The Campus Activities Board’s annual Spring Jam concert took place May 18 with headliner OK Go rocking the rain-soaked crowd in Parking Lot F behind the Main Building as the day’s festivities came to a close.
Spring Jam kicked off at 3 p.m. with free food from Chestnut Street Caterers for all attendees and activities sponsored by various student organizations. Henna tattoos, balloon art and face painting were offered to concertgoers, and CAB representatives gave away free T-shirts and sunglasses sporting the 2013 event logo. Attendance was hampered by the cold, rainy weather, but those who did show up enjoyed themselves.
“Even with the crappy weather, I’m always down for some free food and live music,” sophomore music industry major Matt Olenik said.
Other students shared his enthusiasm as they stuck it out through the rain to see DreX Factor winner Marcus & Rome and Battle of the Bands winner Anna Greenwald perform before the opening acts. The winning team from Drexel’s Best Dance Crew was slated to appear but did not come.
Singer-songwriter Noah Guthrie was the first professional opening act to take the stage. Guthrie gained notoriety after his cover of LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” earned 17 million views on YouTube and landed him an interview with Matt Lauer and Ann Curry on “Today.”. After his short acoustic set, hip-hop group King’s Dead came on. Formerly known as Dean’s List, the Boston-based group, who toured with artists such as KiD CuDi and Calvin Harris, got the crowd going with its single “Your Professor” and a song from an upcoming album that will be released next month.
The final opening act was 5 & A Dime, an electro-house disk jockey from the Philadelphia area who opened for Time Flies, Steve Aokie and Kendrick Lamar. With his unique brand of electronic house music and song mashups, 5 & A Dime got people dancing around Lot F to remixes of songs like Calvin Harris’ “Sweet Nothing.”
Finally, OK Go took the stage a little after 8 p.m. in the midst of a rainstorm that did not let up. The band drew the biggest crowd of the day, even with the weather. OK Go had a lot happening onstage, with cameras mounted on microphone stands and confetti cannons firing during every other song. Lead singer Damian Kulash opened up for a question-and-answer segment while the band set up for a song played solely with hand bells.
When asked if they would play their hit song “Here It Goes Again,” Kulash jokingly replied, “We’ll play it when the rain stops.” But they did play it about halfway through their set as many concertgoers sang along. After the band closed with its early hit “Get Over It,” there was some controversy before the encore.
Students reported that Drexel Public Safety officers began to force them away from the stage, reportedly saying, “I promise you, no one is coming back out [for an encore.]” OK Go did return in less than five minutes to perform a couple more songs.
“There was no effort to clear the students out of the lot prior to OK Go coming back onstage and performing two encore songs,” Edward Spangler, director of police operations, said. “Viewing video from the event, it appears that as the last song ended, students began to leave on their own but returned when the band came back onstage.”
Regardless, students had enough time to return in front of the stage before the band started into the first song of the encore. The encore featured a sing-along to the song “This Too Shall Pass” with Kulash taunting the crowd to sing louder than rival schools the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Delaware. Near the end of the song, Kulash jumped down to the barrier and launched himself into the crowd as everyone sang, “Let it go, this too shall pass.”
CAB hosts Spring Jam annually. For information on future CAB events, visit drexelcab.com.
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