New commissioners plan the bands

Students Jesse Ervin and Tom Londo have taken on the positions of acting Associated Students Inc. concert cocommissioners, replacing Matthew Claybrooks who resigned Oct. 20.

Londo focuses on noon-time concerts while Ervin coordinates high-profile concerts to be held at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, The Pyramid, and George Allen Field.

Currently, the noon-time concert slots for this semester are all booked up and Londo is in the process of working on next semester's schedule.

"Next year, I want to be more picky because in the past there have been a lot of bands that wanted to play," said Londo, a senior who is majoring in English.

"We want to be sensitive to what everyone wants, not what we want," added Ervin, a junior who is majoring in music and photography. "We want to bring in big people and give exposure to bands."

Londo said he believes that students will find this year's noontime concerts more researched.

"I think it's going to be better," he said. "We're doing research on the bands by going to see them first. In the past, I don't think some of the bands were actually seen live before they were booked."

Londo's drive for bigger and better bands stems from an internship he had at Geffen Records.

"I want to get a lot of high-profile bands because when I worked at Geffen, we had a lot of our artists playing at UCLA and USC for the noon-time concerts there," he said. "They also toured all the colleges around the U.S.

"I thought about it and Long Beach State doesn't have hardly any of that. We're not a stop for nationally touring acts that are doing the college scene and I want to change that here."

Londo said that performing at Cal State Long Beach affords good publicity for the university and the bands alike.

"We just want this to be known as a spot for the bands to stop while they're touring the country," he said. "Like a couple of years ago, we had the Counting Crows and we all know where they are now."

Londo said he found that all good music begins with word-ofmouth publicity and expands to every group of people the bands will play for.

"That's why there is such a value in playing at universities for audiences that normally would never be surrounded with that music," he said. "That's how buzzes on bands get started."

Ervin has taken this concept and is planning to make it a reality with his first big concert featuring Sky Cries Mary, a band from Seattle.

The band's supporting acts are Sweet 75, featuring an exNirvana bass player, and Hovercraft, featuring Beth Vedder, wife of Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder. The concert will be held Nov. 13 in the University Student Union Multipurpose Rooms.

Ervin said he hopes to expand on the ideas and goals of his predecessor. He is working on a spring-break concert scheduled for the first Saturday in April.

"Hopefully it'll be like a Lollapalooza-kind of thing with lots of different acts Ñ hard rock, mellow rock, rap, reggae, and rhythm and blues," he said. "That was one of Matt's ideas and that's the main thing that we're going toward."

He said one goal is to save up money so that so the A.S.I. can budget for big concerts and build revenue. Concerts are non-profit events designed so that revenue from one concert goes into planning for the next.

Both commissioners said they want people to know that they have the community in mind when planning these concerts.

"We have respect for the neighbors," Londo said. "We want the community to know that we have it in our intentions, to be respectful and take every precaution necessary to secure a clean neighborhood, good concerts and no problems."

"We're definitely geared toward students, but we're definitely sensitive to the community," Ervin added. "We try to have shows that have a broad fan base."

In terms of support for their projects, both commissioners said they foresee no future problems.

"I was told that we're the hot commission," Ervin said. "I know that in Carl's pre-election speeches he promised the students concerts, and that's why we're here. We want to make that happen."