Cashing In on the School of Hard Rock : Noontime concerts expose college students to emerging artists and prepare aspiring promoters for careers after graduation

“Turn up the music, man. Turn it up!”

The annoyance on Kid Frost’s face looked real enough, even if the rapper’s insistence on more volume was probably just hip-hop bravado.

At least 1,500 students had scattered across UCLA’s central plaza and pressed against a small outdoor stage in anticipation of the week’s free noontime concert. Kid Frost was pacing aggressively across the stage in black sunglasses, as if waiting for the sound man to inch up the volume before starting the show.

Student concert director Craig Adelman was checking sound levels, sure that some students already were checking their watches, ready to complain if the concert went beyond the 1 p.m. time limit.

Adelman, a 22-year-old sociology major, and other students on the concert staff already had been the subjects of blistering complaints about noise levels--part of the price they pay as amateur concert promoters. For many, bringing known and emerging pop musicians to campuses is a step toward a career in the music industry. And nearly all believe that live, free concerts can be a welcome respite for students from the grind of lectures and exams.

Such concerts allow record companies to show off their artists to some of their most avid customers.

Lunchtime presentations at UCLA, Cal State Northridge, Pepperdine University, Santa Monica College, Valley College and elsewhere also offer an opportunity for new artists to expand their audiences.

Kid Frost, whose debut “La Raza” single was a mainstream hit, agrees that there are benefits to playing to a college audience.

“These kids are in school, so their minds are still open,” Frost said before his recent UCLA performance. “They can still learn something from the input that you give to them.”

Weeks earlier, Frost had performed his raps about East Los Angeles street life and Latino consciousness at UC Berkeley as part of a get-out-the-vote campaign.

College students are among the most active members of the pop music audience, said Larry Jenkins, a former student concert promoter at CSUN who is Capitol Records’ senior director for media and artist relations in Hollywood.

“They are the ones who are buying records, and they are the people going to concerts,” he said. “But it’s also a larger segment of the population that wouldn’t necessarily go to clubs.”

The campus shows can give students who are uncomfortable in nightclubs an opportunity to keep in touch with the developing local rock scene, promoters say. Earlier this year, local club favorites Mary’s Danish performed a well-received show for about 1,500 students in the CSUN Student Union square. Some fans had gathered for the noon show as early as 10:30 a.m. A concert by the Havalinas won a similarly enthusiastic response, said Kia Kamran, who heads the CSUN noontime concert series.

Like UCLA’s, the student-run CSUN concert program strives to bring in well-known acts. In recent years such national touring groups as the Ramones, Jane’s Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have played at Northridge. But the week-to-week emphasis inevitably has fallen on the Wednesday noon shows that feature newer, sometimes untested, bands.

“We’ve had complaints about the types of music we’ve brought out there,” said Aviv Ilan, 20, executive director of the student productions program. “Nobody liked the thrash metal band. People weren’t into it. We did it to open up their minds, and their ears.”

Hiring bands with outspoken personalities can be risky. Through an unlikely coincidence at UCLA in 1988, an outdoor concert by local rockers Thelonious Monster and a debate between presidential candidates George Bush and Michael Dukakis were scheduled the same day. Little conflict was expected until the band’s wiseacre frontman, Bob Forrest, interrupted his own songs to tell jokes about Barbara Bush.

“All you can do is tell the artist these are the guidelines,” said Eugene Hernandez, 22, the elected student commissioner who oversees student government-sponsored concerts, speakers, films and comedy presentations. “But you can’t really go up there and put your hand over their mouth if they say something you don’t think is right.”

At Pepperdine, which is affiliated with the conservative Church of Christ, guidelines are still more delicate. Until recently, most programming at the Malibu campus was directed by school administrators. The last time a big show was organized mainly by students was in 1985, when the cost of bringing the Thompson Twins was far more than what could be recouped in the school’s small athletic venue, which seats only 3,104 without a concert stage.

David Jordan, chairman of the school’s first student-organized effort at regular music programming, said he’s working to bring interesting new artists for monthly outdoor lunchtime shows and the school coffeehouse every Tuesday. Among the recent noon concerts was a performance by the Figaro Brothers, who record for the Geffen label. Before the new effort, Jordan said much of the on-campus entertainment came from older, established artists, now making a living on the college circuit.

Jordan said he is bringing newer acts to the campus now in part to connect students with breaking developments on the music scene, but he’s being careful not to offend the school’s religious sensibilities.

“I would never want to program something that would be detrimental to the school’s mission,” he said. “Certainly to expose someone to something new is not going to damage them. To expose people to things that are different in a college environment is always what you’re looking for.”

Students on campuses ranging from Santa Monica to Valley in Van Nuys seem to appreciate the effort. If nothing else, they say, the live music breaks up a day that would otherwise be very much like the one before.

“It gives you something to do between classes,” said Chris Almanza, 19, after the Kid Frost show. “Normally, we’d be sitting around, to just eat and watch people walk by.”

Kid Frost’s biting sociopolitical themes were an added attraction in his UCLA show, offering a message not normally found in Top 40 or even album rock radio.

“It was a chance for us to hear about the struggle of the Mexican people, but in a way that all the younger people can associate with,” said Ronaldo Parrales, 18, a political science student. “It wasn’t like a rally. The music draws you in, and then you hear the message.”

The costs of presenting the rap singer--about $2,500, including production expenses and advertising in the campus newspaper--were higher than normal for a noon program because Kid Frost already has a following and a popular record and thus commands a higher fee, Adelman said. But most of the bands presented at noon haven’t yet seen any pop chart action and are paid significantly less, usually between $500 and $800.

With a smaller budget, CSUN normally schedules acts that cost between $200 and $250, although occasionally bands such as Mary’s Danish are paid significantly more. The budgets for campus shows at Valley College, CSUN, UCLA and most other schools come out of student fees paid at the beginning of the term.

“We don’t look at it as losing money if we paid $1,000 to put on a show and charge nothing, if we entertain the students,” Ilan said. “That’s what we’re here for.”

Still, Los Angeles-area schools face a level of competition from the local music scene that is virtually unknown to their counterparts in the Midwest and rural areas. Regardless of how earnest a young college concert director may sound on the telephone, agents, managers and band members are more likely to choose the Hollywood Palladium over the CSUN gym, said Jenkins.

Jenkins added that many who begin as student music promoters end up working in the industry. Several high-ranking figures at major record labels and talent agencies were--not many years ago--struggling to bring entertainment to their schools.

“I think all of our intentions were to get into the industry,” Jenkins said. “Everybody knows that even in Los Angeles it is extremely difficult to get in. And your only leg up is to get as much experience before you go knocking on industry doors.”

Some student organizers even find themselves pulled almost involuntarily into the industry. At Santa Monica, Tonya Anderson, 28, has brought a variety of free 11 a.m. concerts, from jazz to reggae to rock, to the campus. A single mother of an 8-year-old boy, Anderson’s plans to go into international law. In the meantime, she said, some are urging her to help organize entertainment for fund-raising benefits for worthy causes.

“I started it as just a hobby, you know,” Anderson said. “But if a job were to be offered to me, I wouldn’t turn it down, because it is fun.”

Back at UCLA, the Kid Frost show was yet to begin when some students were already talking about an upcoming noon show by the Soup Dragons, the Scotland-born four-piece garage band. And Adelman could smile even as he talked of the complaints and problems that arise after certain shows, knowing very well the most immediate benefit of organizing the concerts himself.

“If you’re a fan of Kid Frost, most people can’t say, ‘Well, let’s get him to play,’ ” Adelman said. “But I can.”