98 Comments
Eschewing their own tradition of booking hip hop acts for spring, Columbia Concerts has booked awesome Brooklyn-based indie rockers Grizzly Bear and awesome Brooklyn-based indie rockers The National for this year’s Spring Concert.
An anonymous source also informs Bwog that this year’s Spring Concert will also differ from last year’s because it’s going to be indoors and tickets are going to cost a completely reasonable and completely worth it $5 fee.
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98 Comments
@peekaboo uhhh grizzly bear is going on tour with radiohead. that’s pretty fucking big people….
@adam I am shocked that nobody on this blog likes nay heard of The National or Grizzly Bear. Titans of music. Titans of modern music and your scoffing them as pitchfork-approved Brooklyn nobodies? Columbia, get a clue, The National haven’t left my cd player since Boxer. Put on Fake Empire and give me one reason why they shouldn’t deserve recognition and praise.
@Anonymous Clearly, the columbia concert committee is doing self-service; they know these bands do not have widespread appeal. And apparently, listening to indie music is better done inside, where the sun does not shine. If its any consolation to the committee, I do not expect much of you anyway. Two Brooklyn bands? Really? Its far more probable that I will try to get into Brown’s spring concert, paying any concert fees and transportation fees than to bother attending this free concert. I have been here for three years, and for three years I have been disappointed. I am going to enjoy a spring concert during my undergraduate years, even if that concert is not at Columbia, which is highly likely. Next year you should consider Mike, the security guard: more Columbians know him and he’s even closer than Brooklyn!
@A.... They’re actually not that obscure anymore. Grizzly Bear played a main stage at Pitchfork last year and I believe they’ll be at Lolla this year. The National did two sold out shows at BAM a few months ago and will be touring with REM and Modest Mouse in a few months. The fact that we get a concert at all is nice, so get the fuck over yourselves.
@bobo i meant obscure
not “secure”
@bobo I hear you nostalgik, but I’d hardly say these bands are secure. The national are touring with REM and Grizzly Bear are playing Conan the same day they play Columbia and then following those shows with a week of sold out shows with paul simon.
I do agree though, I could have (and did) see both bands for cheap in the past few years. Doesn’t mean this isn’t a great show.
I still give it a thumbs up
@Apple Sos!! What is this thing they call the pitchfork?
@Anonymous “We’ve noticed a bunch of people have never heard of Grizzly Bear and/or The National and have requested some sort of guidance as to what to expect from their show.”
I found the above sentence very amusing. The staff had no idea people have never heard of their obscure bands. Oh wait, the National were on NPR! They are household names.
The selections are very narrow-minding. I rather return to Wyclef Jean and have music everyone knows and enjoys.
There is music outside of Pitchfork.
@you're an idiot you want a household name? alan jackson. linkin park. let’s have them play. that’ll be the best concert ever.
also “let’s return to music everybody knows like wyclef jean” when 80% of america knows him only for guesting on that santana album.
gosh you sure are the best arbiter of what music’s popular, bwog poster “heathen 17,” tell me more about how much bands you know are not somehow “pitchfork bands”
@HAHAHAHAH You’re the idiot actually. At least 40%-50% of America knows him from the Fugees and the rest who know him know him from his own stuff, not just from Santana (for the record, I even forgot he was on that album).
@bek awesome, have been trying to get to a national gig for ages, but all the shows have been sold out! am so stoked they will be playing!
@Anonymous ummm grizzly bear live are fucking ace. Not WILD about the national, but they are good enough.
I love that people are crying about the “glory” days of Wyclef Jean
hahaha
@Hilarious “I’ve never heard of this band, why not get a band people know of and will go see?”
Counter-point: “Open your mind and pay $5 to sit inside and listen to a band you probably won’t like. If you don’t like it, you have bad taste.”
The main issue is that having it inside means that nobody who hasn’t heard these guys will go. I think I’ll just sit on the steps on a spring day with some beer and listen to music I know I like for free.
@dude After thinking about it, it’s probably a good thing that they’re charging this year. This way, there will be empirical evidence that the vast majority of Columbia students don’t give a flying fuck about whatever hip-hop artist or indie group is popular at the moment. Then maybe they will just do the right thing and book an 80’s cover band EVERY SINGLE YEAR.
@budget? I would gladly pay at least $20 to see Lupe and Vampire Weekend out on the steps. Given the bands we’ve been getting, does anyone have any idea what kind of budget the committee is working with? I like the National, but it couldn’t have been more than $8k to get these bands to make the trek from Brooklyn, could it?
@Stoneman MY CAVALRY GON FUCK UP YO TRAIN TRAXXX
@ideal spring concert levon helm. outdoors. at night.
