As you can imagine, I’m very proud to make this major announcement that I stole from Chris Strub’s blog on pressconnects.com which he stole from Melissa Bykofsky’s article on bupipedream.com:

Third Eye Blind is coming to Binghamton.

You remember Third Eye Blind, doncha?  Their bubble-gum-punk-pop-sounding singles got oodles of radio play because it took three or four listens before anyone realized that the songs were actually about suicide, blow jobs, and crystal meth.

Yes, Third Eye Blind is back with a whole new album: “Ursa Major”.  You can listen to their latest single, “Don’t Believe a Word” below.  Just make sure nobody with epilepsy is in the room while you watch the video.  And when you figure out why one of the band members changes outfits on-screen at 1:38, drop me a note and fill me in.  Thanks.

PS: You should actually all go support Third Eye Blind because they graciously agreed to do the ribbon-cutting at the 2007 Southern Tier AIDS Walk in Rec Park.  And A LOT of bands wouldn’t have done that.

Two "interesting" facts about Third Eye Blind:

• During concerts in the mid 90s, they would drop candy from large piñatas above their mosh pits.
• Lead singer Stephan Jenkins decided to swap out the candy for live crickets when they played a showcase for record execs.  (Not sure what makes this a good idea, but hey, they got signed.)

Tickets for the October 11th show go on sale to us townies on September 15th (for 29 bucks).  Students can now buy tickets online too because—and this is the actual stated reason—they won’t have to cut classes this time around to make sure they see the show.

Third Eye Blind last played Binghamton in April of ’07.  You can check out a review of their Magic City Music Hall performance from the Pipe Dream.  I especially like how it highlights the “intense muggy heat” you could feel in the venue that night, as if the air conditioner actually worked most other nights…

*Sigh* I actually really miss that place.

Yeah, OK, Melissa Etheridge is a gay icon.  And an environmental awareness icon.  And a breast cancer survivor icon.  And a rock chick icon.  And a songwriting icon.

Jesus Christ, Melissa, leave room for somebody else to have a cause, would ya?

But more than all of these things, she’s a brilliant live performer.  I had never known that till last night, and I suspect I’m not the only one who discovered it at the Anderson Center in Binghamton.  Well, OK, Vestal; but she said Binghamton.  “Are you ready to rock, Vestal?!?” doesn’t have the same ring…

See, what’s unique about going to a concert in the Bing is this: we get so damn few of them; we’re a lot more willing to go see a show from an artist that we maybe kinda liked just a little bit in college because their single was stuck in our broken CD player.  So Bing concerts are filled with the unconverted—not the hooting, hollering, crying, shrieking, (maybe even) tripping concert-goers you’d find in the “big city”.

It took me a while to realize this; beforehand, I just thought that we were all f*cking lame.  And I’m not convinced that some touring performers don’t feel that way when they show up here.

BTW, I heard one set of concert-goers last night scream at another set of concert-goers to sit down because they weren’t as excited about the show and they didn’t think that anybody else should be either.

On another BTW, I pretty much suck at listening to new music; what do you want from me?  I work in radio.  And if a lyric hasn’t been drilled into my head every four and a half hours before being used as the underscore for a Toyota commercial and the theme song for an Amy Adams romantic comedy, I have a difficult time sitting through its live performance.

But that’s what separates a really really really great live performer from, well, Britney Spears.  Because while we all want to have sex with Britney (even the gays; it’s OK, you can admit it), we pretty much just tolerate her singing on the off chance that she may lose her sh*t on stage and rip her clothes off for no particular reason.

This is not true for Melissa Etheridge.  (OK, maybe it’s true for some of the lesbians reading.)  I, for one, am not sure quite why I liked her live show so much last night.  More than 70% of the show was tunes I didn’t know.  But it didn’t matter.  It might have been her voice—which was in perfect form and didn’t sound any different from what you’d hear in a studio recording.  It might have been her laid-back vibe: you felt like she could have been playing a bar as small as Frankie’s or a space as big as the Broome Arena, she’d be having a ball either way.  I actually think, more than anything else, it was her chemistry with the audience.

She’s an engaging storyteller, and every lyric seemed vitally important when delivered live.  Message songs like “I Run for Life” (her breast cancer anthem) and “I Need to Wake Up” (her Oscar-winning environmental anthem) which before seemed to me like “charity jingles” when they first came out, suddenly just worked.  It’s impossible to deny that’s she’s genuine when you see her in the flesh.

I can’t tell you for sure if I’ll buy Melissa’s next album—I’ve never been blown away by her CDs; but I can tell you I won’t miss her next concert.  Unless Britney Spears is in town.  And having a breakdown.  Half-naked.

Now that’s entertainment.

PS: We interviewed Melissa on the Star Morning Show.  She was just as cool to speak to by phone as she was live in concert.

CLICK TO LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

Now I’m not looking for the President to betray his keen sense of basketball brackets–but considering that Broome County voted for him over McCain 52%/44%, you’d think he’d show just a little bit of Bingo love.  Like actually bothering to MENTION Binghamton as he filled out his NCAA bracket on ESPN this week.  But there he was, returning from the commercial break, with his entire first round picks ALREADY filled out.  "To save time."

