Jay Leno is retiring in a little over a month, and I suspect his memoirs will include something along the lines of "Michael Jackson's fall from grace was the best thing that ever happened to me." That whole circus, with its accessibility, crude physical humor and generally broad appeal, is the kind of material that mainstream comedians pray for at least once a day, because it's easy to joke about and everyone likes to laugh at the rich. That's why, for two years, every Jay Leno joke went out of its way to reference moonwalking -- not because it was funny, but because it was easy.
To someone who writes about live music, the takeover of Oxfam Café by Tufts Student Resources (TSR), which will turn the nonprofit, charity café into a for-profit eatery, is akin to the Michael Jackson Saga for a mainstream comedian. This is a music columnist's dream. The Man ruining a perfectly good art space by turning it into a cash cow? Yes, please! Greed wins again -- isn't anything sacred (sob)? Just wait until I put this in my LiveJournal, craft a smug tweet, and talk about it with my friends at the faux-Marxist co-op where I live, etc.
This line of thinking is simplistic, reductive and flawed. More money will probably mean, among other things, more resources to invest in making a comfortable atmosphere and better audio production. I think it's hard for anyone in the Tufts community to argue against that.
Nonetheless, as I stood in the back of the café during Brooklyn band Parts and Labor's ferociously incredible set last week, I couldn't help but get swept up in a wistful trip to cliché land. Would this kind of show or any of the dozens like it that I have been lucky enough to see in this dingy basement still be possible when the people running the café no longer care about it at all?
I've seen deafeningly loud, sardines-in-a-tin-can crowded shows by huge acts like Ratatat and Man Man; a sweaty rave with a bill that included Daedelus two days before he appeared on the cover of XLR8R Magazine; and hauntingly intimate performances by reclusive legend Phil Elverum from The Microphones. All of these nights are among my favorite memories at Tufts, and there is literally nowhere else on campus that could have hosted those shows and still made them fun.
At Tufts, concerts either happen at Dewick -- where there are as many TUPD officers as people in the audience, the music sounds like it's coming from a set of iPod speakers and the power-tripping Concert Board volunteers are too busy brown-nosing the performer to pay attention to the crowd -- or Hotung, where bands compete with the TV for attention.
Seeing and feeling Parts and Labor's songs in an atmosphere rooted in community and social activism, I realized that, as much as I hate to admit it, the simplistic faux-Marxist tweeter may have a point. If, as I suspect, the TSR takeover will mean a head-spinning bureaucracy will exercise more control over Oxfam and the concerts it hosts, there might not be anywhere else on campus for performances as meaningful and powerful as Man Man's or Phil Elverum's.
Don't misunderstand me -- I'll gladly and repeatedly see Ghostface in Dewick. But for me, Oxfam filled a huge void in the Tufts community, giving interesting people within and outside of the campus a place to see and hear quality live music. This year's head of booking, Kelly Duroncelet, a senior, told me that she "likes to give people a chance to open up for people they normally would never have the opportunity to if it were any other place." I hope, but doubt, that this is something TSR will eventually understand.
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Mikey Goralnik is a senior majoring in American Studies. He can be reached at Michael.Goralnik@tufts.edu.
