Trumania offers too much, lacks entertainment

The phrase "less is more" should be applied to this weekend's Trumania.

The Student Activities Board will be hosting a mega-concert this Saturday, featuring comedian Jeff Dye, country music group Emerson Drive, hip-hop artist Chingy and others. In all, five performers are scheduled for a more than four hour event. While Trumania seems to have something for all goers, this event does have flaws.

It's understandable that SAB is trying to appeal to different musical interests, but this mega-concert idea seems over-the-top. When people go to a performance, they expect to hear one thing, not two different things tied together, like what Trumania is doing with music and comedy.

The scheduling of performers is perplexing. While SAB did try to put similar music genres together with Chingy and DJ Earworm performing back-to-back, the rest of the concert is disconnected. Comedian Jeff Dye will not be performing a set stand-up routine. Instead he will serve as an emcee and be used as relief between the musical artists in 15 to 30 minute segments. Emerson Drive will have an entire hour and 15 minute set, while Chingy will perform for only 30 minutes. Even the opening act, who is yet to be named, is scheduled for a longer period of time than Chingy who is a multi-million album selling hip-hop artist, which will not please his fans.

The ticketing for Trumania raises some concerns. The tickets will be in the form of wristbands, and re-entry into the event will not be permitted. So if you only want to listen to Emerson Drive and artist DJ Earworm, you are going to have to wait the entire hour and 30 minutes between those two acts to see them both perform. This is unfair to concert goers who aren't interested in seeing all the performers. 

Time is a huge factor with this event. Attendees might grow tired or restless with some of the acts that are scheduled and want to leave earlier than planned. If one does stay for all five-plus hours of Trumania, it might drive them insane trying to keep up with the constant changing of artists. As many have experienced, concerts are notorious for being longer or shorter than what they are scheduled for. This is a disadvantage for an attendee if they want to see one artist in the middle part of the event because if they show up on time or late, that artist already could be halfway finished with the set.

The compacting of performances is discouraging. Why could these acts not be brought in independently of one another, rather than have them grouped as one big cluster? For example, if people want to just see Dye, they are going to have to wait the duration of the concert to see his full comedy bit that spans two hours. Why not have Dye have an hour set alone rather than having him spread out between the different music acts?

 Trumania, while good in theory, should be conducted in a different fashion. The artists should have their own independent shows on different dates. Independent shows would have highlighted each of the groups and showcased them on their own merit. Instead, we are faced with a mega-concert that provides more disadvantages than advantages to attendants.