Mighty Mighty Bosstones to heardline Fling concert

Rap trio Run DMC and two other groups will join the punk-ska band at the annual Spring Fling concert on Hill Field April 16. With the concert date looming just one month away, the Social Planning and Events Committee has announced that the popular ska band the Mighty Mighty Bosstones will headline this year's Spring Fling concert on Friday, April 16. Hip-hop artists Run DMC will also perform at the annual concert, scheduled to be held on Hill Field at 7 p.m. The two groups will be joined by up-and-coming New York punk groups D-Generation, who will open the event, and Clowns for Progress, who will play the second Fling stage in the Quadrangle on the afternoon of the show. The Bosstones' 1997 breakout album, Let's Face It, combines pure ska with popular hybrid songs. Some of their more popular songs include "The Impression That I Get" and "Rascal King." Tickets go on sale Monday, March 22 at the Annenberg Center box office and will cost $16 with a PennCard and $20 for the public. They will be available on Locust Walk starting in April. In case of rain, the event will be held at the Palestra, as it was last year. SPEC Concerts Committee Tri-Chairpersons Jon Herrman and Jocelyn Jennings both said they were extremely pleased with the selection of bands booked for this year's Fling. Both agreed that the bigger names of this year's bands will prove to be more popular than the lesser-known names of last year's Fling acts. Last year's Fling was billed as a "Funk Music Festival," bringing acid-jazz saxophonist Maceo Parker, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, ska-funk-rock mainstay Fishbone and the Five Fingers of Funk to campus. "I think the bands this year have a wider appeal than last year," said Jennings, a Nursing senior. She was quick to add that while Maceo Parker played a good show, this year "we have the advantage of a headliner." "More people will have the Bosstones in their CD player," said Herrman, a Wharton junior, commenting on the difference between this year's show and last year's event. Several other big names -- including A Tribe Called Quest, Cypress Hill and the Violent Femmes -- have headlined Fling in past years. The Bosstones were one of the concert committee's targets last year as well, but the band agreed to play at Princeton University instead. Later though, they cancelled the Princeton date so they could extend their European tour. For the past eight years, since their debut album Devil's Night Out was released, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones have been busy refining their trademark ska-core sound. The New York Times has called the Bosstones "ska punk with a social conscience," and in this spirit the band seeks to combat bigotry, racism and homophobia with songs such as "Numbered Days," in which a lifelong bully finally gets a taste of his own medicine. The band first formed in Boston as the Bosstones in 1985, and soon thereafter gave themselves the not-so-humble prefix: Mighty Mighty. Though lead singer Dicky Barret's resumZ included work with hardcore bands such as Impact Unit, his main focus, and that of the Bosstones, has always been ska. The band's growing popularity culminated in their stadium debut in 1995 on the fifth Lollapalooza tour, in which the Bosstones shared the stage with Hole, Cypress Hill, Beck, Pavement, The Jesus Lizard and Sonic Youth. And Run DMC has long been considered the founding fathers of hip-hop's cross-over into the mainstream. The trio holds a veritable laundry list of musical firsts. They were the first rappers to earn a gold album and a platinum album, the first to go multi-platinum, the first to have their videos played on MTV, the first to appear on American Bandstand and Saturday Night Live and the first rap group to grace the covers of Rolling Stone and Spin.

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