Allow me to make a broad, generalizing and potentially racially offensive statement: White people love Journey, and I don't understand why.
Every social event I've attended in my illustrious Duke career, from frat party to semiformal to Maya Angelou's orientation address, is immediately transformed as soon as "Don't Stop Believing" begins to play. People seem to go into a trance-like state when Steve Perry's tenor is heard, similar to when Britney Spears sees a pack of Twinkies.
It has been four years since I left the "monotonatic" world of Tyler, Texas. Who likes country? What about alt-country? What about Christian country? No takers? In that long time since I still haven't figured out the love for Journey.
I mean, honestly, why pick Journey over what I believe is the superior '80s rock band, Foreigner? Sure, "Don't Stop Believing" and "Anyway You Want It" are great, but they just can't compete with "Double Vision," "Cold As Ice," "I Want to Know What Love Is," and the list goes on and on.
The demand for Journey led to an entire student movement to bring the band for LDOC-if forming Facebook groups counts as a movement. Though the group fell short of their ultimate goal, Journey cover band Frontiers will be playing before the main act today on LDOC.
It is rather appropriate that Journey and Duke collide on LDOC, because I feel like the annual undergraduate bacchanalia is a perfect example of the musical things I don't understand about my Caucasian peers. My LDOC headliners have been Collective Soul, Guster, Jason Mraz and Third Eye Blind. With the exception of Guster, the acts haven't exactly been critical darlings. However, not being accepted in the pretentious world of music critics isn't enough to discount the bands. A bigger problem is that the acts have all come to the Main Quad stage a few too many years past their prime. What's worse, these acts specialize in what can only be described politely as wussy rock, hardly fitting for what should be the most rambunctious day of the semester.
LDOC seems like the perfect place to bring a musical act that can really bring the campus alive, not lull us into a sunny-yacht-ride-on-a-weekend-trip-to-Cape-Cod sense of sleepiness. Why choose Collective Soul when there are currently popular or up-and-coming acts that have some modern relevance and what could be considered musical talent? Let's aim for a musical act that really knows how to rock. And if we are really lucky we may get a band that rawks, but that is just idealistic hope.
The most common answer I receive when I lodge this complaint to the Bureau of Friends Who Listen to Varun Rant is, "Well, they are limited by budget restrictions." Mount Holyoke College is bringing M.I.A. for their spring concert and brought Kanye West and Hellogoodbye in previous years (although the show is only free to the first 100 students). Are you kidding me? We are being shown up by Mount Holyoke? First it is Mount Holyoke and LDOC, and before you know it Vassar will be dunking on Singler.
With our budget we could bring Muse, Wolfmother, Arctic Monkeys, the White Stripes, the Black Keys or any other number of bands. Bands that have visited Duke like Franz Ferdinand and Death Cab for Cutie make more sense for LDOC.
After hours of careful introspection and two bags of bin candy, I have come to the conclusion that I will never understand my peers' taste in music because I don't share their propensity for nostalgia. I came from a small town in Texas that I wasn't particularly fond of and was thus usually living for the present and looking toward my future, not usually taking time to reminisce.
Now after four years of happy memories, I look at the Marketplace or the massive fortress that is Gilbert-Addoms and can kind of see why people care about the past. I am starting to realize the importance of nostalgia. These bands represent distinct memories or ideas that illicit the warmest of fuzzies. This still doesn't excuse choosing Journey over Foreigner.
We are supposed to use these senior columns to leave you younger folks with a bit of trite advice gleaned from our knowledge and wisdom as seniors. But I don't feel like it is necessary to extol cliches when Journey has been giving it to you all along: Don't Stop Believing.
I hate myself so much right now.
Varun Lella is a Trinity senior. He is the current recess editor and is convinced he is pretty awesome.
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