Opinion

No Bumstock is a good Bumstock

Hansen, Bumstock Committee have failed students

By Andrew DeFilipp

Posted on April 18, 2005, at 12:00 a.m.

It is less than a week away, and there is nothing to get excited about. There are only a few general ideas about who should play when, and no headliner. Bumstock’s $50,000 dollar budget seems to be hastily spent trying to firm up a day’s worth of music and enjoyment for UMaine’s annual end-of-the-year music festival. I’m not a math major, but this equation seems wrong – something does not add up here.

For the past couple months, I have heard a lot of talk around campus about this year’s Bumstock. Nothing positive has been spoken.

Just days before the main event is set to kickoff, no one except the coordinator has any idea about what is going to happen on the Hill come April 23.

“The news we’ve all been waiting for” is blah, blah, blah, Mr.-No-Name, Paranoid Social Club and Headstart. Who cares? It seems as though Bumstock has been transforming into the “Paranoid Headstock” for the past few years. Both of these bands are talented, and I enjoy seeing them, but enough is enough. Each one has performed at UMaine more times than I can count – like I said, I am not a math major.

The Bumstock Committee should sit back, relax, and realize that they have failed the student body worse than past Bumstock Committees have ever failed the student body before.

If there is anything that could exonerate them, it would be for Elizabeth Hansen and the Bumstock Committee to apologize and cancel Bumstock 2005.

There is no excuse for Bumstock to turn out like it has this year, except for lack of effort. Insurance and security are always a problem with Bumstock; it has not kept other committees from forming band lists before. Verbal agreements could have been reached and contracts could have been drafted long before last week. Then, when Bumstock got insurance, acts could have signed on the dotted line and Bumstock 2005 could have flourished.

Bumstock is a celebration for the student masses; it is an end-of the-year-bash for everyone. The niche market that Bumstock has been aimed at while I have been here gets slimmer every year. Not having a headliner this year that the majority of the student body knows will increase the exploitation of the student body and more students will feel alienated by the festival, which is ironically designed to release their tensions.

Hansen and Kate O’Brien, president of Student Government, said that informing the students of the lack of insurance was not necessary. That is pure ignorance. It is the student’s festival, we should know if it’s going to happen or if there are circumstances that could prevent it from doing so.

In the past, the rain, the mud, the no-shows – they were all part of Bumstock, but at least students had something to look forward to, even if everything didn’t go as planned.

Bumstock cannot be successful when the band list is finalized with less than a week before the show. To have Bumstock now will be a waste of the students’ money. My suggestion for the Bumstock Committee would be to cancel Bumstock 2005, save the money for next year, bring back the two day festival and start booking bands in November. Putting a festival of this magnitude together this late in the game, is like writing your thesis the night before you have to present it.

Producing a Bumstock of just local bands is a cop out by a Bumstock Committee that is just trying to save face for finally killing a dying outlet for student sanity at the end of the school year.

Andrew DeFilipp is a senior broadcast journalism major.

Campus Currents: Bumstock