“One Man Wrecking Machine” won’t just refer to a UC-Berkeley linebacker this Big Game weekend.
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Guster will be coming to Stanford on Dec. 3.
The folk-rock band Guster will visit Memorial Auditorium to perform in the annual Big Game Show Sun., Dec. 3, the day after Big Game.
The Stanford Concert Network, responsible for booking Guster and running the show, announced the news last night. SCN Director Megan Green, a senior, said that Spoon and Sufjan Stevens were other possibilities, but Guster was the top choice.
“We’ve been using Facebook a little bit to figure out who the students like, and Guster is way up there in terms of Facebook rating,” said Green, who has seen Guster perform at the Warfield in San Francisco. “We thought it was a good fit for Memorial Auditorium and Big Game.”
Guster kicks off a 14-stop, four-month tour, today in Omaha, Neb., mostly of college campuses. The four-man group will perform in Geneva, N.Y., and Orono, Maine, before Stanford, the ninth stop on the tour, and in Walla Walla, Wash., two days after.
The tour stops are far from the biggest venues in the country, but that’s just fine for Stanford Concert Network, a group that didn’t want to spend all its limited annual budget on booking one act.
“We went right down the list and people were either too big or dead,” Green said. “We’re excited because our goal is to bring to campus someone people really want to see and from everything we’ve tried to gather, Guster is the one.”
Hip-hop artist Talib Kweli and acoustic pop star Jason Mraz performed at the last two Big Game Shows in 2004 and 2003, respectively. SCN started planning too late to book Memorial Auditorium for last year’s Big Game Show.
Mos Def, Eve 6, Something Corporate, Nappy Roots, Jack Johnson, Common and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy are among the bigger names SCN has brought to campus since 2000.
“We wanted to go with a rock show this year since it’s been hip-hop heavy,” Green said.
Adam Gardner and Ryan Miller both sing and play guitar for the band, which formed when the four were students at Tufts Univeristy in Boston. Percussionist Brian Rosenworcel and instrumentalist Joe Pisapia round out the group.
Two of the band’s most popular songs are “Amsterdam,” off the 2003 album “Keep it Together,” and “One Man Wrecking Machine,” off the “Ganging Up on the Sun” album released earlier this year.
The band’s lyrics reflect a questioning of one’s identity all too common to bands that pander to the college audience, but also a tongue-in-cheek appreciation of life’s small ironies.
“I built a time machine/I’m going to see the homecoming queen/Take her to the Christmas dance/Maybe now I’ll get in her pants,” opens “One Man Wrecking Machine”.
The band prides itself on environmental conservation, powering its bus on biodeisel and its performances on wind in a recent tour. They are donating a portion of their ticket revenues at the Stanford concert to a carbon-offset program.
Tickets for the show, which starts at 7:30 p.m., will cost $23 for students. Dorm presales begin today, with the dorms buying the highest percentage of tickets qualifying for priority seating, and, possibly, a chance to meet and greet the band.
The general public will be able to purchase leftover tickets Nov. 6 at $33 apiece.

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