Annoying as hell, yes, but the invasion of snot-nosed young’uns in the guise of rock stars saved 2002 from being exactly the same as the year before. This all happened when Avril Lavigne ate Fred Durst and the other members of Limp Bizkit for lunch one day and decided that it was time that the world paid attention to fun loving skater chicks instead of being pissed off at the world. Meanwhile, bands like The Strokes and The Vines sucked up every bit of rock ’n’ roll excess that Guns N’ Roses forgot to flush down the toilet with that last bag of cocaine. Speaking of Guns N’ Roses, did you see Axel Rose on the MTV Video Awards? He was chubby, out of breath and he had a lead guitar player named Buckethead, which is kinda lame when your old guitar player had a bad-ass name like Slash. It’s easy to make fun of all this, but the fact is that the general music audience was a little more willing to step out of their listening comfort zone this past year. Sure, all those “The” bands were made into trendy commodities, but there really has been some excellent releases in the past 12 months. Here is what you may or may not remember about the good and the nasty of music in 2002. Obligatory nod to the album of the year Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” is the kind of album that most bands wish they had the guts to make. When Wilco handed this gem to the suits at Reprise Records, they ran about like scared and confused monkeys, made loud and annoyed monkey sounds, and then kicked the band off the label. That’s an indication in itself that it’s either pure genius or pure crap, and I’ll argue for the first choice any day. If you ask what it sounds like, I’ll say “Willie Nelson from outer space!” and leave it at that. The “I have no idea why this band isn’t bigger than Puddle of Mudd” award OK Go’s debut album is by no means a standout album of the year, but the jagged edged lead off single “Get Over It” is the catchiest rock song I’ve heard since “Mmm Bop.” I expected to hear it sandwiched between Eminem and Nelly on 92.9 by now. Take pride in your guilty pleasures While Avril Lavigne is busy putting on her tie and skater spikes, I’d rather listen to the giddy and boy-crazy symphonic pop of Vanessa Carlton. Her debut “Be Not Nobody” showcases her classical piano chops and a precious voice that is anything but controversial. Rednecks and geeks unite! Imagine if you can Buddy Holly with a Wayne Campbell heavy metal mullet sipping Colt 45’s with classic rocker Ted Nugent. If after the drunken shenanigans of that encounter they were to write music together, it would sound something like “Maladroit,” the latest release from Weezer. This is the geek’s ode to groupies and gratuitous guitar solos, and you’ll be singing along with every second. Stoner rock from the Twilight Zone To be honest, I missed the last album by death metal band Deeds of Flesh, but from the palatable choices on the market it doesn’t get better than “Songs for the Deaf” by Queens of the Stone Age for the world of grinding guitar riffs and otherworldly classic rock mysticism. Uh, that means it rules dude. “Turn off that racket!” screamed Grandpa Sigur Ros is an Icelandic band that creates swirling epics through the use of bowed guitars, layers of low-end keyboard, and a vocalist that sings in a language resembling something from “Lord of the Rings.” The new album “( )” sounds beautiful to me, but it’s just strange enough to make gramps feel the need to talk about the simple days of cowboy songs and John Denver. Ungrateful kids. You there, with the Pokemon cards! So, if Weezer is really just a bunch of geeks trying to play heavy metal music, then the Flaming Lips are a bunch of geeks that look, act, and sound exactly like the nerd bombers they’ve been since high school. The new album “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” is a Japanimation science fiction extravaganza that explodes with more sound than most people can handle. Rocketman part two goes solo Ben Folds is a 36-year-old child who wants to be a punk rocker, but is gifted instead with the talents of Elton John. The performances on his new live album show how loud and fun one man with a piano can be. The “what the !