The Fling Concert sure has come a long way since my freshman year, when about 28 slack-jawed Sonic Youth fans huddled around a makeshift stage at Wynn Commons to see their favorite band put on a memorable and really tight performance.

Friday’s show was in many ways the inverse of 2005 — thousands of students stood on Franklin Field’s bleachers, happily grooving to mainstream-approved music of no real substance. But if the performances were generally underwhelming, the crowd’s enthusiasm was truly awe-inspiring. In my four years here I’ve never seen the student body come together with that kind of energy.

Some notes:

• OK Go are robots. They pranced around in their little outfits, played their harmless little 3 minute pop rock ballads and finished their set without leaving an impression on anyone.



• Gym Class Heroes were pretty great, but their special guests were not. The Kids from the Hall (not these guys) burst on stage, yelled “We graduated from this motherf*cker!!!” and proceeded to suck for 7 minutes.
• Ludacris had no presence. He showed up late, thrust his mic in our direction for an hour, then dropped it and bounced.

One final thought: Given the total lack of security and the really awful setup of entrances to Franklin Field, it’s kind of a miracle that no one was hurt. I’m all for keeping this new (old) arena-style format for future concerts, but without proper organization it has the potential to turn into a catastrophe.

Tags: Fling, SPEC

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