On Oct. 23, KRUX hosted their 36th annual Birthday Bash concert at Corbett Center Student Union’s outdoor stage. The night featured live music from local bands, with students turning out in their Halloween costumes.
KRUX 91.5 FM is New Mexico State University’s student-run radio broadcast. For the last 36 years, the organization has celebrated its first airing in Oct. 1989. One of the highlights of Birthday Bash is the costume contest, in which students can arrive at the concert dressed up in a costume and compete for a prize. This year, KRUX’s event featured three bands: Blushed, Kaliyah and Ruff.
First-year student, Ethan Perez, dressed up as Anakin Skywalker from the “Star Wars” franchise. Perez explained why he decided to dress up as the character for both Birthday Bash and Halloween.
“Well, for me, the hair is similar,” Perez said. “And then he is also my favorite Star Wars character too. So, it all just matched. I also wanted to get the scar on it, but I did not have the makeup for it.”
The second-place winners of the contest was a duo of students who were dressed up as Jesus Christ for Halloween. According to Albert Perez and Cristian Souder, neither of them was aware of Birthday Bash until they noticed it and chose to participate.
“So, the story is that we were playing basketball in the Activity Center, and then we heard loud music outside,” Perez said. “We wanted to go check it out, you know, to see what all the fuss was about. And then we see like all these people in costumes. And then we said, ‘screw it,’ we had our costumes in our car nearby and we went to dress up.”
After winning second place, Perez said that he enjoyed his introduction to KRUX’s yearly event and encouraged more members of the community to attend next time.
“It is cool, yeah, we are definitely coming back next year. I didn’t even know this was happening, but it’d be pretty cool if a lot more people showed up,” Perez said.
Blushed was the last group of artists to play at Birthday Bash. Originating from El Paso, their band has already played once for KRUX at KRUX Fest in March 2024.
“They posted something on their social media, where they asked which bands wanted to play for their event,” Villareal said. “So, we just slid up and we were like, ‘Hey, we’re down.’”
Villareal said that their band enjoyed the concert and was happy to see the community members of NMSU enjoy their style of music.
“We love it. It is always a great crowd,” Villareal said. “The people who attend are always so nice. We honestly thought that people were going to be a little weirded out, because we’re so heavy. But I mean, they were great. It was awesome.”
