Onstage in Roone Arledge Auditorium, Matt Beringer from The National calls out to the crowd: "I heard Harvard got Kanye." I laugh, but I'm not sure how to respond. I love both The National and Kanye, but I dislike Harvard on principle—should I boo? What if I love Kanye more than The National, but understand the financial constraints of booking bands at Columbia—should I burn a checkbook while wearing futuristic shades? What if I tear my ears off so that I won't have to think about it—how much would the reconstructive surgery cost? Would it cost more than Kanye? Would it cost more than Kanye's sunglasses?
I don't know the price. And I don't think Harvard got Kanye—apparently Arizona State shelled out something like $500,000 for a Kanye show in April (which is definitely a lot more than Columbia paid to get him five years ago). I do know that The National put on a hell of a show in Lerner Hall, and that the sound and lighting were fantastic, especially considering that stage's dubious history and acoustics. They played a long set and held nothing back in song selection or intensity. Sometimes, there were even people shouting along and jumping up and down. I felt an honest-to-God sense of community and camaraderie, especially when Beringer screamed, "I won't fuck us over, I'm Mr. November."
Students love to complain about Columbia Concerts, but the school has booked fantastic rock bands every year of my undergraduate career. In the fall of 2006, the Hold Steady played in Roone Arledge under less than ideal circumstances (a hasty rescheduling, courtesy of rain). A distressingly small group of students managed to find the show, but those who did saw the band at its best. The Hold Steady played a preview of almost all of Boys and Girls in America, the album that was released to wide critical acclaim a month later. The band even returned for a two-song encore. The Hold Steady, with their tales of misspent youth and constant intoxication, may be the perfect college band, and they wisely took the opportunity to conduct a balls-out rehearsal in Roone for their subsequent 13-month world tour.
The fall of 2005 brought Yo La Tengo, who played on the steps on an unusually nice day. The highlights included an extended version of their cover of Sun Ra's "Nuclear War" and a breezy rendition of "Stockholm Syndrome." Yo La Tengo, long considered the official band of music geeks (and immortalized forever in The Onion's headline "37 Record Store Clerks Feared Dead in Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster"), played a charming and unpretentious set, full of jangly pop tunes and noisy guitar jams.
At my freshman year orientation, Columbia booked The Walkmen. Although my memory of the concert has grown hazy, I'll never forget hearing the song "The Rat" for the first time. I think that those four years of rock bands, taken together, would trump any other school's lineup. Besides, we've also hosted Common, Ghostface, and the Clipse, all of whom performed immediately before releasing enthusiastically received albums. (And we had unlimited access to Vampire Weekend for a year and a half before they headed down the path to fame and riches (and, probably, a catastrophic breakdown at some future date)). Columbia has consistently chosen acts with momentum, instead of simply the most popular bands it could afford, and they've been pretty prescient. Would people have been happier with Avril or Fall Out Boy? We've had many great bands in their prime, or bands on the cusp of something great, and I find that hard to complain about.