@Anonymous Man, Levon Helm would be about the sweetest thing ever. It’s still kind kind of niche, though, just in a different direction.
As it stands, pretty good choices. I don’t know either band well, but I’ve heard of them both, and The National made a lot of year-end lists.
@almost forgot... some other schools also charge for admission to their spring concerts (this includes brown).
@Inside? Where? Does this mean not everyone will be able to go?
Also is this to do with the weather, or with removing the main way to make the concert fun, ie 40s on the steps?
@real question how do i get tickets?
@RRT 5% ? the show will sell out quickly… get over your narrow mind.. Jenna “fuckin” Bush has heard of The National for christsakes , boo hoo , 2 great bands play a private show for students only but not good enough
@Anonymous The National are a good band, but Columbia shouldn’t be catering to the 5% of the population that listen to Pitchfork approved music. There is music outside of Pitchfork, and the organizers should be more open. To have two blogger bands is too much. Where is the diversity?
@honestly, have you spoken to people on this campus about the music they listen to? there are plenty of hipsters/poseurs who mainly listen to pitchfork-approved music–they account for way more than five percent of the student body. i’m not saying that that’s a good thing.
@what? the national have gotten regular play on npr and so forth and are the furthest thing from a “pitchfork band”
vampire weekend is a pitchfork band, black kids is a pitchfork band, they know people who work on the site and similar sites and built their own hype successfully, the national did it differently
you can say you don’t like them (I don’t) but calling every band you don’t like a “pitchfork band” is stupid and short-sighted
also what’s with everyone suddenly begging to see vampire weekend? they played two wbar shows a year, free, but oh no, wbar, pretentious, right, who are these “vampire weekend,” man fuck this it’s just catering to 5% of the populace
columbia also booked outkast pre-speakerboxxx/love below and everyone bitched about that, too so shut up and go see it this time around, you might enjoy it
@nostalgik you are kidding yourself if you think anyone complained about seeing outkast that year. pre-speakerboxxx?? oh you mean with just four earth shattering hip hop albums, including stankonia, and five grammy nominations? yea- they sure were small-time back then. but i can assure it was the best concert in columbia’s history.
followed closely by kanye west. i mean the point is not that they’re picking bad bands. grizzly bear and the national are talented and deserving of your attention. the problem is that any person who is not new to nyc could have seen either of those bands play for $5 or less over the past couple of years somewhere downtown or in brooklyn. so what value am i really getting going to an ivy league school with a ridiculous endowment??
the purpose should be to use that cachet to secure talented and accomplished groups with widespread appeal (and for the fucking hipsters, talent and mainstream viability are not mutually exclusive) that you wouldn’t typically have the opportunity to see in such a setting, and for FREE no less.
fucking music snobs who run columbia concerts think they’re doing all the dim-witted, clueless students a favor by ‘exposing’ them to new and relatively obscure bands. fuck that. seriously. you think we all don’t have the internet to figure out what we like and don’t like? the last thing anyone wants on a lovely spring afternoon is to force themselves to like a band that they’ve never heard because a small group of people in the columbia community think that they should??
this concert, though it includes great bands, is, in my opinion, a fucking joke.
@yeah. i'm not really complaining despite my earlier post..i’ll eagerly anticipate the show
clipse and VW aren’t better in my opinion
HOT CHIP would have been sweet as hell, but i guess that’s just a dream
@Reginald Vel Johnson BrooklynVegan confirms Monday evening, 4/21 at 8pm in Roone.
@Reginald Vel Johnson You guys need to really shut the fuck up. This is New York. If you don’t like what the school booked, go see one of the billions of shows offered nightly throughout the city. That’s right. The city. That place beyond the little Columbia bubble. Wah. The school booked some bands I don’t like but I’m too scared to leave Columbia to see something I do like. Get the fuck over yourselves.
Personally, I think this is a great choice and I can’t wait to see it.
@alexw I have no idea who the fuck these bands are and I’ve never heard any of their music. Statistically speaking, they probably suck, just because most music does. However, they might be good! In the words of David “H” Iscoe:
“I’d rather see something that might be good than something I know sucks.”
@also of note Even though there are a lot of people in support of these bands, I highly doubt Kanye or Wyclef generated this much “Columbia fails again” sentiment.
@alexw Know that you have my full backing to bring Kanye to this campus.
@Alexei Novshinski Apparently William Shatner’s musical appearance in ’68 caused some sort of riot.
@Juli Hi Guys,
We’ve noticed a bunch of people have never heard of Grizzly Bear and/or The National and have requested some sort of guidance as to what to expect from their show.
We’re going to be putting up a Spring Concert Primer that will include links to the bands’ best (accessible) songs, a brief history of the two groups, and reviews of the bands’ live performances.
