In the spirit of Halloween, here is a super creepy video from Bat for Lashes!

Those bike tricks are bad ass even without the creepy animal masks and Natasha Kahn’s vocals.

Happy Halloween!

Everclear played a show at the Canopy Club last school year. Tickets were $25. People laughed.

Dave Matthews Band played at Assembly Hall two years ago. Tickets were $40. It was packed.

Ryan Adams played at Foellinger for a Star Course show earlier this month. Tickets were $23. The Auditorium was one third full.

Ticket sales are an absolute crap shoot on this campus. Students are poor and putting on a show is expensive, but if an artist is popular enough the tickets will sell, right? You would think so. Unfortunately things are far from that easy.

Venue managers spend lots of time estimating an artist’s worth, pursuing a show, negotiating contracts, and promoting a show. The most important decisions made are the ones deciding an artist and how to promote them. Factors such as venue size, artist popularity on campus, cost of the artist, and show date all help determine what a reasonable charge for tickets would be. A couple dollars too much and a venue could lose hundreds of ticket purchases. After the show is confirmed a promotions campaign has to get started quickly. Locally, things usually don’t get running until a month or two before the show date. How many people are reached and excited by the artist can make a huge difference in not only ticket sales but the success of the concert.

Students are cheap, flaky, and capricious enough to make this entire process a living nightmare. An occasional trip to Ticketmaster should be enough to remind concert-goers that CU concerts are for the most part service charge, shipping charge, and printing charge free. Instead of indulging a Jimmy John’s fetish three times a week or spending too much money on beerses try putting a few bucks away every week to save up for several concerts a semester. Most of them are a way better experience and a cheaper price than spending two hours getting a contact high at DMB circus shows.

Paste Magazine is now offering a year’s worth of magazines for any price over $1! Obviously inspired by Radiohead’s music industry bitch slap, potential readers are given the choice of what they will pay, as long as they are willing to front at least one bill. The only limitation seems to be one order per address, which is only a problem if you have a roommate that doesn’t like to share (get your order in before they do!).

There are several reasons why Paste might be offering such a deal. Radiohead fans, of which there are many, will applaud the magazine’s effort to spread their favorite band’s experiment and be more likely to indulge in the offer. As soon as this makes its way across the internet (t-minus 2 minutes from the time stamp on this post) the name Paste will be omnipresent via blogs, news sites, and forum posts. The PR and publicity money saved by the digital grape vine might make up for the amount they will lose when they find out no one wants to pay more than a dollar.

Rapper T.I. was released on $3 million bond Friday. A federal Judge sentenced him to monitored house arrest until those weapons charges have been brought. Not only did T.I. have to post those millions, he is required to pay for the private monitoring service that will make sure he doesn’t set foot off of his Henry County property.

Local fans were extremely disappointed when they learned about the rapper’s arrest just days before his scheduled concert with T-Pain at Assembly Hall. It looks like everyone will have to forget about seeing “The King of the South” anywhere but chained to his throne.

Ever since the internet’s criers and bleeders got a hold of Conor Oberst’s fan base Bright Eyes has been subject to the worst of all possible insults: Emo band. Yes, his vocal chords still quiver like a mid-pubescent 14 year old’s, but there is an endearing nature that comes with such a sound. I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning spawned many eye-liner fanboys while leaving just as many with a bad taste in their mouth. Despite this I still preferred his hair circa 2005 over the current grunge rock thing he’s sporting now. Salon styles aside, 2007’s Cassadaga signaled a re-emergence of a Bright Eyes worth spinning over and over again. While not as surprisingly first-rate as Fevers and Mirrors, this fresh look at favorite Oberst subjects religion, love, and the self are deeply fulfilling. Album flowing metaphors weave their way through warm lyrics and simple chords. Cassadaga commands too much of a listener’s respect to be written off as emo, as does it’s creator.

Conor Oberst will be pretentiously singing you songs on Sunday, October 21 at Foellinger Auditorium. Contact Star Course for tickets and other info.