Woodies from mtvU

Big stories and bright lights have always been what Times Square does best. Last week, mtvU's Woodie Awards brought its fair share of both to New York's brightest district, filling Roseland Ballroom with a panoply of music stardom? from biz stalwarts like Tom Delonge (once of Blink 182) to new lights like Lupe Fiasco and TV on the Radio. The blogosphere took its seats, as well, as BrooklynVegan snapped shots of a duly inebriated Lady Sovereign and a Stereogum rep found himself in an altercation with Jared Leto, recently of post-grunge act 30 Seconds to Mars (lawsuit pending).

The Woodie Awards, mtvU's yearly award show, offers "the only awards honoring the music voted best by the college audience." As befits an event catering directly to a college demographic, debauchery was the name of the game, thanks in no small part to mtvU's generous provision of the open bar(s). That tomfoolery, as is its wont, found its way to the show's multiple stages. A myriad of selections of performances packed as much theatrics into the night's show as was possible: Imogen Heap's celestial voice seemed just arrived from the night sky, Beck packed his marionettes (enough said), and Brooklyn locals TV on the Radio didn't need any histrionics to make their music soar.

The awards themselves, theoretically elevated by their being presented by actual, factual college students, fit comfortably within their Times Square setting. High on style, low on content, and bolstered, for the most part, by major industry labels, the winners of this year's Woodies identified, in mtvU's words, "the emerging artists poised to break big."

The clever, though somewhat cumbersome, titles of the awards,?"The Breaking Woodie," "Left Field Woodie," and "The International Woodie," to name a few? belie mostly traditional award categories. Angels & Airwaves, Tom Delonge's latest project, took home the equivalent of the artist of the year award, while Plain White T's, an appropriately named emo/pop-punk concoction, received the award for best emerging artist. The "International Woodie" went to The Subways, whose across-the-pond Brit-flavor continues to shake hips in both the New World and the Old.

Other categories tipped the typical award-show format a bit youthward, with separate awards for best animated and live videos, best tour, and most streamed video going to Gorillaz, 30 Seconds to Mars, Taking Back Sunday, and O.A.R., respectively. System of a Down won perhaps the most unique category, "The Good Woodie" for greatest social impact, for their activism pushing for recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

Coming just days before the CMJ Music Marathon, New York's annual, sprawling festival of up-and-coming indie music, this year's Woodie Awards tugs at the age-old indie-mainstream binary, complicating what constitutes a "college audience." At this past winter's Plug Awards?held a long ways from Times Square at Webster Hall?bands like The National and publications like Pitchfork Media applauded a rising tide of small labels and innovative artists against the entrenched interests of deep-pocketed industry insiders and major record labels. In opposition to?-or at least outside of-? the proliferation of independent music, the Woodie Awards confidently claim the loyalty of college students nationwide. As mtvU GM Stephen Friedman said in a prepared statement, "College students are prophesying the future of new music today, and at the 2006 'Woodies,' they honored the music they lived their lives to this year."