@#$” awards The constraints of newspaper space force me to condense a year’s worth of crap into one paragraph. The worst: Creed’s video for “One Last Breath,” the idea that the Red Hot Chilli Peppers still rock, morbid depression bands like Seether, the existence of Nickelback, Chad Kroeger and that infernal song from the Spiderman soundtrack, the somewhat disappointing Audioslave debut and America’s obsession with John Mayer, who is possibly the most boring songwriter alive today. Back to good stuff, a follow-up that doesn’t disappoint I had a friend who told me he wanted to make love to Coldplay singer Chris Martin’s voice. Not Chris, just the voice. Most people spend the first few listens of the new album “A Rush of Blood to the Head” searching for the sequel to “Yellow” and are taken aback when they can’t find it. Instead, we are given a challenging and dynamic album that is more than worth the wait it takes to soak in. “That boy ain’t right,” said Hank Hill When Craig Nicholls from The Vines couldn’t finish the last verse of “Get Free” on the David Letterman Show because his ridiculous stage trashing knocked the mic stand down, I suddenly lost the urge to listen to the band’s album anymore. Kurt Cobain trashed the stage all the time, but at least he waited until the song was over. 3 a.m. album of the year It’s easy to imagine Norah Jones at a jazz club somewhere in Manhattan, barely pressing the keys on her piano while she sings in a near breath to an audience that is either drunk or depressed. I was neither the first time I heard her album “Come Away With Me,” but this is the kind of music that convinced me it wouldn’t be so bad if I was. “The” + snappy pluralized noun = success Although the debut albums from The Hives, The White Stripes and The Strokes were released before 2002, reissues of these albums kept our fascination with the garage rock fad continually maxxed out. The Hives release “Veni Vidi Vicious” is definitely the most exciting of the big three, but outshining even The Hives is the all-woman trio Sleater-Kinney. The recent release “One Beat” is a blazing and raw rock record that puts any “The” band to shame. What’s left? Ben Kweller, Pearl Jam, David Gray, Mooney Suzuki, Dave Matthews Band, Clinic, Ryan Adams, N.E.R.D., The Eels and Foo Fighters all released enjoyable albums this year. There is plenty of trash left over as well, but if you like it, there is nothing I can do to change your mind. That’s why Michael Bolton is still around.

 

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five billboards are put up around the local areas like Decatur, on 287 coming from Henrietta and from Vernon on Loop 11, on Interstate 44 from Burkburnett and Highway 82 leaving Holliday, Buss has plans to expand the campaign into the Metroplex. Not only will these lucky students have their happy, shiny faces on billboards across Dallas and Fort Worth, they’ll be on the silver screen as well. That’s right. Fourteen students will have the chance to make it to the big time with preview ads appearing before all movies in both local theaters. Buss also has plans for future TV and radio spots in her preliminary marketing plan, but for now, these plans are just ideas. None of the students have had previous modeling careers, and although the outlook of this shoot looks promising, for most of these students, future modeling plans won’t be crowding their day planners. “It’s the closest I’ve become to being a model, with all the spotlights on you,” Saravane said. But he doesn’t plan on quitting his day job anytime soon. “No way,” he said without hesitation. “The process took a long time, you couldn’t move, and the photographers were really particular about everything.” The photography session was an all-afternoon event, keeping the students, the Oklahoma City photographers and the crew from Graphics 2 local ad agency cooped up in the Kiowa room of the Clark Student Center until the project was over about three hours later. For McCubbins, the day started out a bit on the uneasy side. She only recognized a few of the other students from seeing them around campus. “Oh, this is embarrassing,” she thought as she was told to move even closer to the student next to her in the shoot. “I was squooshed up next to these people I didn’t know.” According to McCubbins, the long, awkward hours turned into a fun-filled afternoon, as she was able to relax among the other students and make some new friends, but the shoot wasn’t the first thing she told everyone about that night at dinner, her mother took care of that. “She called me at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday to tell me I was in the paper,” McCubbins said about the article that featured her billboard in the Times Record News. “She told everyone and sent a copy to all of the relatives. She wants to take a picture of me under my billboard.” McCubbins has other hopes for her debut to local fame and recognition. As far as she wants, “Hopefully, I’ll get one of the out of town boards.”

