Cheesespread

Get with the program
Well, I’m finally convinced that the majority of Chico State students don’t know good music from a day-old vomit puddle on Main Street. How else can you justify TWO inexplicably poor turnouts for two great live performers in Chico last week? I just don’t get it. People complain about spending $5 to $10 on a show when half the student population looks like they’re driving around $20,000-plus vehicles that Mommy and Daddy bought them. First off, you have the Wayne Hancock show at the Brick Works on Wednesday. Anytime a crappy MTV buzz band plays the Brick you get lines around the block—same thing with some new-school cheeseball country musician at the Crazy Horse. But book an authentic, old-school country crooner playing the real deal, and the place looks like a cavern. Pathetic.

Then, even worse, on Thursday, Femi Kuti and his 14-piece band Positive Force put on a stellar, high-energy show at the new BMU Student Auditorium and the place wasn’t even half-full. This is an international artist, mind you, well-respected around the world who just finished a stadium tour on the East Coast and who is playing a $25 show at the Fillmore in SF just two nights after Chico. But, do many students fork over the whopping $6 to check out this highly danceable, funky-as-hell show? Nope. They’re probably sitting in the dorms or wherever watching one of those dismissed, elimi-date shows and rooting for more nipple shots.

It’s no wonder that Chico gets the reputation among many touring bands as a waste of a stopover—a podunk little white trash pitstop where the homogenized jarheads care more about getting drunk off cheap fruity drinks and barfing on their shoes then supporting live music and making the downtown a truly enjoyable place to go. I apologize to those who are legitimately poor and who support to live shows—but I just have to vent. I’ve noticed this wack trend for the last six years, and sometimes it just gets to be too much.

The last two months have been pretty darn good when it comes to live music in our little burg. But it can’t keep up, unless some people go to the shows. So check out the upcoming schedules for the Senator, the Brick Works and Moxie’s—which all have some wonderful shows coming up and try your best to check out new things. Even if they aren’t on commercial radio or TV—you sucker-mother-$&#*$!.s!

Weekly props
1. Charles Barkley

2. Duffy’s gong show

3. TAj Mahal in Redding (12/2)

4. Sopranos rentals

5. Femi Kuti’s dancers