Check back soon.
@oh yeah and bwog, you should at least suggest a couple songs for people who haven’t heard of these bands to listen to. I personally have listened to 3 random songs from each band, I definitely don’t like Grizzly Bear and 2/3 songs from the national sounded like interpol but lamer
@Date? anyone know what weekend this will be?
@poonarang Basically, the reason that everyone on this board is complaining (and always complains), is that the Columbia Concerts group/organization always recruits bands that clearly attend to a narrow demographic (people who prefer indie rock, who also keep up to date with obscure indie rock, who out of the obscure indie rock bands that exist happen to like these two bands, who also want to pay $5 at their own college for these bands).
Honestly, the organization would do a better job if they recruited an artist that satisfied more people. It’s not a matter of “selling out,” or sinking to a lower level, but satisfying a greater amount of people, which is what the organization is supposed to do in the first place.
I guarantee every member of Columbia Concerts has the Grizzly Bear/National cds on their ipods, and I’m also sure that the issue of whether or not anyone else wants these bands was put on the table, only to be quickly thrown off on the basis that “they are good if people only listen.”
The Spring Concert shouldn’t be about you forcing your music onto people who don’t want to take it at face-value, that’s just doing a terrible job at your job. You’re not satisfying your student body, only yourselves, and I think it’s ridiculous.
Get off your high horses, and get a band that – even if they may be a little worse – at least half of the college has heard of (or maybe even heard), so they’ll feel like the event is actually as big of a deal as it should be, instead of being another blunder.
(on a side note, I was very satisfied with Clipse/VW – that was the perfect combination and appealed to tons of different types of listeners).
@Android Nottingham As you know, all bands love being paired with their absolute opposites. This stated, let me make some suggestions:
1) Cypress Hill & Clay Aiken
2) Will Smith & Pantera
3) Dream Street & Bob Dylan
4) A blanket & small pox
@alexw I too hate new things that I do not understand. When making decisions, people should cater to all tastes, especially the fucking awful ones. That’s why, when they have this “concert,” I will be in my room with the door closed and the shades drawn and the lights off. I will be listening to “Kryptonite” by Three Doors Down on loop until I graduate.
P.S. I love Friends! Chandler LOL.
@blah I hate those people who refuse to accept the fact that a bands lack of popularity does not always correlate with them being awesome and just undiscovered talent. Damn hipsters
@msss Fuck you and your douchebaggery. This music sucks…you suck, nothing can change that.
@Music Clipse and Vampire Weekend appeals to a lot of people? Really? I *like* hip hop but think Clipse should die in a fire, and Vampire Weekend isn’t a very interesting band (although they’re a logical choice, sure). But the National aren’t exactly an obscure snob band… their last album charted top 100, one of the singles was written up in Rolling Stone [and, yes, Pitchfork]. They were on David Letterman. Etc etc.
Grizzly Bear is a little more in the background, maybe. I’m a mild indie rock geek but don’t know who these guys are. But at CU it’s probably more reasonable to assume that more students like good indie rock than getting us some generic arena pop or more hip-hop, which we already have in the fall anyway.
@wow couldn’t have said it better myself
@currently the other ivies are laughing with their consistently better concert choices
@Grizzly Bear sound great live, and The National are getting pretty huge. Great picks, whoever picked them. w00t.
@0000000 quit complaining and maybe you’d actually enjoy the concert and discover a new band. possible? only if you’re not a jaded asshole. although, i gotta respect you, bwog commentors, for managing to be elitest while simultaneously having no taste.
@Can we get Tatar instead? Mongol rap FTW
@INDOORS? INDOORS? $5?!?!?! Doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose (or at least spirit) of the spring concert? jeez. columbia seems to be becoming more concert-tarded every week.
@alexw Shoulda gotten Smashmouth…
@... woah. this is awesome.
how do we get tickets?
@they sold out terminal 5, which, though somewhat large, it’s also NYC, you can sell out practically anything here. I’m sure Chromeo could come close to selling it out if marketed correctly
@ZvS Are the National a generally unknown band? They sold out Terminal 5, which isn’t exactly a tiny venue. (Also, that was one of the best live shows I’ve seen in forever). This will probably be awesome.
@wtf..... At least give us SOMEONE who’s name is out there rather than bands who 1% of the country has heard of
@... this is what $80,000 buys us? give the money to someone else…
@yo! we should bring back some old groups like bon jovi or the delfonics or peter paul & mary
@Brown also got UMPHREYS MCGEE!!!
@wow brown gets lupe fiasco…MIA….and vampire weekend. we get the national and grizzly bear for an indoor spring concert that we have to buy tickets for…..
holy shit wtf
@blast! Brown has to pay more money though…but still.
