The Omnibus

Issue date: 4/20/07 Section: Sports

Junior John Moore performs with the band John Holiday. Moore is helping to revive EMU and the music scene at SBU.

Prior to 2004, the campus at Southwest Baptist University had nothing to offer passionate musicians other than a desolate and suffering music scene. Now, thanks to the efforts of junior John Moore, SBU is steadily moving up the list of most desirable places to rock out in the Midwest.
His passion for music, Moore says, is what ultimately made him want to attend school at SBU.
"The guys I stayed with for Bearcat Days were in a band," Moore recalls. "Pretty much all we did that night was hang out and watch them practice. That was just so cool to me, and it made me excited about coming here."
Moore's excitement has yet to dim. Throughout his SBU career, Moore has been involved with Emerging Musicians United (EMU). Through playing bass guitar for the classic rock band John Holiday and talking to other SBU students who are in bands, he has become more and more sensitive to the needs of campus musicians.
"Just giving them a place to play and to practice on a consistent weekly basis and to store their equipment [is my purpose with EMU]," said Moore.
EMU was nothing but a faint whisper in the ears of campus musicians prior to Moore's step into leadership. It was under-funded, under-publicized and had hardly enough activity to give musicians the outlet they were looking for when they came to EMU. Moore, however, has turned a suffering organization into one of the most active and exciting student groups on campus.
"Since I've been president, we've put on a Halloween show that was larger than last year's," explained Moore. "We've bought new equipment; we're in the middle of buying new sound equipment for the building. We've organized everything to be secure, so we don't have any problems with theft anymore. We got new locks on the building; we got some maintenance things done to the building, and just basically [cleaned] out the building and [made] it a safe place for people to have shows and store equipment."
The 2nd Annual Masquerade Ball was hosted Halloween night of the fall 2006 semester. The concert yielded the second largest turnout of any concert at SBU this year. The only concert with more people in attendance was SONICFLOOd.
However, there are bigger things in store for Moore and EMU.

Continued...

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