So, apparently Ms. Dynamite is still a thing?
This is something I learnt yesterday at midday as my Facebook feed became rammed with the great and good of Derwent College telling everybody ever that they must buy a ticket for this year’s Big D within the next thirteen seconds, or risk missing out in the Glasto-esque rush and spending the end of term crying and shaking on their bedroom floor in a state of irretrievable F.O.M.O.
Of course, I clicked through to the YUSU website – why wouldn’t I? This is Big D – you have to go to Big D.
Then I saw the price, I remembered who the acts were and realised that spending £26 to see three acts I have no interest in seeing and roll about on barely-inflated inflatables a few feet away from the sink I used to drunkenly piss into in first year sounds like a really crap deal.
I know I’m being a total cynic here, but bear in mind that last Sunday’s YO1 Festival cost £15 to students for a whole day of good and varied music with credible headliners and wasn’t located in and around student accommodation. The logic of wanting to go to Big D starts to go a little hazy.
Add to the £26 ticket cost the amount you’d then be spending on food and drink and you’re getting towards £50 for one night – that’s a lot of money on an end-of-term student budget, money that could be spent going to a gig where someone you actually want to see is playing or going on a night out in another city.
Big D has a strange kind of draw to it however. It touches freshers’ lips in October nearly nine months before the actual event and the college always make sure it is surrounded in hype by doing ticket giveaways and putting on launch parties.
So they should – it’s their job, but they must realise that what they’re flogging is a dead horse spruced up in lipstick and a fancy saddle. For the last two years especially, Big D has been riding on the back of past successes, to the point that they are now selling tickets at £26 on reputation alone. I have only heard one good story from last year’s Big D, and all that was was a friend falling asleep somewhere he shouldn’t have and waking up being straddled by an angry porter – I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what he paid for in the ticket price either.
It seems that students are starting to realise that Big D is not what it was – contrary to the panicked Facebook posts, gone are the days when the rush for tickets would crash the YUSU website and they’d be sold out within an hour, and despite my facetiousness, this is actually a shame.
Campus events have a big part to play in University life, and the sort of hype that surrounds an event like Big D is great so long as the event itself is worthy. Unfortunately, £26 for this year’s offering is in no way fair to the student audience, even if the money does go to charity. At the end of the day, this is no excuse for trying to fleece people out of money for a sub-par event.
Since the event perennially loses Derwent money too, perhaps it is time they started to rethink their strategy a bit. As much as I enjoyed a bit of ‘Dy-na-mi-tee’ between games on FIFA 2003, there are plenty of better acts out there who would hold an audience for more than one song and be far cheaper to hire.
The early noughties fleeting big name is not the way to go for these type of events – just get us some good music, some cheaper tickets and everybody’s happy.
What pushes costs up is health and safety, not act costs.
Believe me no JCRC tries to ‘fleece’ it’s students. The price is high because the break even point is high.
If you want to point a finger, try pointing it at the university who seem to find more and more red tape that is becoming costlier and costlier
All JCRC’s want to put the best events they can on but with little funding and high costs from the university it’s really difficult.
What a load of rubbish, there are no health and safety costs associated with the event, heck they get the first aiders to volunteer! It’s just the college being greedy at the end of the day!
To clarify how does health and safety make events more expensive?
Are you saying that the university charges JCRC’s a fee every time they want to put an event on claiming that its for health and safety?
Health and Safety is just common sense and doesn’t cost anything, what costs is when people don’t do thinks safely and people get hurt.
How is the college being greedy? All the money goes to charity you doughnut.
From experience, health and safety costs can come in various places. Mostly, it comes in having to get paid qualified people to do certain jobs to meet insurance requirements. For example, we had to get people to go to a course, which costs money, so that they were allowed to move speakers and other music equipment around, for insurance purposes.
@John – You are right that health and safety is common sense but it can cost money. Health and safety requirements are, in theory, there to protect people but, in practice, are really there to comply with insurance regulations.
Sadly you can no longer just “put on an event”. There are too many hoops to jump through so that the University covers itself from being potentially sued.
This is a ridiculous, insensitive and pointless article. Do you actually know anything about music or the difficulties of booking acts for an event?
Music is subjective- whoever they’d picked, some people would have inevitably been left unhappy and regardless of how good the lineup was, some moron like you (whether it was you or not) would’ve personally found an issue and written a shitty little article like this.
Has Big D really gone downhill? Has it ever really been that good? Has a university-organised event ever, in the history of the world, ever even really been that fresh, diverse or ‘cool’? Almost definitely not.
All your demonstrating here is an insatiable urge to grab onto a ‘controversial’ opinion as a means of coming across as some cutting-edge, controversial journalist.
The lineup may not be great, but they’re better events organisers than you are a journalist or person.
Whilst I understand that there have been increasing requirements surrounding such events, I doubt that Health & Safety costs that are the key driver in pushing up costs.
I wholeheartedly agree with the author that Big D events have seen a decline throughout the last few years, and its not just Big D, but also campus events in general.
Josh states that they try to put on the best events but are limited by their funding. I would challenge that to say that nearly all committee members solely focus on the price and returns from these events?
When was the last time a college committee put on an event without limiting themselves on their returns forecast? When was the last time an event was done purely for the benefit of students and offer them the best jobs.
