by Philip Ellefson |
The thrumming anthems of of Young the Giant and electronic grooves of Priory filled the Chiles Center Saturday at the fourth annual Rock The Bluff (RTB).
Samantha van den Berg, RTB co-coordinator and next year’s CPB director, said the event was a success. All 2,400 tickets printed for RTB were given away, and van den Berg estimates that about 1,800 students, staff and prospective students were in Chiles at any given time.
“Rock The Bluff is an event that can truly bring a huge mass of students together,” van den Berg said. “This year, we tried to create a culture where freshmen knew what Rock The Bluff was and would get excited about it.”
RTB began four years ago with a concert by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and has since grown into the largest student event on campus, both in terms of attendance and budget.
CPB spent all $138,000 of the RTB budget - including $28,000 that rolled over from last year’s budget - on the concert. That’s more than the rest of CPB’s budget combined.
Snagging a big act like Young the Giant was an expensive ordeal. According to van den Berg, booking the band cost almost twice as much as previous acts Andy Grammer, Boys Like Girls and Macklemore.
Senior Katharina Cochran, a Corrado Hall RA, said the Young the Giant also performed better than previous RTB artists.
“(Young the Giant) was more of an exciting act. Andy Grammer was more of a swayer, but this one had the dancing, exciting vibe to it. Definitely more memorable,” Cochran said. “The bar was definitely set high for future years.”
On Monday, CPB also received about $28,000 extra for next year’s RTB, which came out of unspent Major Project Fund money. But van den Berg said RTB needs a steady, reliable source of funding in order to keep acts like Young the Giant coming.
“If Rock The Bluff is to remain as high quality as it was this year, something has to change,” van den Berg said.
Philip Ellefson is The Beacon’s news editor. He can be reached at ellefson15@up.edu or on Twitter @philipellefson.
