This year’s Sun God festival — featuring My Chemical Romance, Cypress Hill, Talib Kweli and boysetsfire — features a relatively niche lineup that is drawing both fervent ire and support from students.
The nature of the concert bill, with acts either appealing to fans of mainstream emo punk (My Chemical Romance), old school hip-hop (Cypress Hill) or underground rap (Kweli), have split student opinions on the concert’s lineup quality.
Some students have said they are not pleased with the headlining My Chemical Romance, with most of them arguing that the five-man band has too big of a mainstream presence to appeal to the average collegian.
“I’m totally disappointed,” Thurgood Marshall College freshman Richard Chiem said. “My Chemical Romance is a terrible headliner. It’s like bringing MTV to UCSD.”
However, the band’s presence on the popular music scene was the main reason other students were happy with the A.S. programming office’s choice.
“My Chemical Romance was a good choice even though they’re not my favorite band,” Earl Warren College sophomore Nick Norton said.
Still, some students said that they had no familiarity with the band, which peaked at No. 28 with its album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge.
Supoort for boysetsfire and Talib Kweli was larger, with many students saying that they are attracted to the artists’ heavy political undertones.
One of Kweli’s biggest mainstream hits, “Get By,” chronicled the economic and social struggles of the black population.
“[Kweli] is going to be off the hook,” Marshall senior Chris Beetley-Hagler said. “He’s going to be a voice for the movements going on in the country that need to be voiced.”
Although festival co-Coordinator Brian Serocke said he is pleased with the full line up, other students expressed less enthusiasm.
“I feel like the Sun God committee likes getting groups that are out of the loop and are trying to come back, or groups that are just out of the loop,” Earl Warren College senior Craig Edelman said.
Cypress Hill, a pioneering rap group that hit its selling peak in the early ’90s, has not released a top-10 album since 2000.
A.S. Commissioner of Programming Eric Morris said that this year’s lineup was created through new department practices, including the use of student input through e-mail and Facebook.
This year, the office sent out multiple campuswide e-mails to get student ideas for the lineup.
To book acts, the programming office finds out who is and isn’t available on any given date, Morris said.
This year’s Sun God festival will cost about $8 per undergraduate, and paid by student activity fees, he said.
