#LINVASION Cali Style -- Smashmouth vs. The Wiggles in a Contest of Irrelevancy

August 7, 2012
  
      The reason that the Geller clan has decided to plague the unsuspecting state of California with our presence has yet to be revealed. This was no normal family vacation. (Although no Geller family vacation is ever a normal family vacation.) We had invaded San Diego in the name of pets everywhere-- for my father's veterinary convention. Besides providing hours of pointless meetings which partially spoiled my dad's vacation, AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) sponsored a free concert for all the vets and their families. The last conference we had attended was in Seattle and featured Natasha Bedingfield. This was at least two years after "Unwritten" had lived and died on the Top 40 charts. This time around, the entertainment was even more irrelevant. They brought us Smashmouth. Let's face it, Smashmouth is the Austria of the music world. (They used to be important, but now...eh.) Just as Austria is most well-known for its place in The Sound of Music, Smashmouth is most well known (aka only really known) for their opening number in Shrek. Shrek came out in 2001, which means that Smashmouth has been sitting quietly on the record shelves for over a decade. Seeing as songs more than three months old are usually considered "retired," I was surprised to find that Smashmouth still existed.
      Even after my father confirmed that Smashmouth was not the stuff of myths, I was not very interested in seeing them in concert because of the aforementioned reasons. My sister was not thrilled by the idea either, my father himself was basically indifferent, and my mother thought it was the Smashing Pumpkins. Even though no one was fighting each other to become president of the Smashmouth fan club, no one (and by no one I really mean Samuel Joseph Geller) wanted to turn down a free concert. So, we went.
     And what we witnessed from seven-thirty to nine-fifteen was a musical cock tease. My family (and pretty much everyone else there) just wanted to hear "All Star," and Smashmouth knew this. So, the evil genius who designed their set list made sure that they played every other song in their "repertoire" to keep people in the seats. However, a surprisingly large amount of people decided to jump out of them and surround the stage. I suppose that they thought they were at a real concert. I suppose that most of these people, members of the greater veterinary community, had never been to a real concert. The nerd herd was thrilled.
      Another group of concert goers were equally, if not more thrilled by Smashmouth's presence only because they were blissfully ignorant of Smashmouth's status. These were the children. Early on in the concert, the lead singer (whose name I do not care to Wikipedia for lack of interest) called all the kids onto the stage. The band played one of their nondescript songs, and the only highlight was the spastic gyrating of one little boy. However, this charming display of spasticism (spasticity?) was followed by countless copycat tots, all competing for fifteen minutes of veterinary convention fame. The kids were cute and all, but even a petite attention whore is still an attention whore. And as an attention whore, I'm not really amused when I see this quality in others, especially the young. Even before Smashmouth had made its full transformation into the Wiggles, I was more than ready to leave this "concert." Then, the kids got a hold of the microphone, and the torture truly began. The band had stopped playing by this time, so the kids' giggles, screams, and other cries for attention came through loud and clear. Somehow, my family had taken a wrong turn and ended up in the seventh level of Disney Channel hell.
     And yet, we stayed. We stayed through the childrens' antics. We stayed through the reggae equivalent of rock songs. We even stayed through the rebirth of the childrens' antics. My family endured it all, simply in pursuit of the elusive "All Star."
     Finally, in the last two minutes of the concert, Smashmouth took pity on all the pathetic attendees and struck up those familiarly green chords. The sole reason for our attendance was realized and...it kinda sucked. I can only guess that the lead singer of Smashmouth has been smashed in the mouth. Now, I don't know how many times that may or may not have happened to him throughout the past decade, but something negatively affected Smashmouth's performance of THEIR ONLY SONG. I have no shame in saying that I prefer the original soundtrack recording to the recent live performance.
     Once my family acknowledged that this concert would, indeed, have no moment of redemption, we left. If nothing else, at least we beat out the rest of the "enthralled" veterinary community for seats on the shuttle bus.