As you may have noticed, there is a group of bothersome individuals who frequently stand around the Student Union lobby, attempting to promote the Dave Matthews Band contest. In case you haven't heard about it...wait, wait, wait. Unless you've been living in a cave - on Mars - with your fingers in your ears for the whole semester, you've definitely heard about it. It has even masqueraded as "news" more than once in this very publication.
There is one DMB fanatic in particular who appears to have made it his personal crusade to summon good ol' Dave and his friends to the UB campus. And it is this individual who has accosted me in the Student Union lobby twice now. Like a communist trying to sell their revolutionary paper or a homeless man repeatedly asking for change, this DMB enthusiast handed me a flyer while quickly blurting something to the effect of: "Do you like Dave Matthews' Band? Wanna help get them to play at UB?"
How shocked and momentarily nauseous he looked when I replied simply, "No."
"You...don't like Dave Matthews Band?"
"Not even a little."
"Not even if it was free?"
"Not even if you paid me."
As I walked away, the fan looked helpless and forsaken. The possibility of the existence of a NON-fan had never occurred to him. It was as if I had told an Amish man that there is no God.
The following week, after enjoying upwards of seven days as harassment-free, I was approached by the fan a second time. This time he remembered that I am a non-believer, a heathen, a heretic.
He asked me again if I would like Dave Matthews to play at our beloved place of higher learning. I said no, then recalled him as the same fanatic who had previously accosted me, and asked, "Didn't we already do this last week?"
He tried a few more times to convince me, while following me across the lobby, and when I made it extremely clear that I am not interested in Dave, his band, or any contest for them to come annoy the crap out of me in person, the fanatic broke out the big guns:
He said, "I know where you copy edit."
What was this? A threat? A notification of intent to stalk?
By this point he had followed me all the way outside, leering at me with his brightly colored flyers and empty jam-band-loving stare. Gradually he receded, his flip-flops shuffling back indoors and his curly, untamed locks disappearing into the shadows of the Student Union.
I was at a loss. Reeling through memories from 1997, I had never thought that the popular band of the day would still be around ten years later. This is almost as disturbing to me as the continued reverence for Sublime and some sort of heroin-riddled zombie Brad Nowell.
If we really want to take it back, we should try to get Hanson or Seal or R. Kelly to play UB. You may be wondering whatever happened to these Top 100 artists from last decade, and I will happily tell you that they're buried in their musical graves where they should be (with the exception of R. Kelly - he's just been in the closet all this time).
So should we not lay DMB to rest, as well? I do fear for the Dave Matthews generation - I really do. When fans affectionately refer to the guitarist as merely "Dave," implying that everyone in Birkenstocks or otherwise has met the man and maintained an intimate friendship with him, I grow worrisome indeed. If the band does turn up at UB to play a show, it is not because "Dave" is friends with any of us, and it will more realistically be an excuse to get high, drink Coronas and lose more than a few brain cells.
Although it technically came out three years before DMB went mainstream, I am reminded of the movie PCU. A third coming of hippies is here (the second being circa 1994 as exemplified in PCU and also that Woodstock '94 crap), but this emergence is the scariest of them all, for these hippies lack ideals and tend to look just like everyone else. But they still smoke lots of weed and listen to bad music, leaving me with one question: "Who snagged the bee?"
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
