Well hello again. It must be Wednesday if you are reading this which means that we are halfway through another God awful week of class.

I would like to say GOOD MORNING to all of you who are in 8 or 9 o’ clocks, GOOD AFTERNOON to those of you who are a little better at scheduling and are sitting in your 12 o’ clock as your first class of the day.

For starters I would like to say that my car, the glorious mode of transportation that it is, remains in Colfax. Soon I will liberate it from the evil clutches of the Colfax locals.

Moving on, I am getting prepared for the Dave Matthews Band concert that will already be over by the time this column runs. I hope I had a good time.

I recently read a review of a show that the band did in my back yard, Cleveland.

The review basically said that Dave Matthews and the rest of the band put on a less than stellar performance.

I was instantly taken aback by the review. I have seen DMB a number of times and in every instance found the shows thousands of times better than any CD.

The review said Matthews and the rest of the band spent too much time in solos and not enough time playing its “radio hits.”

The woman reviewing the show said songs like “Too Much” failed to capture the “grunge” feel that it had on the radio.

Grunge? What the hell is this woman thinking of?

To sum it up, she said the songs did not sound the same as they did on the radio.

This got me to thinking. Why is it that every time a new band comes along, it must instantly be thrown under some label that strips it of its original sound and throws them to the masses to be compared with bands that have nothing in common with it.

It seems to be happening everywhere. It’s like some kind of plague that is sweeping across the music industry destroying everything in its path.

No longer can a new band come in and blaze its own trail, forge its own path. It seems that every band must be measured by the one that came before it.

A band has not “made it” unless they have been seen on that evil monster called MTV.

MTV can single handedly make or break an upcoming band. To me, (I’m just some guy from Ohio) MTV plays only the music that fits its image. An image that has digressed exponentially over the past years.

MTV is possibly one of the strongest voices in the music industry, and it tends to be very one-sided.

The problem with MTV being one-sided is there really is no other place to get an alternative opinion.

Sprinkled between the tacky game shows, the gaudy, mindless programming that seems to yank brain cells from your skull and smash them on the tube, the millions of “hip” commercials, and mashed amongst the VJ’s egos lie the remains of bands that have been forced to conform to this music giant.

So a band is placed in a very difficult situation, conform or die.

Now, we must all sift through the rubble and try and find music we like to listen to. Music that is whole. Music that actually has some emotion behind it.

This is not to say that every band on MTV is bad. There are a few that have survived the plague and gone on to live fruitful lives fighting Ticketmaster and producing trash. Pearl Jam?

So why should Dave Matthews, or any other band be expected to perform the way the industry dictates?

It was its original sound that got them there in the first place. Let the fans, and the musicians frolic in it.

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J.R. Grant is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. His own video has yet to be seen on MTV.