HUB Late Night to host giant ska festival

HUB late night programming will skank into full swing tonight with the ska festival in the HUB Ballroom.

The two-day festival, starting tonight at 6:30 p.m. and continuing tomorrow at 5:30 p.m., features 15 bands and is one of the biggest ska performances ever in this country.

The bands playing tonight are, in order, The GLG 20s, Johnny Too Bad and Strikeouts, Too Hectic, Thumper, Spring Heeled Jack, Eastern Standard Time and Slackers.

Tomorrow the lineup will start with The Decepticonz, followed by The B-3s, The Planet Smashers, The Skunks, Skavoovie and the Epitones, The Pietasters and Stubborn All-Stars.

"This is probably the largest ska fest in this decade," said Jeremy Myers, who co-organized the program with University Concert Committee Chair Dana Nale. Although Myers knows Nale through working with her on the UCC policy board, they organized the show independently of UCC, Myers said.

"Dana handled the paperwork, and I handled the booking," he said.

The festival is a major event for the ska scene in State College, as the town has been swelling with a growing ska fanhood for quite some time.

"State College is a regular stop for a lot of ska bands whenever they tour," said Noah Wildman, label manager of Moon Ska NYC, the largest international ska label in the world.

Four bands in the festival, Spring Heeled Jack, Skavoovie and the Epitones, The Pietasters and The Slackers, are all on the Moon label. Wildman noted that Moon flagship band Toasters, whose singer, Buck Hingley, is the president of Moon, perform in State College several times each year.

Skavoovie and the Epitones also performed at the University recently as part of last spring's Movin' On concert. The Pietasters played last year in the HUB Ballroom at a festival sponsored by The Asylum.

"(The festival) is a great opportunity, so many bands," Wes Bowser (junior-secondary education) said. "I haven't heard of anything this big for a long time."

Bowser, who plays bass in local ska band 2000 Flushes, said the festival will provide good exposure for newer fans of radio-oriented ska, such as No Doubt and Goldfinger, to more traditional ska styles, based on Jamaican origins.

"There's a lot more (ska) fans than I would have imagined," Bowser said, referring to ska's growing popularity in the area.

The ska festival is one of the most highly anticipated events in the HUB late-night programming series. Undergraduate Student Government Vice President Ed Kilpela said the festival is a perfect example of how any student group can take advantage of the program.

"This is one of the examples of another group coming in and working in conjunction," Kilpela said.

The program itself has become somewhat complex, and it is currently rather ambiguous as to who is really orchestrating it.

"It's a collaboration between several student organizations," Vice President of Student Affairs William Asbury said. "The initiative really came from a group of student leaders including USG and IFC and Panhellenic."

Although the programming is taking time to pick up right now, Asbury said he expects it to be in full swing when the new HUB is completed in 1999. The HUB now has an atmosphere that isn't as attractive to spend a lot of time in, with dim lighting and poor acoustics, Asbury said.

"All of that's going to change with the new student union," he said. "All of a sudden, that'll become 'the place'."

Assistant Director of Programs/Coordinator of HUB Late Night John Harlow said he is pleased so many people have gotten in on the action. The Association of Residence Hall Students has also been working with the program, he said.

And the program is already doing well, Kilpela said.

"Our comedy nights are packed," he said, referring to the comedians HUB Late Night brings to the Cellar.

Kilpela said he did a survey, and found that 50 percent of students who know about HUB Late Night programs learned about it by word-of-mouth.

If people are talking to each other about it, they are interested, Kilpela said.

"From what I know about Penn State, that's how things get going," he said. "Hopefully, it's something we can create kind of a culture around."