As USC students welcome family members from across the nation and world to Los Angeles for the upcoming Trojan Family Weekend festivities, the music of their parents’ generations will once again blare across McCarthy Quad.
This Thursday, USC Visions and Voices, the campus’ university-wide arts and humanities initiative, will host British pop band ABC live in concert, following a pre-show conversation with lead singer Martin Fry.
The band, formed in 1981, fuses elements of disco and funk with new wave, having charted on both the U.K. and the U.S. top 40 with songs such as “The Look of Love,” “Be Near Me” and “When Smokey Sings.”
ABC is the newest addition in a series of family weekend headliners embodying similar musical eras, including the B-52s, Berlin, the Psychedelic Furs and last year’s headliner, A Flock of Seagulls. Visions and Voices Executive Director Daria Yudacufki said ABC’s performance will provide “fun” entertainment that resonates with parental-age audiences.
“This genre has been really great so far, and we kind of are sticking with it,” Yudacufki said.
While ABC’s music emerged and experienced its peak before many USC students were born, the concert will expose students to the music of their parents’ generation while appealing to audiences of all ages and musical tastes, Visions and Voices Marketing Administrator Martin Wong said.
“What’s cool is that during Trojan Family Weekend, parents will meet professors, they’ll go to a football game, they’ll check out the museums on campus, so they’ll see a lot of things that students do, but this is kind of a chance for students to do something that the parents were into when they were younger,” Wong said. “It’s almost like an opposite, and it’s kind of fun, that give and take, and we love the multigenerational aspect.”
Sam Ingram, a freshman studying psychology, plans on attending the concert with his mom despite not being as familiar with the band himself.
“My mom is a big 80s fan, and it’s really about her,” Ingram said. “She really loves that kind of music, and I think she wanted to introduce it to me too.”
Despite some students having limited knowledge of ABC’s discography, others may have been exposed to the band’s “timeless” hits through streaming, which has reached audiences across generations, Yudacufski said.
“I see that a lot of 80s bands have tons of listens on Spotify, and I think there’s just such a wide range of audience now, for music, cross-generationally, and this music is timeless,” Yudacufski said.
Familiar or not with the band’s selection of hits, Wong added that ABC’s performance will provide attendees with a “really fresh, powerful energetic vibe that will resonate with anyone who wants to have fun.”
Katie Hahn, a freshman majoring in artificial intelligence for business, views the concert, as well as Family Weekend’s other events including the USC v. Arizona football game on Saturday, as an opportunity to “spend time with her dad”.
KXSC, an independent student radio organization, is involved with Family Weekend’s concert every year. Jackson Nehls, a junior majoring in the music industry and the general manager at KXSC, said “We are grateful that Visions and Voices gave us a booth at the concert. All of the booths open at 6, an hour before the concert starts and they close at 10. Anyone who wants to can stop by at any time.
Santana Vespe, the music director at KXSC, said “We are going to do giveaways and anyone can stop by our booth to get stickers, pins and other stuff like that. It just adds to the experience for students and their parents.”
As Wong put it, “I hope people bring their folding chairs to sit at first, but collapse them and get up and move around, and show off their moves.”
Photo courtesy of Cherubino / CC BY-SA 4.0