 

When a scared and nervous Ashley Cartwright walked into her first class at MSU, her eyes widened. There were about 100 students already in the class and no seats were left. Cartwright rushed back outside to check the numbers on the door. “I thought I walked into the wrong class,” she said with a West Texas accent. “It was so big. There aren’t that many people in our whole school, kindergarten through twelfth grade.” Many students at MSU think their classes are relatively small, but until college approximately 3 percent of students have never been in a classroom with more than 10 students at a time. “I never had to worry about getting a seat in high school,” Cartwright said about her life in Benjamin, Texas. She never had to worry about getting a parking spot, either. In fact, from any location in Benjamin one could walk to school in less than five minutes. There are towns just like this in Texas, where the cow population is greater than the number of residents and a graduating class is large if it has 20 seniors. Small fish in a big pond “There is a transition we have to make when going to college,” said junior Antonio Garcia of Goree, Texas, population 321. “We have always had this one-on-one relationship with our teachers. When a small-town student gets to college that relationship is gone.” “In high school everybody looked up to me and now nobody even knows who I am,” Garcia said. “In a small high school you do get an altered sense of self,” said Shelli Blagrave of Ackerly. “The community makes you bigger than what you really are. When you get to college you feel about this small.” She smiled and extended her finger and thumb an inch apart. It takes a while for such students to finally adjust to a college setting. “I was sad for the first two weeks,” Cartwright said. “I still go home every weekend. I had to meet some friends to get adjusted. I’ve never had to meet new people before.” Junior Hardy Coffman who lived in both Goree and Benjamin, which are less than 30 miles apart, believes that he received a better education than one can receive from a large school. “I think in a small class you can learn and retain a lot more,” Coffman said. “But the disadvantage is that everything is done within class, you don’t have to work very hard and you never learn to study.” Top ten People from more populated areas usually don’t believe it when small-town students tell them how many people they graduated with. Coffman graduated with eight others. “Some people don’t believe me when I tell them that,” Coffman said. “Then they ask me if it was weird. It seemed pretty normal to me.” Students from tiny schools feel that they have some advantages you can’t get in a city. “I had a pre-cal class with two people in it,” said junior Casey Case of Byers. “We could work at our own pace.” Students also have more opportunities to be involved in a wide variety of extra-curricular activities. “You can play every sport, be involved in every organization and academic event if you want,” Coffman said. “You don’t necessarily have to be good at it either.” Everybody knows your name “We have a more personal touch. The people at school are your extended family. You know everybody,” Case said. Knowing everybody can also have its downsides. “A lot of people are in your business,” Katrina Keith said. “People know stuff about you that you don’t even know.” Keith has lived in an array of places ranging from the cities of Lubbock and Weatherford to what Jack Kerouac once described as the “abysmal wastes” of Paducah and Guthrie. “I had a friend from Weatherford who wouldn’t visit me because he wouldn’t go that far from a Wal-Mart,” Keith said. The nearest Wal-Mart from Paducah is 30 miles away. The nearest mall is two hours away. “Fashion and pop culture are slow as cold molasses to a small town,” Keith said. “Being far from a Wal-Mart is an inconvenience,” Cartwright said. Benjamin is 80 miles from the nearest Wal-Mart. Despite these inconveniences most students agree that their lives in small-town America were a pleasant experience. “I enjoyed school,” Bethany Puckett of Era said. “I was good at sports, and I wouldn’t have been that good at a bigger school.” Roads that go nowhere “I wouldn’t have wanted to grow up anywhere else,” Case said. “Being cooped up in an apartment in Wichita is driving me nuts. I need to be in the country. I need to have space.” Not everyone shares those students’ favorable assessments of small-town life. Some students want to get out of their small towns, considering them dead-ends. “There are no jobs except farming or teaching,” Keith said. “A lot of people leave and get a degree and come back. It’s just a trap. I don’t think they know how to function and enjoy living anywhere else.” Despite the lack of nightclubs, restaurants, theaters and practically everything city people take for granted, small-town students do have some fun. “Getting into trouble is a little more justified because it’s something to do,” Keith said. “There are no cops in Goree. You can do whatever you want. I was driving my own car to school at 14,” Garcia said. A lot of people get the wrong idea when they think of a small town. “When my parents told me we were moving to Guthrie, I was upset,” Keith said. “I thought everyone would ride horses an be cowboys and cowgirls. It’s not entirely like that.” “People from the city think we’re stupid,” Case said. “Our accents don’t help us much.” City folk seem to make fun of small-town folk nonetheless. “They think our school athletic programs are jokes,” Case said. “I think we do well considering the amount of people.” Small towns aren’t as dull as they seem. There are a lot of thing that go on in a small town you would never see in the city. “A cow tore up my swimming pool,” Case said. “And I had a friend that had a pet goat. The goat thought it was a dog.” Step back in time The sad truth behind all these small towns is that if they aren’t already dead, they’re dying. The single red-flashing traffic light is sometimes the only hint of life. Farmers can’t plow in the money they could 20 years ago. “Now that farmers can’t make any money it’s not worth staying in a small farm town,” Case said. “A few years ago, it seemed like a farmer would auction off his equipment every week,” Keith said. “The town is definitely dying. It was like the end of civilization last year when our Dairy Queen closed down. Dairy Queen is like in the definition of small town.”