@80s van halen
@anon Grizzly Bear opened a concert I went to once and they were actually really good! I also saw the National open for Arcade Fire and I wasn’t too into them, but they’re pretty big-ish.
@bmeguy grizzly bear is the shit. seen them twice now. and the national were great opening for arcade fire last year. awesome.
@Indie & Hip-Hop? Is that all we’re left with these days? That makes me a sad panda.
@well what do you expect?
whos going to teach skanking to a bunch of rain soaked east coasters?
@mannn first off, i applaud whoever puts this together for actually getting bands that apparently some people like (judging from these comments).
but mannn… hearing about past columbia concert headliners makes me wish we could return to that golden age. i mean it’s cool that we’re getting bands period, but i feel like getting relatively unknown bands is kind of alienating for the general campus population.
@bwog HIPSTERS UNITE
@???? name recognition? grizzly bear and the national are really big.
Boxer was album of the year for a lot of magazines…
@jeb booo my school got bands with less name recognition than the other ivy leagues. i don’t know their music but they probably suck.
stop turning everything into a competition and approach these bands with an open mind.
@alexw The Coup is amazing. Everyone who reads this internet website should immediately buy/steal/download “Steal this Album” and “Pick a Bigger Weapon.”
@DHI Yo send me that album.
@DHI Alright, now I’m just spamming up in this website:
http://www.myspace.com/wale202
@alexw I see your link and I raise you:
http://www.thecoupmusic.net/
@alexw I heard that Harvard is getting the fucking Beatles. The minds of John Lennon and George Harrison are being implanted into robots and the Fab Four are going to reunite and play all of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in a hovering warship above Harvard Yard.
GODDAMN IT FUCK COLUMBIA UGHHHHH
@DHI Weinberg, you like that COUP.
@DHI Should have got Wale.
@DHI Man, I thought they were supposed to do hip hop in the spring, indie rock in the fall. They could have gotten someone And that this shit was supposed to be free. And outside.
We could have got Jedi Mind Tricks, David Banner, or Tech N9ne. Indie people would like them because their names reference Star Wars, an old TV superhero series, and a gun (but through half-pun, which they like). Or maybe we couldn’t have, because didn’t concerts get their budgets cut?
In conclusion I hate indie rock because I don’t know much of it and people fear the unknown.
@jpm well this kind of made my day. actually it really made my day!
as for it being indoors, think back… when has it *not* rained for the spring concert? i remember being a short young thing… ‘i think Common is up there but i can’t see because of your GOD DAMN UMBRELLA…’ indoors: not such a bad thing.
@bsc Last year the concert was sunny, and good. What happened to hip hop? Why can’t Columbia get itself together and bring 50 cent?
@DHI Alright, I’m all for hip hop, but fuck 50 Cent. I’d rather see something that might be good than something I know sucks.
@Well 50 cent sucks and it would be a waste of money. The Coup would have been great. Grizzly Bear is great.
We could have taken a lesson from other schools and booked bands of different genres though.
@???? never even heard of them.
That doesn’t mean they’re necessarily bad, but it does mean I’m not going to spend time and money on something I’m not sure about. Maybe you guys can convince me though….
NB Please don’t offer the swooning “completely reasonable and completely worth it” type of justification Bwog did. Just tell me about the music, damnit!
@Just to clarify Before current students were here, this school produced acts such as Outkast and Wyclef Jean. Now we get this Brooklyn nothingness. I barely even care about this kind of thing, but I could not be less happy with my university when I look at the other Ivies’ lineups.
@Would prefer Panda bears and the Washington Nationals
@a yay and nay YAY for the bands…
NAY for it being indoors. BOOH.
@yay! yay! this is so exciting!!!
@brown is also getting MIA and vampire weekend.
@why!??! indoors? sitting outside on the steps is the best part of the concert!
@awesome... …for fags who mindlessly get all their music from pitchfork.
@srsly fuck these guys. we need music for true men’s men…. where’s fred durst when you need him?!
@straight tool Hey, we think this is awesome too…
@nice wow, awesome.
@ahasbdshadsbds SOOO GOOD! But i wish it were OUTDOORS,
AHHH this is gonna be great
@i have no idea who they are. brown is getting lupe fiasco. and we’re getting…who??
@YES. FINALLY. stop hating, guys. this rocks.
@wow that’s a really predictable line-up… jim jones would’ve been better than this
@... indoors?! but it’s SPRRRRRRIIIIIIING!!
@tickets on sale? when and where?
@hate to complain but… indoors sucks, and no VW sucks…
@what the indoors? $5? blergh.