Stephen Morillo
Curmudgeonly Cartoonist

I'm irritated, and not at The Commentary, either. No, it's the reaction to the Big Head Todd concert that has me riled. I went to that concert, I thought it was a great concert, and in last week's Bachelor I find nothing but bitching, moaning, and cries that it was a failure. If this were simply a matter of differences in musical taste, I wouldn't have much to say. But I find the arguments advanced in support of this assessment of "failure" disturbing on a number of levels.

First, I will take on the critics at the level of musical evaluation. I don't see how anyone who watched that concert -- the whole concert, not some half-assed portion of it -- could argue that Big Head Todd didn't put on a great show musically. Todd Park Mohr has a great voice and plays a mean guitar. Every song had a superb -- and different sounding -- solo, accented by the fact that Mohr has the perfect guitar soloist's facial expressions, halfway between ecstatic trance and seizure. He clearly enjoyed himself up there, smiling and reacting with that chunk of the crowd that cared to respond to his efforts. And he writes good songs. "Bittersweet" is melodic, moving, and richly textured, to name just the best known of the band's songs.

But in fact, the actual performance seems not to be the target of the critics' ire. Instead, two factors dominate the whining. First, the National Act was a failure because nobody showed up. (Well, very few Wabash students, anyway. Busloads of Big Head Todd fans came from all over the place to be there. I found it pretty damn odd, after reading complaints all year about the lack of women at campus events, that Wallies stayed away in droves from an event where groups of unescorted women were in enthusiastic and abundant attendance.) Is this the band's fault? No. It's the fault of all those students who say they have no social life here, then don't show up at major interesting events.

Why don't they? Or let me put it directly. Why don't YOU show up? This brings us to the other, and to me most irritating factor. I gather from the critics, in print and in person, that the crucial problem is that Big Head Todd and the Monsters are not well enough known. "Little known", "washed up", "not that popular" -- the list of adjectives goes on, about this band and most other National Acts we get here. This line of complaint even goes so far as to suggest that has-beens might even be OK if they were bigger has-beens, like Run DMC for example.

So let me get the argument straight here. "I haven't heard of them, so they must be bad." Is that right, fellas?

What a goddam bunch of sheep you are! You can't like a band unless everybody else likes them? You only like what's familiar and comfortable? A band that comes in and does note-for-note covers of Lenny Kravitz, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden -- or whatever best-selling CD you've worn out recently -- is better than an original, creative group? Why not stay in your room and play the damn CD again? Or turn on some cloned classic rock station and stop thinking entirely! (This does lead me to ask what radio stations you have been listening to, since BHT's "Please Don't Tell Her" got significant airplay earlier this year on the stations I had on. And did anyone notice that Todd did a great cover of Led Zeppelin's "Tangerine"? That's on Zep III, guys. Whaddya, want, "Stairway to Heaven"?)

Anyway, I have to conclude that this attitude is indeed the central problem, because it accounts not only for the pitiful turnout for and reaction to Big Head Todd, but also for the miniscule turnout at The Jazz Messengers the Thursday before. Here's an All-Star jazz lineup, putting on an absolutely spectacular, stunningly good concert, and the number of students in the audience is derisory. And that concert was FREE to students! How's that argument go again, guys? "Ew, jazz -- I don't know it so it must be bad." That right? And this also explains why WNDY -- a student radio station, for god's sake -- so often sounds like every other commercial station in this state. "New music? I don't know it, so it must suck." I hesitate, with my 40th birthday around the corner, to open myself to charges of "hipper than thou-ism", but outside of my show did anyone this year play any jazz? Reggae? Sixteen Horsepower? Anything you hadn't heard before?

Ok, the punch line. I think this is about more than you all being complacent victims of commercialism. This is about being open minded and willing to examine new experiences. This is about why you're at Wabash. I mean, music is easy. Music is fun. If you can't go to a concert with your ears and minds open to something new, willing to take it on its merits and find something good that you didn't know existed before, how can you do so with something tough like ideas?

So get off your lazy intellectual and aesthetic asses. Enjoy a new sound, think a new thought. There's nothing wrong with the National Act except the audience.