Music fraternity to host ‘Phi Mu Alpha Jukebox’ this weekend

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Music fraternity to host ‘Phi Mu Alpha Jukebox’  this weekend
The band will perform “Mr. Saxobeat” by Alexandra Stan as part of the show. | Wiki Commons

The hosts of Battle of the Bands are returning to 55 Below for a spring show, this time featuring student song requests.

The music fraternity Phi Mu Alpha will host Phi Mu Jukebox from 8 p.m. to midnight on March 25. Tickets are $5 at the door or $3 in the Grewcock Student Union during mealtimes. All the proceeds go to the nonprofit Education Through Music.

“It kind of stems off our battle of the bands event in the fall,” sophomore and fraternity president Avery Miller said. “Our main goal was trying to give musicians on campus more opportunity to play.”

The main difference with this event, however, is that the audience got to voice their opinion on what they’d like to hear. In February, the Phi Mu members had a booth in the student union where students paid $3 to pre-order tickets and suggested a song or voted for already-suggested songs.

The event will feature four student bands —Them Kids, Sad Dads, Stella Anne and the Half Pints, and Half House — who committed to play a set before the songs were chosen.

“Some people wanted to curse us with bad songs,” said senior Shane Smith, bassist for Stella Anne. “But most of them are awesome songs that will be fun to hear live.”

Smith said he’s most excited to play “Hotel California” by the Eagles and “Mr. Saxobeat” by Alexandra Stan. Some of the choices, like “Flashing Lights” by Kanye West, will be difficult to pull off in a rock band setting, he said.

“But I think it makes it more interesting because it’s a challenge,” Smith said.

Senior Nick West said he’s most excited for “Flashing Lights.”

West developed the event after Phi Mu’s vice president, junior Matthias Rhein, came up with the idea of doing a jukebox concert.

“Matthias had the original idea to do an event where people recommend songs and we play them, but that’s kind of a difficult thing to do in practice,” West said. “You have to take some time to let bands know what songs they’re playing. So, I ended up taking the lead on trying to figure out how we were going to do that.”

While Battle of the Bands is the fraternity’s primary source of income for the year, this additional event will give all proceeds to the nonprofit Education Through Music. The nonprofit partners with under-resourced schools that don’t have music programs to develop curricula and train teachers at those schools.

“It’s a very sustainable charity,” West said. “It tries to find areas of need where there isn’t a ton of music and establish ongoing programs.”

For more information about the event, see @hc.phimualpha on Instagram, or stop by their booth in the union this week.