Kathlyn Hotynski

Our university is proud of its excellence. The motto “Excellence. Our measure, our motto, our goal” pervades UW-Eau Claire like a mist or salad sprayer. For the most part, Eau Claire measures up to this goal, but there is one area where we fall woefully short. Our concerts … for real.

This year the University Activities Commission is only putting on three concerts, and of those, only one is happening this semester. I don’t want to be some sort of annoying, pasty critic who throws stones from his ivory tower, but if we hold UAC up to the same high standards that we have everywhere else on campus, we’ll win two-fold. We’ll have great bands AND a UAC that pays for itself through ticket revenue.

Without further ado, here is my three-point plan for making our campus the cultural center of western Wisconsin.

1) Get members of UAC who are hungry and excited to book music for UWEC: This is where I’m the guiltiest, and you probably are too. We just don’t get involved with campus events as much as we want. It’s easy to complain all day about how bad a job UAC has been doing, and then go home and play X-box all night. This can’t be how it works.

UAC needs the help of motivated people who are willing to go out into the community, who are willing to talk to promoters and e-mail bands, who are willing to negotiate with tour managers and fill up a jar with peanut butter M&Ms because a crazy musician has it in his rider.

As I said, I’m as guilty of this as anyone, but we need people who will not only be happy to serve, but will also take pride in bringing quality back into our university’s concert series.

2) Get up and coming bands for cheap, instead of has-beens for a ton of money: This year, Eau Claire is having Mustard Plug at Ska Fest. Wait, let me back up even further – Eau Claire is holding Ska Fest. Yes, we are having a festival here for a type of music that for all intents and purposes died in 1998. Why? Was there a huge demand for this from kids in Hawaiian shirts and Chuck Taylors? No, I don’t think that there was.

I don’t mind if you’re going to blow all your money on one concert a semester, but if you’re going to do that, you better make sure it’s a concert to end all concerts. Make it something that people will remember.

Sufjan Stevens, Atmosphere, Vicious Vicious, Halloween Alaska, and The Bad Plus have all played in the area in the past three years. How many of these did UAC book? None.

How many of them could have been booked with Ska Fest money? All of them.

Yes, we did have Rilo Kiley and Neva Dinova, but that was three years ago. C’mon UAC, put your money where our ears are.

3) Promote like there’s no tomorrow: Unless I look on the school’s website, I have no idea what is going on during the semester.

The first and foremost rule for getting people out to a show is to, well, let them know that there is a show going on. Blue Devil Productions (Stout’s version of UAC,) not only has its own Web site, but a calendar that is frequently updated with new events. They get students in the graphic design programs who are excited to come up with new and interesting designs for posters. They screen print them themselves using school equipment.

The point is that it looks like they care about what they do. Maybe it isn’t realistic for us to expect UAC to change everything in a year, but at least we can have something to shoot for.

So there you have it, the blueprint to putting us on the map as the cultural hub of western Wisconsin. Maybe “blueprint” is too strong of a word. Maybe we can just call this the “shove that got the ball rolling.”

Maybe “shove” is too strong as well. Maybe this is the “nudge that acknowledged the rock, and also acknowledged all the people, past and present, that had also nudged at the rock in the hope that one day the rock would really start rolling.”

Whatever it is, I hope that it helps.

Jacoby is a junior print journalism major and a columnist for The Spectator. “The Flash in My Pan” appears every Monday.