Mal Madrigal are totally sweet. They played Wackadoo's on Saturday night, to a riveted crowd of about 30. When my friends and I walked in, we couldn't help but notice that we nearly doubled the size of the crowd. I felt bad for the Nebraskan quintet.

They had a folk sound, one that allowed plenty of room for surprises. I wouldn't have known about them if it weren't for my friend from Nebraska, who knew a member of the band, Dan McCarthy, who played accordion, banjo, keyboard and mandolin. In other words, he would make a very impressive one-man band.

Stephen Bartolomei, the group's frontman, is quite a songwriter. With each song, he has created something new and unexpected. He doesn't let you down with a simple verse-chorus-verse progression. He takes an idea and builds on it, using his tenor and his band to make the songs rise and swell like a wave, breaking only after he feels it is completely done with.

Listen to "The Morning After" to hear a song with a quiet kick drum beat stapling down the quiet strumming of a guitar and a synthesizer floating in and out of the music, and then slowly growing until more guitars come in, the strumming becomes louder and harder, and the cymbals start to crash until a snare beat kicks in and the song barrels ahead, determined to teach you a lesson about music you might not have already known.

"My heart, I give it to you for free," he sings. It may be a bit cliché, but I'm glad Bartolomei, a SLU graduate, has the guts to share these songs with a smaller audience than he's probably seen at birthday parties back home.

This was the first of any concerts on campus I have attended this semester. I generally walk past all the fliers hanging in the Busch Student Center, not even glancing at the names of the bands on them. Sadly, I could be missing out on countless bands that could end up being some of my favorites. There are already many bands that I love that I might never have heard of if it hadn't been for my habit of buying CDs on a whim, or on a recommendation from "Rolling Stone." Without these practices, I would be missing out on Wilco, Bright Eyes and countless other bands that I would never know existed.

I really think I need to take every opportunity I can get to take in free music, in an attempt to see who might potentially write my favorite song. Besides, if the band sucks, at least I didn't waste any money.

Add to that the fact that security in Wackadoo's is nonexistent, so I could heckle the bad bands all I want without having to fight the man. Not that I don't like fighting the man, but it's a nuisance during a concert.

I tend to pass things by a lot lately, without even noticing. I worked about 700 hours at the information desk in the BSC over Easter break and realized, with the ample free time I had, that I hadn't read a newspaper in months.

I barely knew who Terri Schiavo was. I had fallen out of touch with the world somewhat. I hate doing that. There is no worse feeling than the feeling that you have been in a cave for months. I felt that way when I heard this new band, and feel that way each time I hear a new band that I love: like I've been hiding in an airtight cave listening to too much Weezer and not enough random noise that 90 percent of the world doesn't know about.

I left Wackadoo's with my friends, satisfied that I was still capable of noticing something that I generally would not have, if I went about my day-to-day life. One of my other friends bought their CD, which I have been listening to incessantly. I really am glad I heard about them. Not noticing music this good, or anything else in my life, is really quite pathetic on my part.

Marshall Johnson is a sophomore studying English.