On Saturday, mtvU's Campus Invasion will be a British invasion.
The college music channel mtvU will stop at Breslin Center during its Campus Invasion Tour with outdoor, pre-concert entertainment and a show featuring English rock trio Muse with fellow countrymen Razorlight.
Much like Nickelback, the 2002 Campus Invasion performer, both Muse and Razorlight are primed to take off on the U.S. music scene, said mtvU general manager Stephen Friedman.
"It's typical for college students to be looking out for the next great artists," Friedman said. "We try to find those acts that college students are going to see first when they blow up huge, so they have first insight in that main music."
Muse recently won the Best British Live Act at the BRIT Awards. The band also picked up two European MTV awards for "Best European Alternative Act" and "Best UK and Ireland Act." Razorlight also is an up-and-coming rock group and recently won NME magazine's Best New Band Award.
Friedman said MSU was a perfect campus to hold the show, which is sponsored by ASMSU, MSU's undergraduate student government.
"The bands want to go where students are open to great stuff," Friedman said. "MSU has a great tradition of accepting new music, so it made perfect sense for us to try to bring the concert there."
MtvU's senior director of marketing Lori Raimondo said the network will set up a village, which will feature an mtvU lounge, Nintendo lounge, an inflatable climbing mountain and other free activities and displays.
Before the show, students can stop by to sign up for a meet and greet with the bands or grab free products from the show's sponsors. The network will set up cameras for students to dedicate songs on air for a segment to run during the graduation week.
Muse is accustomed to a tremendous fan base in Europe and has played shows in front of thousands, including a sold-out show in Rome's Collosseum, but the band is just now beginning to win over American audiences with their mtvU tour and the singles "Time is Running Out" and "Hysteria."
Muse, consisting of lead singer Matt Bellamy, bassist Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard, has an operatic sound, and during the band's seven-year career, Bellamy's vocals have often been compared to those of Radiohead's Thom Yorke.
Taking a break before a show in Philadelphia, Wolstenholme said his band, which spent five months touring in America last year, initially planned to go on hiatus to work on material for a new album. But the opportunity to play for American audiences through the college tour was too good to pass up.
"It's always nice to go on tour when you know that everywhere you play is going to be to a new audience," Wolstenholme said. "Crowds are so different everywhere you go."
He said his musical career began at an early age.
"Even as a kid, I was always into music and listening to it," he said. "With the piano, even if I couldn't play it, I'd always try to play a few notes."
He said he draws inspiration from his favorite bassist Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers fame.
"He's one of those guys that comes in a real perfect balance between being a bassist and being very, very good, but still projecting some kind of emotion into the music," Wolstenholme said. "There's a lot of bass players where it's all about how fast you can play or about how hard you can play.
"And I don't really like that kind of thing because I find it so emotionless and it's not about songs anymore."
During the years, the band's musical inspirations have evolved from bands such as Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Queens of the Stone Age. Wolstenholme said now the band has taken a note or two from fellow British group Franz Ferdinand.
"They've got that perfect balance between sort of dance music and guitar," he said.
Of course, the band's name raises the question of who Muse's muse might be.
"There's a whole bunch, not just one particular thing," Wolstenholme said. "I think people generally take inspiration from things that happen in their everyday life - things that you've seen on your travels or things that you do at home or (in) relationships."
