Broward Community College - Silver Sands Yearbook (Fort Lauderdale, FL)

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Rick Bowen Silver Sands: Flick Bowen. Silver Sands: Rick Bowen: 2. Nfxx, uv Z- X! ,V N by c 'xx have to spend more than that. We have to spend close to fifteen percent of our gross down here because there are so many stations and the demographics are spread out so great. Down here, we buy six stations: WBUS, WIVIYQ, WFUN, WQAIVI, VVSHE, and WSRF. D0 you think you Ill eventually expand into group management? I foresee that the concert situation will always be the backbone of anything that I do. I don't feel that l'm a good enough manager or that I have experience in that field to become an all-out professional in it. I don't feel that l have the potential to manage a stable of acts. I am capable of running my concert business and having one or two acts to manage and that's my full capability. Why are you in this business? The financial thing. lt's rewarding, usually. lt's the only kind of business -he qu? that you can lose huge sums of in and, on the other hand, make huge sums of money in a quick period of time. If you're that is. lt's just a gigantic co of things. The thing that dejects me the about the business are the young school kids that getfreaked drugs. That has been the one that has always bugged me business and I know that gonna do drugs, at their I their cars at school, and they re do them at football games and of my concerts, and that really me. That's the worst thing happening in our society today. don't get off drugs soon, I don't what's going to happen. It to death. We provide entertainment and the one thing that keeps people throughout the roughest times through the best times. People always want to be entertained just feel like that's my ieb.

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'lver Sands: ick Bowen: Vver Sands: ick Bowen: L...- it stands out more on the record. So, if you listen to the whole album, if for no other reason, psychologically and subconsciously you remember that song because it was a little louder. Those are the tricks you play on the record buying public. How much money does it take to promote a concert and what risks are involved? lt requires a huge amount of money to stay in this business because each show that you buy, you are required to put up fifty per cent of the talent cost in advance, you are requied to put up a deposit on your building which usually amunts to about half the amount of the rent, and you have to purchase most of your radio and newspaper advertising by paying for it in advance. So, it runs into abnormally high sums of money. lt's just something l've always learned to live with. I have always had to worry about getting the things done that I need to get done. At the lowest point of my schedule, it's too busy and at the highest point it's just too chaotic. What is your relationship with Leas Campbell? On some concerts, l'm in a partnership with Leasg on other concerts, we're strictly East Coast Concerts or strictly Concerts West. lt depends a great deal on the individual shows. Silver Sands: Rick Bowen: Silver San ds: Rick Bowen: lt's a matter of doing two things for you. Number one, if it's a show that you're not that sure about, it gives you somebody to lay off part of the action to and in this particular area there are so many concerts that l don't want to have the amount of exposure that I would have by doing all the concerts by myself. And neither does Leas by doing them all himself. As a consequence, we pool our energies, our capitals, and we pool our exposures, and in all general partnerships we receive the values thereof. How much money does it take to promo te a concert and what risks are involved? lt requires a huge amount of money to stay in this business because each show that you buy, you are required to put up fifty percent of the talent cost in advance, you are required to put up a deposit on your building which usually amounts to about half the amount of the rent, and you have to purchase most of your radio and newspaper advertising by paying for it in advance. So, it runs into abnormally high sums of money. The rewards can be few or they can be great. lt's just as easy to make 310,000 as it is to lose 810,000 on a show. And there are so many different aspects that affect your concerts: the local economic levels, the amount of people that are in town, high school football or basketball games. There are just hundreds of things that can enter into it and spell disaster for you if you happen to hit the right combination of things on any particular given concert. How much advertising are we bombarded with when you decide to do a concert? In most markets, we try to spend ten percent' of what we feel our gross of the show will be. If we feel our gross of the show will be S50,000, we usually spend S5,000. In Miami, we

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Cl' i University of South Florida rgraduate students Mike Goodwin Ken Cramer walked into the it phone booth just outside their iitory they had only a dime. , majoring in journalism, slid the ' piece of currency through the ded slot, got a dial tone, and i the toll free 800 number of a r insurance company in New like was patiently dialing off the ssary digits, Ken pulled a small Ilic box, no larger than an eight istor portable AM radio out of knapsack he carries with him tantly. compact piece of electronic Jment which Ken now holds in his is called a Blue Box. lt is a i-tone oscillator, which can uce all of the 13 once secret tone :Jinations needed to turn the d-wide telephone company into more than an obedient genie in 1ands of its possessor. On the face ne device are 12 buttons marked l,4,5,6,7,8,9,0,KP, and ST. Each iese emits two tones at one time, h like the touch tone phones being today, which, when manipulated Playing A Tune For A Number Photos by Peter Paige correctly, makes its possessor a cross country, trans-continental, overseas operator. On the top of the easy to build device is another button which emits a pure tone of 2600 cycles per second lcpsl. As soon as Mike completes the call, Ken who is already holding the box close to the mouthpiece of the ordinary pay phone, pushes the 2600 cps button. After a second the ringing stops and a slight clicking noise preceeds a sharp momentary buzz. All of a sudden there is clean, white silence. lt's cool, says Ken. We've hit a trunk. Where would you like to go? Mike says he'd like to go to Switzerland. He has a girl friend in Geneva. Ken slowly moves his finger down to the KP button on the lower left side of the cold metal face. The frequency combination of 1100 cps and 1700cps gets fed into the mouthpiece. He follows it with four other buttons: One, eight, two, and ST. All the tones are digested by the pay phone with an anti- climatic click-clunk. by Bill Jacques Flight now we're hooked up to the international sender in White Plains, explains Ken. There are seven of these senders which exist in the U.S. The others are in New York, Pittsburg, Jacksonville, Oakland, Denver, and Montreal. Each usually serves a different continent. White Plains services Europe. Do you want to go by satellite or cable? asks Ken flauntingly. l'm scared of heights, Mike answers. II I ll Lets go by cable. Now, Ken explains, all we have to do to complete the call is punch out the country code, city code, and your chick's number. The country code is 41, Ken continues as he scans down a mimeographed sheet with a long list of countries with an individual number listed beside each. So all I do is punch out KP 141, the area code 1 and dial up your chick. The KP stands for Key Punch. This tells our sender we are ready to feed it. The 1 before the country code of 41 tells it we want to go by cable., lf we had