vandal Entertainment believes to be the best version of Finals Fest, but either attendance or students’ study habits will take a hit as a result of the chosen date.
Beyond the procedural issues of the event itself, the approach to securing this year’s artists seems lacking in foresight. Plenty has already been said regarding the tastes that AJR and the rest cater to, and there is no need to rehash such talking points now. However, the approach of lining up four artists has very clear potential to dilute the overall product and experience.
The most obvious change will be shortened set times for each act. The doors for this year’s fest will open an hour earlier at 6 p.m., but with doubling the artists from two to four will cut into each act’s time. Accordingly, it is unlikely that many students are familiar with any of the artists beyond the headliner (and even then, it can be spotty), so even the students that are excited for AJR are theoretically getting less of a show than they would have in previous structures for the show.
There are some benefits to moving the event inside the ASUI-Kibbie Activity Center, such as the added warmth in what has been a relatively cold spring. It should also be easier for event organizers to streamline the ticketing process to ensure everyone sees as much of the show as they can, but this leaves out one of the most important factors of the Dome itself. The acoustics are absolutely terrible for an event like this. The Vandal Marching Band is undoubtedly the best part of some football games, but their musical mastery is lost in a building that often makes it seem as if a song is being played once in real time, and once on a two-second delay.
These effects will not be as much of an issue for those at the very front, but the cavernous and non-absorbent nature of the dome will make for plenty of distracting reverberation that is below what the artists and audience members deserve.
With at least three major factors working against this year’s event, Finals Fest could be looking for renovations in the coming years. The Vandal Entertainment team deserves plenty of credit for putting together the festival year after year, but the new directions taken this year seem more like snafus than strokes of brilliance.
Jonah Baker can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @jonahpbaker