I went to see Hoobastank play last night at a record label's showcase/concert thing. Personally, I wasn't the biggest fan of theirs when I went into the concert, but they put on a great show. They had energy and they sounded good and the crowd was really into them. But what got me was the fact that their first show ever was also in the venue where we were last night -- 8 years ago. It took them 8 years to build up that kind of a following where they could pack a house (or a major concert venue), and when they played their hit songs, practically everyone in the place was singing along. Literally, the lead singer just kind of stood up on stage during parts of those songs and just held his microphone out to the crowd. Hell, there were even a good number of people there who knew all the words to their songs that they didn't play on the radio. And that's just got to be the coolest feeling in the world for a band. The thing, though, is that it took them 8 years to get here. 8 long hard years of performing their own music by touring constantly and living in a van and driving themselves around the country and not seeing their friends or relatives except when they come play in their hometown for a night and hauling their own equipment as their own roadies and staying in cheap motels (if they're not sleeping in the van). And yet, some guy gets on American Idol and, within a couple of months, the entire country knows his name and what he looks like because he's gotten up on stage a couple of times and sang other people's songs, then he's gotten a record contract and his song is being played on the radio all the time and he's an instant celebrity. American Idol is not real music, American Idol is manufactured pop dribble. A band like Hoobastank has paid their dues, they put in the work and they worked hard to establish their fanbase and they deserve to be where they're at right now. All Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken had to do was face down Simon Cowell a handful of times and look and sound good enough on TV to make people choose them over their opponents. They know nothing about the music industry.