The headline came as a moderate shock to those of us expecting to be subdued by another average Veishea. It read, in no less than size 18 font, “Veishea will have no major concert.”

Not to bite the hand that feeds me, but I think this was the most monumental error by the Daily this year. For several days, I looked for a headline retraction, but none showed up. So I guess it’s really my duty to propose my question to the student body at large. That question is, quite simply: How is this different from the last two years?

The simple fact is that no matter how you dress up Vertical Horizon and Black-Eyed Peas, they aren’t major concerts anymore than the average fourth-grade piano recital. At least this year, through this so-called failure to book a major band, the students are probably going to get a good deal.

Before I make everyone angry and get put to death by the Veishea burning-at-the-stake subcommittee of the committee on lynching, I should point out that I think they did a great job. I sincerely mean this.

It’s time for us all to take a deep breath of reality. If you look at the acts the Iowa State Center has brought in over the last year, they’re mind-numbingly bad. Whether it came in the form of Creed, LFO, Matchbox 20 or the upcoming Dave Matthews Band and N’Sync shows, even the popular concerts were just examples of money sucking the creativity out of music and reducing it to banal ballads and post-Nirvana confusion.

They were just great examples of how musical elitists like myself could draw a distinct line between those with no taste and those with good taste. It was a simple equation, albeit a subjective and unfair one. Matchbox 20 fans were bad, while KURE listeners and people who have at least heard of Guided by Voices, Yo La Tengo and Jimmy Eat World were good.

Ames simply isn’t a hotbed of concert tours these days. Even if they missed the main Ames demographic, Billy Joel and Aerosmith were as top-of-the-line as we can ever expect to get here. How bad is it? Well, during Bob Dylan’s college tour of last spring, he had a definite choice in his tour stops.

Rather than come to Iowa State, where did he go? The University of Nebraska at Kearney, a college less than one-third the size of Iowa State, and a college with no major arena for concerts. Then, just a few days later, he stopped in Lincoln, essentially eliminating the only metropolitan draw that Kearney had. This is just one example, but clearly a glaring one. It’s a bad sign when Kearney and Cape Girardeau, Mo. are outdrawing us.

Veishea’s concerts the past two years have definitely attracted virtually no one. When Black-Eyed Peas were booked, I barely knew anyone who had any idea who they were. Strangesearch and Napster were buzzing with people in Ames who were trying to like this no-name band from Los Angeles. The fact is, students actually tried to embrace the entrails of musical talent that Veishea had tossed to them.

When we got Vertical Horizon and Five for Fighting, I gave up. Not only had Vertical Horizon been in the area just a few months prior at Westfair Amphitheater, they were the third-billed band behind the far superior Third Eye Blind and Splender. They were definitely an uninspiring live band, and if I hadn’t gotten the tickets to the show for free, I’d have demanded my money back. I wasn’t alone, judging from the absolutely tepid response the Vertical Horizon show got from ISU students.

Really, this year’s situation is completely understandable. It’s not my nature to give anyone that much credit for doing a mediocre job of drumming up publicity, but at least they made a good effort. Exacerbating the problem by going mainstream again would only be annoying. People who wanted Creed and Matchbox 20 had their chance. Any band that would appeal to the same crew would get trashed by the rest of us who’ve had our fill of it through radio inundation.

We should realize that this is not the end of Veishea. In fact, I think it may be a new beginning. For the first time in three years, this should be money well spent on the Rock Veishea event. With a good number of local bands, odds are a lot better that there will be something for everyone, not just the lemmings.

Planning for Veishea is an impossible task. There’s nothing that’s likely to persuade nearly 28,000 students to join in a ceremony of unity except surpassing last year’s world’s largest rice krispie treat with the world’s largest keg of beer. At that, the student health center would still inform me that only 40 percent of students would really take advantage of such an achievement.

The highlight of Veishea the past two years has been Dew the Rec, followed closely by the breakdown of the Tofilon/Johnson car during last year’s parade. There’s a reason why Rock Veishea hasn’t shown up on that list. Hopefully, with a bit of success this year, that will change.

We should be happy. At least this year, the money spent on bands will be harder to squander. Rather than shelling out big money for a second- or third-tier flash in the pan like Staind or Nickelback, this year will be, at worst, the year remembered for nothing.

On the bright side, it has a lot more integrity and economic sense than nothing posing as something.

Tim Kearns is a senior in political science from Bellevue, Neb.