For shame, Mr. President, for shame.  Duke had already been chosen on the board over Binghamton.  I watched the video all the way through, hoping we’d get a little Presidential love as Binghamton’s name occasionally bobbed into view on the whiteboard behind Obama.  And I took pride in the fact that the President had, for a fraction of a second, considered the Binghamton Bearcats.  And then, apparently, judged them unworthy.

But wait!  Was it just a pure case of favoritism??  Upon further research—(which was particularly necessary, because I know NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING, about basketball)—I discovered that Obama’s personal aide is none other than former Duke team captain Reggie Love!  For BIGGER shame.  Love was a forward for Duke when they took the 2001 NCAA national championship and it became a tradition for him and Obama to shoot hoops during every primary in the 2008 season.

So I’ll just assume THAT’S why Obama chose Duke.  That, plus Obama won North Carolina by a razor-thin 14,000 vote majority.  Isn’t it a little early to be suring up re-election, Mr. President?  That’s what I thought.

Word from the folks at BU is that Jon Stewart is ALMOST sold out.  They wouldn’t share any numbers–but I’m going to assume they’re not playing the "if we say we’re almost sold out, it’ll spur sales" card.  Buy your tickets soon–or be crushed by regret as the rest of us laugh at your self-imposed misery.

Honestly, talking to Mike Sherwood of the Nervous Breakdown Crew makes me feel like a bit of a loser.  I didn’t know Mike until last week, when I got an invitation on Facebook to something called “Battle in the Boonies”.  I was intrigued—intrigued and clueless.  Mike calls himself a “BBoy”.  Yeah, I had to Wikipedia that too.

“A B-boy or B-girl is a person devoted to hip hop culture, more specifically, bboying/breakdancing. The term originates with the first hip hop DJ, DJ Kool Herc, who, noticing the reaction of some dancers to his playing the part of the record with a drum break, named them beat-boys or B-boys.”

Thank God for Wikipedia.  “So, you’re a breakdancer?” was the gist of what I asked him over Instant Message after tracking him down a few days later.  Breakdancing, he responded, “is a term the media invented”.  God, I’m so lame.  Then, he patiently explained the difference between “B-Boying,” “Popping/Locking”, and hip hop—all three of which you’ll be able to see at the Battle.  I responded with a smiley emoticon, as if to say, “I totally understand what you’re talking about”.  Even though I didn’t.

Which is exactly why I’ll be checking out the Battle on April 3rd at… whatever venue they eventually settle on.  They’re still scoping out their options.

I wanted to know what the vibe would be like at the event.  “At a battle, it sounds just like the title: it’s a battle. People are there to win, it’s almost like a sport.  You train, you practice, you make a strategy to win; and at the battles you implement what you practiced. People come in very intense during the battle. But, after the battle they shake hands hug and hang out and talk. Once the jam ends, there’s a lot of hanging out, playing, and even more dancing then there was during the battle. People you have never met before will help you with moves you were having problems with. The culture in a whole is very friendly; there is an almost unspoken rule that violence is a no.”

He makes sure to tell me that families and newcomers are welcome.   Although, talking to Mike makes me wonder if, at 28 years old, I’m gonna feel like a senior at an event with his kinda energy.  (I’m out of breath after having just typed that last quote, BTW.)

But even cooler than the event itself is the way Mike and company are bridging the gap between Binghamton University and the Southern Tier.  The Battle began at BU; but they’re now looking for a more city-friendly home to open it up.

Mike stopped “toprocking”, “downrocking”, and “freezing” long enough to answer an e-mail interview… (Yeah, I had to Wikipedia all those words too; what’s it to ya?)

OK, first things first.  Before we talked over IM, I knew almost nothing about breaking.  So what’s the basic difference between the three types of competitions you’ve got going on: Hip-hop battles, Popping/Locking, and BBoy/BGirl Battles?
They are all related, but with their own differences. Like hip hop is considered a good exercise. It helps the dancers to improve flexibility, to develop body balance, and to coordinate the muscles. This dance allows the dancers to improve their own style and to remain in good body shape. It also leads the dancers to a state of spiritual wholeness. Popping/locking is a style based on the technique of quickly contracting and relaxing muscles to cause a jerk in the dancer’s body, referred to as a pop or a hit. Bboying/bgirling is a style of dancing that grew up around hip hop music during it’s early stages stretching the human body to its limit.  They dance on their feet, hands, arms, head, everything, to the rhythm of the song, hitting major and minor beats.

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It’s not clear if anything’s set in stone; but sources are saying that Jon Stewart stand-up tickets (for the BU show on March 27th) will be available this coming Monday, Feb 23rd.  IF that is true, they should be available online here.  It also seems like tix will be released to students AND the general public on the same day.  An official press release is expected–uh, soon…

UPDATE
It’s was cofirmed by Chase Charwat, Press Secratary of the BU SA:  Tickets ARE going on sale this Monday @ noon.  2,350 tix are available to the general public.  Student tix will sell for 26 bucks.  Everybody else pays between 36 and 47.