Who is Mike Jones? Ask people who were around during his performance at the 2007 Veishea and you may find some negative answers.

“It felt like there was 100 people there when there was actually like 1,000,” said Adam Brandt, sophomore in aerospace engineering. “I was expecting the crowd to be more into it, but he wasn’t very into it at all, almost like he was drunk or something.”

Rapper Mike Jones was one of three headliners at the Live @ VEISHEA concert series, along with alternative rock act Story of the Year and country artist Chris Cagle.

Mike Jones performed for 34 minutes in front of an estimated crowd of more than 9,000 people. He began the show at approximately 2:15 a.m. Sunday, about a half hour past his earliest scheduled time of 1:45 a.m. He was accompanied by a single disc jockey, playing tracks from an Apple laptop computer onstage. Jones executed a selection of his own songs and covers, and cut many songs short. The mix at the beginning of the show was also lacking in bass, spectators said.

“If he would have sang his song all of the way through and actually sang his own songs and not mixed it up all over the place, it would have been a lot better,” said Doug Allen, freshman in construction engineering.

Steve Satterlee, entertainment programs coordinator of the Memorial Union, said Jones’ performance served its purpose and was not entirely unexpected.

“We had contracted him to a minimum of 30 minutes,” Satterlee said. “He performed his contracted amount of time, and, as a rap performer – for that genre – he did pretty much exactly what you would expect that genre to do. He waits a little bit to go onstage, to build up hype. We did everything we could to try and maintain the schedule.”

Satterlee said the lack of bass was largely out of the sound team’s control.

“They had burnt the CDs and only have so much control over that,” Satterlee said. “We can only make it louder, and that’s it. We can’t control the distortion once it’s mixed.”

Mike Jones was paid a $21,000 flat fee for his appearance – $617 per minute of his show.

Jones was not the highest paid performer of the night, however. Co-headliner Story of the Year was paid $27,500.

Co-headliner Chris Cagle and Battle of the Bands headliner Saliva were each paid $20,000.

Satterlee said each headliner’s fee was all-inclusive, and did not cover anything else – such as travel or hotel fees – minus a few minor amenities such as bottled water and fruit in the hospitality tent.

The fee for the bands came out of the Veishea entertainment committee’s budget of $154,000. Most of that money came from donations from the division of student affairs, fees, donors and the Government of the Student Body. The entertainment committee also collaborated with several groups on campus, such as the Student Union Board, the Frederiksen Court Council, the Committee on Lectures and the First Amendment Day Committee.

“You have to keep in mind that that money goes not only to paying artists . but also putting up stages, lights, renting out tents and venues, that sort of thing,” said Nathan Katzer, Veishea entertainment committee co-chairman and senior in public service and administration in agriculture. “We really did have a huge turnout for all these events. And when you look at it, the breakdown per event per person is pretty cost-effective.”

Katzer said there were several events available as an alternative to the Live @ VEISHEA event, including the V-Games, an indoor movie and fireworks.

“It wasn’t the entertainment committee’s goal to make Saturday night just a music festival,” Katzer said.

Satterlee said in his experience, working with rappers has proven difficult.”It is a different culture,” Satterlee said. “It’s their timetable you’re trying to work with as well as you can to make it work within the big juggernaut of what Veishea is. Ultimately, the goal is for us to provide entertainment up through 3 in the morning, which is past when bars close and everything, and everybody’s tired and they want to go home. So it actually kind of worked out well, although it was not planned to work that way, with him stalling or whatever it is that he does to pump the crowd up or whatever. It still worked out to the benefit of keeping people there and everything.”

Kelsi Mehmen, Veishea entertainment committee co-chairwoman and senior in agricultural business, said Jones’ performance is unlikely to dissuade future Veishea committees from selecting rap artists to perform.

“There are a lot of students at Iowa State who enjoy that type of music, and as an entertainment committee, we wanted to make sure that we had as many people’s interests [covered] with the concerts, or the V-Games, or the movie, or Stars Over VEISHEA.”

Satterlee said student response to Jones was not entirely negative. “I talked to a lot of students that were there that wanted to go just to say that they saw Mike Jones,” Satterlee said. “That’s kind of the goal for us, is to put people out there that people will come and see and hopefully they do well. And if they don’t, we can take a little hit for it – but it wasn’t us performing.”