In the Beginning

Music editorship for a college newspaper can be confusing. Decisions, decisions. Do we try to cover the same stuff other newspapers' arts sections do, except with more Harvard bias? Or do we assume college students have more eclectic, diverse tastes (or at least are more willing to try stuff out), and aim to introduce new, interesting things to them? It's hard to tell: I've heard loads of generalizations about the musical taste of students here at Harvard but I only get to interact with a limited percentage of you. So I take a stab in the dark and pick concerts from musicians that I feel are fairly well-known, or should be better known, and I try to do it with some reverence for music history. Which is how Fiona Apple, Apollo 440 and Lit came to share this page. But then somewhere along the line someone pointed out that this philosophy needed to be explained, plus we needed a way of summarizing all the musical occurrences on, around and off campus. So here it is, the inaugural edition of In the Mix, a new weekly music column.

The Word

Some people have asked me why The Crimson doesn't cover all the performances by all the different student musical groups. Here's our philosophy: we want to cover new things. We definitely do want to promote student bands, since many of them play original material that won't necessarily get coverage elsewhere, which is why we gave extensive coverage to Quadapalooza and co-sponsored Blast! last semester. And it's not all confined to rock: we would try to cover a premiere of a student-written symphony, for instance. But if a group is merely running through its repertoire, it's not really an incentive for us to cover it.

Still, since we believe a campus music scene of any kind is important, I'll introduce quick summaries of shows in this column. ("Word on the street says Miracle Jam was....") So if you have any comments on a show you watched, just e-mail them to me. All mails will remain anonymous. Just don't try to stack the voting.

Two Words: Milli Vanilli

There's a Simpsons episode (AABF11, "I'm With Cupid") where Elton John hands Homer a Grammy and Homer chucks it into the trash. Which is how I feel about the awards right now. I suppose I'm expected to say something about them, this being the music column and all, except that I feel award shows naturally tend to reward the middlebrow rather than the spectacular. (Hello, Santana!) And the behind-the-scenes politics of major labels to win Grammys just leaves an odd taste in my mouth. I wonder if record labels send "for your consideration" copies of albums to Grammy voters in the same way studios give out comp tickets to movies.

Let's play "20 Rhetorical Questions." Is "Believe" the best dance record of the year, or the one most people have heard of? Is Eminem a better rapper than the Roots? Is Sheryl Crow's "Sweet Child O' Mine" the best female rock vocal, or just Ms. Crow butchering one of my favorite songs? Oh well. Condolences are in order: to missed nominees (too many to name), to undeserving losers (Macy Gray, Diana Krall, Masters at Work) and to deserving winners (Tony Bennett, Chris Rock) for having to share the podium. Want an award that means something? Ladies and gentlemen, I present Time magazine's Show of the Century, "The Simpsons."

What's the Story?

There are lots of big names coming to Boston (or at least New England) in the next few months, and I'll try to tell you in advance about them. Third Eye Blind tickets, for instance, go on sale today at 11a.m. And it may be Oasis headlining the concert at the Orpheum in April, but the band to look out for is their opening act Travis, an amazing indie-rock group that does hilarious covers on stage. And finally, no matter how you parse it, the title of the new Oasis album Standing on the Shoulder of Giants is ungrammatical. "Shoulder?" Not unless someone shows me a pair of gigantic conjoined twins. Or, since presumably that title is a Beatles homage, a giant conjoined Lennon/McCartney. Imagine.

Comments? Want to talk music? Need publicity? E-mail dsng@fas