Two years ago, like many of those around the Keene State College campus, he was just a regular college student studying finance, according to a November 2012 Las Vegas Weekly article “Las Vegas Native 3LAU is Finding EDM Success at Young Age.”
After discovering electronic dance music on a vacation to Sweden in 2011, he started producing mash-ups.
Justin “3LAU” Blau went viral in just a year, the Las Vegas Weekly article stated. With over 105,000 Facebook likes and more than 4.75 million YouTube views, the DJ sensation will take over KSC at the fall concert on Nov. 24, 2013.
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As students become more and more excited for the highly anticipated DJ, they have Social Activities Council to thank for putting it all together.
When SAC members found out that Groove Boston wasn’t coming to KSC this year, like it had many years in the past, it was SAC’s Concert Coordinator, Alicia Berry’s idea of going with an electronic DJ theme for this years fall concert.
Berry said, “I e-mailed our agent, Taylor, [with] concert ideas and he gave me a list of who’s available at what time or what days so we looked through and narrowed it down and [3LAU] was one of the very good ones.”
According to Berry, the $25,000-$30,000 budget that SAC is working with for the fall weekend is a tighter budget than they work with in the spring.
However, it still allows for a fun and enjoyable weekend. With 3LAU costing $17,500, President of Social Activities Council, Meghan Murphy said, “We are still working on [finding] an opener.”
A lot of people seem to often wonder how SAC comes up with how much the main act for the fall concert is going to cost—how much they are willing to spend, how they plan to make that money back and how much tickets will be.
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“There is an equation that we use with how much they [the artist] cost, how much we’re going to charge, how popular they seem to be among the campus,” Murphy said.
“We think about it a lot and plan out how we can make that back.”
Murphy and Berry said they are both very excited about 3LAU performing and they expect there to be a good turn out.
Murphy said, “That’s the thing about DJ’s is that you don’t have to know who they are to still enjoy their show. He’s going to do a lot of fun things to make it a dancing atmosphere.”
To add to that, she also said, “I think that Keene State likes dance parties.”
Murphy and Berry both said they agree that many students enjoy that kind of atmosphere.
The two SAC e-board members said they expect to see many students interested in attending 3LAU’s show.
After the decision was made that 3LAU was who SAC wanted to perform at the fall concert, it started the process of trying to contact and confirm a performance.
It’s not just as easy as telling them what day the concert will be with expectations for them to show up.
It takes a lot of negotiating and figuring out the small details that sometimes people don’t think of.
Berry explained how after choosing 3LAU, Berry and their agent went through many factors—“how much would tickets be, when’s the start time, when’s the actual event, where is it, how much room will he have,” and more details.
After SAC has figured out all the details, and negotiated a price, both parties have to sign the contract for everything to be settled.
3LAU will be performing on Sunday, Nov. 24 in the Mabel Brown Room of the L.P. Young Student Center. Tickets for students will be $5.
Although SAC is not yet sure on pricing for the public, tickets will be available for non-students with a higher price, however.
SAC has not yet determined when tickets will be going on sale, but advises students to keep their eyes open for when they do.
As far as student reaction goes, a lot of people seem to agree that 3LAU will have a good turn out. Senior Kim Lynch said even though she has never heard of 3LAU she will probably go check him out.
Juniors Alexis Bly and Ryan O’Hora both said that they most likely won’t go see 3LAU’s performance but they think that he will get a good turn out because he is the type of music that a lot of students here at KSC like and enjoy.
SAC members and KSC students seem to look forward to seeing a fun, energetic, enjoyable, and memorable performance.
Erin Severns can be contacted at
eseverns@keene-equinox.com