Hands raised and fingers frozen, Concordia students welcomed the line-up of Thursday’s orientation concert at the Loyola Quad with open arms.
Concordia Student Union VP student life Laura Glover estimated between 1,500 and 2,000 students turned up for the free show to see Nomadic Massive, Mother Mother, Stars and Lunice, despite the rain earlier in the day and chilly evening.
“It’s hard to say [what the turnout was], because I did notice, given the artists that we had were very diverse, we did have a number of students come and go for specific artists,” Glover said. “I can say that we distributed ballpark 2,000 bracelets.” Final turnout will be tallied by the end of the week. Over 2,500 students showed up to see K’naan perform last year at the Quad despite similar inclement weather.
A noticeable portion of the students present left after Montreal five-piece Stars finished their set.
“We definitely didn’t expect a huge crowd of people to leave after Stars,” Glover admitted, “And I think there were a number of Lunice fans that came out specifically to see him. Our objective in putting Lunice at the end was so that there would be a lot of dancing and a lot of excitement towards the end. It was not expected that students would leave.”
The concert budget estimated total expenses to be around $270,000, with the CSU contributing $150,000. Petty sales at the show (burgers, beer, and so on) were expecting to make up the $32,000 deficit the budget was projecting. The figures for petty sales for concert and expenses had yet to be finalized, according to the VP. She said the only unexpected expense was for the rental of a barrier between the stage and the crowd.
Students were also sipping on metal CSU coffee mugs filled to the brim with Sleeman or Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, a result of Molson Canada 2005 exercising its right of first refusal for its contract to supply beer to CUSACorp, the corporate entity that owns Reggie’s Pub.
“We will be with [Molson] for the next semester but we’ve placed conditions on [the agreement,]” said VP finance Jordan Lindsay. “Fifty per cent of our bottles [at Reggie’s] will be from other companies as well so we are still going to get some sweet craft beers and some other things in there that will spice up the inventory this year.”
CUSACorp has not signed a contract for beer supply yet, although they are in talks with another company to do so. The two-year contract with Molson Canada and CUSACorp, which was exclusive with the exception of two competing microbeers that were sold at the university pub, Â ended on July 31.
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