In this case either charge more for really good acts, or charge lower for such acts and put on a bigger variety of local acts and artists. Use it as a platform to build a reputation that can be carried to next year. Was this not the reason why Big D enjoyed such success? In my first year the online servers were crashing and tickets were sold out in hours.
I also think there seems to be less and less passion and direct involvement by committee members. Many seem to join for the purposes of bulking their CV and being able to tell employers of their “huge part in these committees.”
When it comes to putting on events, I get the impression there is no real passion there. Its more of a, “Its been done every year, so stick to the same format” approach to these events. Stick up for your events. Take the risk and ignore profit to build your event reputation, which will automatically bring future success.
Alex,
Look, I don’t want to come to Big Derwent or whatever you’re calling this either. But please understand in the current economic climate, has-been music ‘stars’ need to earn their cheddar as much as the next cheese-fiend. With less and less people playing Fifa 2003 these days, it is difficult to get my songs out there, well I say songs, I mean my song. So events like these, while costing you an extortionate amount, are invaluable to me.
I promise to hand out a fresh urban vibe, that is not too edgy (I’m a 12a kind of act) and I am sure I will be able to kick it with the kids. It’s gonna be mad wicked and maybe even crazy sick.
Peace and love, see you at the Big Derwent Inflatable mega-rave.
Ms. Dynamite (tee-heeeee) xx
Well, what a terrible article. Is this how Vision is trying to compete with Nouse these days? No wonder it’s in such a decline.
Shall we just start off pointing out how you’ve got all your figures wrong? YO1 was 17.50 with a student discount but the majority of people bought one for 20 pounds. Furthermore, the Big D ticket is 25 pounds.
Regarding the organisation itself, how about you try to put on one of these events and you’ll see how well they have done this year.
Of course first-aid costs money, they have to pay for an outside company to monitor and oversee operations, would you really trust volunteers to handle this?
This comment will no doubt be downvoted into oblivion by you and your friends and the people that actually have enough time to look at this website.
Get it together Vision, maybe have a look at the Nouse website on how to actually write an article.
Obviously people could go to a gig but you’re forgetting this is a way for everyone to have a final send off before splitting up all over the country for the Summer. Yes last year’s acts were not ideal but we all had a good time getting drunk around campus.
Looking at it as a gig is missing the point completely. I, for one, am looking forward to being with my mates one last time.
As a fresher last year, I encourage everyone to forget costs etc and go along, you’ll have a great night.
Or alternatively, we could all have a good time getting drunk around campus without paying £26 for the experience
Well feel free to do that then
Let’s face it the real problem with Big D is the poor variety of acts..Miss Dynamite (Hip Hop/ RnB), Fenech Soler (electropop) and Dusky (House music I think).
Where is the variety? Would it really have killed the organisers to have some dull and middle of the road pop? Or a 3 guys with guitars and a drummer rock band? Or even for a bit some death metal?
The organisers have catered to a very limited section of the music scene, one would presume their favoured area.
I’m a 3rd year derwent student who would have loved to have gone to Big D to finish of my uni career but frankly why on earth would i pay £25 (plus £1 booking fee) for acts i have absolutely zero interest in seeing.
And by picking catering to such a small section of the music scene the organisers have increased the number of student sin my position
Nice attempt to increase your website traffic, Nouse…
You’re silly
Since when has being current been what is important with music? The way I see it there are two up and coming bands, Fenech Soler who I saw at Reading and were really good live and Dusky who are supposed to be a big part of the house scene. Then we have Ms Dynamite. Now I don’t know about you but sometimes when I go to festivals I like to listen to some older cheesier stuff from the 90s and early 2000s. It is a laugh and brings me back to when I was younger. When Blink 182 headlined at Reading festival no one moaned that they were not current, same could be said for Stevie wonder at Bestival or indeed most bands. It isn’t about whats “cool” its about having a good time.
I actually think this is a pretty decent line up because it has a little bit of everything. It has Dusky for the hipsters, Fenech Soler for those into electro pop and the such and then Ms Dynamite is for people like me who can usually be found in reflex and willow and are thrilled to have a bit of cheese to dance to with their friends at the end of the year celebrating end of exams.
I
The money you should have paid for Live and Loud doesn’t look so overpriced now!
I have a feeling death metal is an even smaller niche…
And with limited funds, it’s very difficult to get bands due to cost/person being higher.
Why don’t Derwent release the budget for the event, so the costs are clear to see?
Health & Safety costs, what a load of tosh.
Big D isn’t about the acts. It’s about the vibe. Which is incredible. Stop being such whiny gits, there are people who have put a lot of time and effort into organising this; if you don’t want to go, don’t. Quit your bitching!
Ms Dynamite a has-been?
naah mate.
Yeh she’ll probably be doing a few tracks off a little deeper but if you go im sure you’ll see that she’s still an incredible rapper and garage MC – she knows how to hype a crowd and has jumped across loads of genres since her first album.
plus shes got a smile that lights a room up.
Interesting that you’ve written a positive article about summer ball, with the future heads and tinchy Stryder playing. Hardly up and coming? Oh and the price is £35. It’s easy to be snide and write cheap shot articles but I’m guessing mr Finnis has never had to spend hour apon hour working towards putting on a huge event, without getting paid. And this isn’t just the vice chairs. It’s easy to write cheap, point scoring articles. I genuinely can’t believe vision have printed this.