The Daily Pennsylvanian: Why did you decide to have Sonic Youth last year? Why not have a big-name band for Spring Fling?
Matt Mizrahi: With the Sonic Youth decision, there are a lot of factors that come into play. Budget constraints are one thing. Second of all, scheduling.
Especially for the Fling concert, one of the biggest limiting factors is our schedule. ... Usually when you have a concert, you have a range of dates available. We've got one day, and it's totally inflexible. It has to be the Friday of Fling.
From a list of 150 bands that we come up with, we can narrow that down to, like, 10. ... There are budget constraints, and if you go to any booking agency's Web site and check out the prices for these things ... you can see why we are somewhat limited. I just got an e-mail from The Harvard Crimson asking me to respond to questions from Harvard students about why we get such better concerts than they do. The grass is always greener.
DP: Can we have more small concerts and guest speakers?
MM: We are actually working on stuff like that. We've got some ideas in the works. ... Last year we had the Battle of the Bands for Philly Week; that actually went really well. That was a small concert that SPEC Concerts was able to put on.
DP: Is it possible to put something on the Web where you can request speakers and bands?
MM: We're going to be putting out some kind of a survey for the student body on the SPEC Web site. Plans are in the works to do something like that.
DP: Are there a lot of people with connections to the entertainment industry on Penn's campus, and can you take advantage of that at all?
MM: Every year, people come to our initial meeting and tell us about all the connections they have. Generally, they fall through. I'm open to any help that anybody who has connections wants to provide. I'm not opposed to it at all. I think it would make for a much better show, but it doesn't always work out that way. We generally do all the booking ourselves.
DP: How many people make the final decision about concerts?
MM: Generally, it is limited to the concert directors, our advisers in the Office of Student Life and some of the executive members on SPEC. That's about it.
Matt Mizrahi
This week, students ask questions of the SPEC Concerts co-director, who is in charge of booking concerts like Howie Day's Oct. 7 visit this year. After poor attendance at last year's Spring Fling concert, the pressure is on to choose a popular artist.
"Faces" offers students a chance to ask questions of campus leaders. It appears alternate Tuesdays.
