During Winter Break, Passion Pit accepted a bid from the Entertainment Board (E-Board) to headline Bowdoin's Ivies Weekend. The Boston-based band joins a provisional Ivies concert lineup which includes Reel Big Fish and The Cool Kids.
Passion Pit had somewhat of a breakout year in 2009: their track "Moth's Wings" was featured in Season 3 of Gossip Girl, their album "Manners" peaked at No. 51 on Billboard's Digital Albums Chart, and The Boston Globe called them "one of the most talked about bands in indie rock."
Though contracts have yet to be finalized, E-Board Co-chair Chris Omachi '12 wrote in an e-mail to the Orient that the bands "are most likely going to come...it is in their schedules and they are planning on it—it's just legal [work] now."
Passion Pit is to receive $35,000 for the May 1 concert, while Reel Big Fish and The Cool Kids will be paid $20,000 and $10,000 respectively.
Lucas Delahanty '10, E-Board co-chair, refrained from offering a specific date by which the contracts would be completed.
"Soon...that's the best I can do," he wrote an e-mail. "The Reel Big Fish and Cool Kids contracts just need to be approved by the Treasurer's Office and then signed off on. The Passion Pit contract is just about done being edited and will hopefully go out for final signatures soon."
Delahanty said that it is customary for the bands to write requirements into their contracts that cost the College additional money. He wrote that there "will be a 10 percent agent fee, miscellaneous hospitality costs like food, water, possible lodgings, moonlighting productions, and a barricade, which will bring the total concert cost to around $80,000."
"Sometimes artists request things like towels, sweatshirts, bouquets of rose, 10 bags of Skittles," he said. "Condoms are on there sometimes; a bucket of KFC chicken. The [Student Activities Funding Committee] also holds in reserve a certain amount of money in case it rains, because then our production costs go up."