Summer Bracket 2011: 90’s College Bands

Well, at long last, the Bracket is back. Last year, we looked back at the Best Eats in the ‘Burg for our first bracket o’ nostalgia.  In that contest, Gus’s Taverna managed to hold off serious challenges from Luigi’s and the Little Grill and an unexpected strong showing from Mr. Gatti’s to take the title. This year we’re back with a retro look at the bands Rob and I both loved and made fun of during our tenure (matriculation would’ve been to much credit for my academic career in the ‘Burg). At one point or another during the “heyday” of the following acts, I’d venture to say one or both of us probably tried to float a test-balloon to a young lady or two that each of these bands was “really good, you gotta check them out.”  Of course we’d never admit that today for most of them, but don’t let our attempt to go all Cusack/Gordon on the criticism fool you into thinking we actually knew what the hell we were talking about then or now.

So here’s the deal. We’ve seeded 16 bands and broken them into two 8 band regions, the JM’s Region and the Blue Fox Region. Every couple of days we’ll trot out new matchups for you to vote on. We tried to seed the bracket as fairly and objectively as we could based on the bands’ various impact and larger popularity as our beer-pong ravaged brains can remember. We’re not saying we actually thought the fifth seed was the fifth-best band, just that they deserved a five seed based on those rather loosely applied criteria. As you might imagine, we’re actually kind of partial to some of the lower seeds for sentimental reasons, including today’s huge underdog in our first matchup. We also may have made some rather serious omissions and we’d love to hear stories of those long-lost musical stylings in the comments as well. Lastly, thanks to frequent contributor and former Blue Fox headliner Uncle Ron for a good bit of help and material for this series!

Now, the Bracket in it’s entirety:

Click for larger image.

Before we break down our first match-ups, let’s look at the biggest snubs in the tourney field. Dickie V’s going crazy somewhere that these guys didn’t get in. Conor & Dric – Both of these friends of JMUSB are still playing for money, or at least beer, on a semi-regular basis, but they convinced us personally they didn’t truly belong.  Modesty is crap though so they’re getting a nod here. Van Heusen – Ultimately we only had room for one full-fledged cover band and they just missed out, but Harrison St. and other raucous off-campus house parties frequently played host to this high energy (read: cocaine-fueled) group. Sev – I’m probably alienating actual readers by trashing these guys and possibly risking a future incident in a Coastal Flats, but really?!  Really? They had their backers and had to be mentioned, but no place in the field. Rob Conklin – Another old friend of JMUSB with enough charisma to warrant at least a high-five if not a flying chest bump. Probably saving the world right now, but Rob was too nice to actually wish bracket harm on anyone else.

Really hard to argue

And now on to the match-ups in the top of the JM’s Region:

 #1 Dave Matthews Band v. #16 Nickel Bridge [polldaddy poll=5129657]

Dave Matthews Band was already huge by the time I got to JMU, but Rob was there when Trax was still on the “tour dates” portion of their flyers. We’re talking the VAX years, forget interwebs, now that’s old school. But when Crash was released during my freshman year, there was really no doubt what would become THE defining album for the classes of the late 90s. Girls went nuts, guys loved it cause girls loved it, and we all loved that they were from VA, even if our friends from that other school in Charlottesville acted like they were actually in the band. Some of my favorite moments in college were spent on Sunday mornings/afternoons sitting around with friends (Eddie A!) eating pizza, being hungover, and alternating between breaking down the previous nights events, the Redskins chances later in the day, and the meaning of Proudest Monkey.

Nickel Bridge– Save it. We know this band formerly known as Full Circle, doesn’t have the name recognition or bring back tons of memories like some of the other bands on this list. We admit it. We selected them because they were good friends of ours. We didn’t do it to be nice however. We did it because we know a lot of our other friends who read the blog, were also friends with them. Therefore things will either play out in one of two ways. 1. Our friends will stuff the ballot box giving Nickel Bridge the upset victory and spare us from the indignity of JMUSB turning into a blog for DMB fanboys in 2011, or 2. They flood the comments poking fun at our buddies in the band in ways that only good friends can. It’s pretty much a no lose proposition for us.

# 4 Mr. Greengenes vs. #5 2 Skinnee J’s [polldaddy poll=5129660]

Mr. Greengenes – To say that these guys were best appreciated while drunk (very, very drunk) would be putting it mildly. They could pack parties at pretty much any campus on the East Coast, routinely sell out the Bayou, and were a fixture on the Dewey Beach scene for a while. Everyone I know loved going to their shows. And yet nobody I know ever even considered buying one of their albums. They could be extremely entertaining in their own way though. A way which involved transitioning from Guns ‘n Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine” to Will Smith’s “Getting Jiggy With It’. You’ll just have to trust me that it seemed pretty extraordinary at the time. Of course this was before the whole “white guys covering rap songs” became passé. And I mentioned the part about being really drunk, right?

2 Skinnee J’s –  Younger readers will just have to trust us on this, but Brooklyn wasn’t always known for being home to an inordinate number of PBR swilling, Camper shoe wearing, messenger bag carrying, d-bags. In fact before God created hipsters (presumably to punish us for something) and deposited them all in Williamsburg, the neighborhood it was home to bands like 2 Skinnee J’s. We mention that for no other reason than it gives us a chance to remind everyone that hipsters suck. Plus we don’t have much else to say about 2 Skinne J’s. Yes, 99.9% of rap rock sucks, but these guys were closer to the Beastie Boys side of things than the Limp Bizkit side. And they were screaming about their area code before it became such a terrible cliche. So there’s that.