Countywide : Santa Ana Approves All-Day Rap Show

The promoter of a rap music concert at Santa Ana Stadium has received city approval to go ahead with the eight-hour show on Saturday.

“Everything’s a go,” Mike Lopez, the city’s parks superintendent, said Thursday. “It looks like there’s going to be an event.”

Promoter Carlos Quintanilla of Mission Viejo-based Arcos Entertainment said he was worried until Wednesday that the show might not go on because he did not have the $1 million in damage and liability insurance that the city requires to rent the stadium.

Nearly two weeks ago, Quintanilla announced a bill featuring Cypress Hill, Technotronic, Black Sheep, Kid Frost and others. He began selling tickets before satisfying all of the city’s preconditions for rental of the 12,000-seat stadium. Insurance requirements, however, proved to be a snag.

Quintanilla, whose company has produced rap shows in Illinois, Iowa and Texas, said three insurers turned him down before a fourth agreed Wednesday to cover the event.

“It was extremely difficult, the most difficult I’ve ever had anywhere,” the promoter said.

He said the insurers who turned him down “were very blunt.”

“They said they could not insure it because it was a rap concert,” Quintanilla said. “It’s really unfortunate. I think there’s a complete misunderstanding of this kind of music.”

Fortunately, Quintanilla said, his organization had a long-standing business relationship with a fourth insurer which enabled him to secure a policy.

Even so, he said, insurance for the show will cost $2,800--more than twice the amount that Arcos paid to insure a 1990 concert at Santa Ana Stadium by Latino pop star Juan Gabriel. Arcos has been promoting shows in the Latino market since 1984 and has branched into rap as well during the past year.

Quintanilla said that part of his purpose in putting on Saturday’s “Summer Jam ‘92” concert is to help remove a “bad stigma” about live rap that he said is exemplified by the insurers’ refusal to underwrite the show.

“They think it’s going to be gang fighting and a mob scene of blacks and Latinos and that (the rap fans) are uncivilized,” he said. “That’s not the case. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for good weather and good people.”

Quintanilla said that 1,700 tickets had been sold as of Thursday morning. “That’s a very good sign,” he said, because rap concerts are known for generating most of their sales at the gate. The show will run from noon to 8 p.m. at the stadium, 602 N. Flower St.

Here is the schedule of performers:

* Noon: D.J. Curl

* 12:15: Let Kick

* 12:30: Delinquent Habit

* 1:00: Juliane Santos

* 1:45: Technotronic

* 2:15: Kid Frost

* 3:00: Lighter Shade of Brown

* 3:45: ALT & the Lost Civilization

* 4:30: FU-Schnickens

* 6:00: Black Sheep

* 7:00: Cypress Hill