The Student Association has designated approximately $390,000 for Fall Fest and Spring Fest combined, but it has yet to announce who will be performing at the Oct. 13 Fall Fest concert.
Some students are getting frustrated.
Rumors circulating the annual event started with the release of the official date on Sept. 1 at the Reel Big Fish concert. After announcing Fall Fest would be held on Oct. 13, SA President Nick Johns said, "We'll release the lineup ASAP."
This was the beginning of the A$AP Rocky rumor.
SA officials have neither confirmed nor denied the presence of A$AP Rocky in the Fall Fest lineup.
SA Vice President Lyle Selsky confirmed there will be four acts, three from the hip-hop genre and one "mash-up DJ similar to White Panda."
That is all the information SA is allowed to release at the moment because the artists' contracts are not signed, Selsky said.
The contracts were sent to Marc Rosenblitt, SA's entertainment coordinator, via email on Monday. Once they are approved, sent back to the artists and signed, SA can release the names of the acts. Rosenblitt wants students to get excited about who is coming, but SA is "stuck between a rock and a hard place," he said.
Selsky agrees.
"I'm itching to tell everyone about the event and to be able to say, 'look, these people are coming,'" Selsky said. "I preach patience because I know now it sucks, but knowing [who is performing] earlier won't change the fact that the date is still Oct. 13. So, either way, you'll be waiting a month for the event."
They both believe the show will be worth the wait.
Julie Safaty, a senior health and human services major, is doubtful.
"Fall Fest usually sucks so I never go," she said. "I would go this year because it's my senior year. But I want to know because there's a Bills game that day and I need to know if I should get tickets for that instead."
She believes SA should have given the student body better notice because "I have a life and I have to plan and organize events."
Some students agree SA is waiting a long time to announce the acts for Fall Fest compared to last year, when it announced the acts for the Sept. 1 show on July 31. In 2011, however, the headliners were released on Sept. 30 for the show on Oct. 20.
"By no means is it unusual for us to have a fest in October, a lot of people have been like, 'Oh my gosh, it's never been past September,' but it's been as late as November," Rosenblitt said. "It's called Fall Fest, so as long as it happens in the fall semester. We try to do it as early as possible because we like the idea of being outside."
Originally, the concert was supposed to take place on Sept. 22. But no "good artists" were able to come on that date, according to Selsky and Rosenblitt.
"We wanted to make sure we had the best show possible," Selsky said. "So we pushed the date back, and now we have a much better show."
In order to achieve "the best show possible," planning for Fall Fest started in late April or early May. Rosenblitt said the dates that are available for the show to take place in Alumni Arena are "the biggest limiting factor."
He then started talking to people in the music industry to find out what direction they should take given their budget and their availability.
This summer, SA sent a genre survey, asking students what type of acts they hoped to see at Fall Fest. The top four were hip-hop, country, electronic dance music (EDM) and pop, according to Selsky.
Rosenblitt said any well-known country artist was out of their budget and all of the EDM artists they could afford were on European tours for the season.
Once a genre was picked - hip-hop - they sent out bids.
"It becomes luck of the draw," Rosenblitt said. "We are competing with every college in the nation."
He added it depends on who's available when the dates are open and who is willing to come to Buffalo, which "isn't thought of as a great location, even though it really is."
They went through over 40 bids this year; typically, they go through 20.
Rosenblitt and Selsky acknowledged they can't make every student happy, but Rosenblitt said, "This show is going to be a very good one, and I think many people will be happy with it."
Email: arts@ubspectrum.com
