When was the last time you saw a great concert in Pullman? My answer would be never, and I’m willing to bet yours would be the same. The better question is, why not? This is a college town, after all, and college towns are supposed to be where all the cool stuff happens. So where’s all the cool music in Pullman?

In my mind, university communities are supposed to be bursting with creativity and vitality. When you’re in college, you’re supposed to be surrounded by an active artistic community, people who want to build up a culture that inspires them. In Pullman, the atmosphere is more apathy than anarchy. Less DIY, more “do it for me,” especially where live music is concerned.

Every so often I get those emails from SEB, the ones with the survey that asks, “Who would you most want to see this year?” And prompts me to vote from a list of 10 or so radio-ready names in pop, hip hop and country.

This is a big part of the problem. Sure, it’s great that we’ve got a school program that’s willing to spend the money to bring a (slightly washed up most of the time) “big” artist to campus for students to enjoy, but it has corrupted our expectations of what truly good live music is and what kind of live music is worth our time.

The big problem with changing these expectations is, of course, live music simply isn’t happening anywhere else in Pullman. To attract a higher caliber of performers, you need venues, and once you have venues, you need people to fill those venues.

Not only are there virtually no places for bands to book public shows big enough to make it worth their while, it’s nearly impossible to see any demand in students who are happy spending $30 on some name they heard on the radio that one time.

College may give us a chance to fly our freak flags high, but it’s also consciously temporary. Building culture and community takes an inwcredible amount of time and effort, and might not always seem necessary in a place you only see as a pit stop on the way to bigger and better things.

If we stop thinking of WSU as our own four years and start thinking of it as the home of students for generations to come, it might seem more worth investing in creating spaces where they can hear and see music that inspires them, and pushes them beyond their Top 40 comfort zone.

If Pullman ever cares enough about live music to become the new Seattle or Portland, I’ll eat my own hat. But from what I’ve seen of my fellow Cougs, WSU does care a lot about community and music is, in my experience, one of the best facilitators of community. It brings people together, literally and figuratively, whether it’s the Senior Ballroom or just a few people in someone’s living room. Maybe someday we’ll actually get to say we saw a great concert in Pullman.