Unfortunately,  this the last definite blog I'll do (except for random times) because I went to the play (picture in a bit). After a school year of blogging almost every week about music usually in the early morning hours, ahem, 1-6 am, it'll feel weird not having to write the weekly blogs and reading other's blogs (because eventually everyone will stop for a while). I definitely feel like the blogs and this class (which if there was History of Rock ll I would kill to get in) have had a definite impact on the way I listen to music as well as how I look at music and I appreciate what I've gotten from writing these blogs as well as the music I've discovered from other people's blogs as well as the various music I've found accidentally while searching youtube for videos to link in my blogs. The same applies for the class itself from which I found numerous artists and LEARNED, yeah, I've learned various things from the class, -(that's not to say we didn't screw around every once in a while when the music wasn't too exciting, ahem 70's)- from what's expected you would learn; the background of rock movements and eras to various artist's impact and influence on music today (be that positive or negative) and regards of music as a buisness and copyright law to things such as having actual opinions and their defense, as well as some pretty good discussions, to the "give a shit" graph Mr.A made some class periods back. The way I listen to and critique music as well as understanding its significance has been heavily changed by this class and I'm glad I took it and thank you Mr. A for putting up with our crap and teaching such an awesome class.

Biggest impact artist

      I think it was in Tuesday's class when Mr. A  asked each person which artist has had the biggest impact on us or was the most important (I don't recall exactly what he asked but it was along those lines). As people answered I thought and went through several artists and bands trying to decide which one was the most important, throughout this process one name kept coming up no matter how much I dismissed it until I decided to embrace it and give more thought to this reoccurring name until the realization of its importance and significance overcame me as I answered almost by reflex "Dan Black".
        
          What I realized was that Dan Black and his music was my kickoff artist where I became more actively aware of the presence/idea of finding new music or better put, discovering music new to you and the idea of finding and actively looking for music, conducting research. Essentially the beginning of my musical awakening and drastic change in the way I viewed/listened to music compared to before where I definitely listened to music (and a lot), but only listened to stuff that I knew from the radio, my parents listened to, or my brother showed me, in other words I got almost all my music from people I knew and even then I never acquired much depth of knowledge with any artist because looking deeper and listening to full albums was something of a result of Dan Black.
         
           They way I came about knowing of Dan Black is peculiar because he was more or less my first individual musical discovery as result of having listened to a Cudi track that (to me at the time featured Dan Black but later came to realize that it was Dan Black's track which recorded a version with Cudi) anyway eventually I clicked on Dan's name which took me to his music and resulted in me starting to find my own music. So then I began to more actively listen to music and its elements as well as actively looking for new music, one example of this is a playlist I made for my youtube account that's titled "music research"  that features various artists of different genres that I came across while on youtube and put them in this playlist to remind me of the exact aspect I liked and go deeper and conduct research on the artist, I still use this playlist and add songs to it to check later, it's definitely a good tool. Another form is when I mistype an artist or for some other reason a different artist comes up, I click on it and give it a listen and its taught me to take chances listening to anything that appears especially mistakes from typing because I've found some great stuff I would've missed otherwise.
      
       I've found that Dan Black has definitely been the most significantly important artist to me not just because of his music (which is really good) but what resulted from finding it and how it continues to influence the way I discover new music and how I listen everything in general to this day.

Mezzanine

So we were about to begin listening to Massive Attack's Mezzanine in class when an announcement called for a "stay in place drill" and in result led to turning off the lights which reminded Mr. A that 2nd period listened to it with the lights out, so we decided to do so as well with the visualizer on, and the combination was sick. Mezzanine, as Mr.A said is definitely a night album so just with the lights out the mood was enhanced and better fit with the music which had something about it that gave off a slightly darker chilled out vibe which is a good and refreshing change from the constant barrage of uptempo music. The visualizer also enhanced the mood of the album, supporting the chilled out, downtempo side of it, sometimes with bright colorful firework explosions and other times with darker, less active smoke balls. One thing I noticed was that as the album progressed, the visualizations looked more and more organic (at least to me, I had Schwarz for biology, so everything's kind of been tattooed into my head)  and got more and more complex from the double helix to flagellum and cilia, so that was pretty interesting to watch the different structures that formed (again that's what it looked like to me). At one point I think a vice principle or some else came in, and based off the ambiance that featured the lights out, rather trippy visualizer and the album playing, they definitely thought something along the lines of " holy crap what did I just walk into","god damn it Mr.A the kids are high","everyone in that room is tripping" and crap along those lines. It think one of the reasons the majority of the songs in the album tended to have a darker sound attributed to them was the lack of  a definite instrumental melody to lead which results in more focus on percussive elements and I think at least some of the songs were in a minor key which would definitely contribute to the sound. I enjoyed Mezzanine throughout and has gotten me to check more of Massive Attack's music.

Well the blog I wrote about Phoenix's new album deleted itself so I'll just post some funny and ridiculous hip hop dancing songs that made all the white kids want to dance (or try).

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=0FOjmV66zf8

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=mwPIC2HchpQ

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=NJxYiIfr4WM
This one is pretty funny because of the guy on the far right.

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=Dq_sGy4H_-k
as if the song wasn't enough

In class we covered some LCD Soundsystem with the documentary and their performances as well as listening to Nirvana. One of the things I like about Nirvana is how their sound can vary from their more common sound of heavy, overdriven guitars (which is always great) to a calmer, quieter, hell even acoustic sound in songs like Polly and how the subject matter is more or less plainly stated in the lyrics though somewhat hidden, in Polly's case the subject matter being toture and rape, yep, and though it's more or less evident what the song's about by lyrics, you wouldn't really catch it unless you read them as the way Curt sings it makes it hard to understand the lyrics together.

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=k2Fr90sOxbs
Okay I think this is the right version with on screen lyrics, I think because I'm on "mobile" (tablet) so it won't let me see it, so if something horrendous comes up on the video I apologize in advance.

Pearl Jam (PJ)

Yup their intials are mine. Anyway, I've definitely liked a lot of their songs, though these tend to be the more popular ones (Even Flow, Yellow Ledbetter,  Alive, Jeremy, Better Man etc.) So I'm definitely going to try to listen more and get deeper into their music. Even Flow I particularly like because its something you automatically start torso nodding to (whole upper body moving to the beat) and just a song that is driven by the guitars and the awesome intro riff, I've seen the video of their live performance like the one Mr.A showed us and I always find it great how much they get into their music and the moment along with Eddie Vedder's voice that chooses when it wants to be understood.

STRFKR

On Wednesday instead of playing music Mr.A asked us what we were currently listening to so I decided this blog will be about that. Lately I've been listening to lots of STRFKR or Starfucker and definitely to their new album that I keep in my car along with the rest that are in my phone. What I like about this band is how varied their sound is, going from chilled out music to dance-focused beats, straight rock and electronica. They use lots of synthesizers but in a way that doesnt drive you insane along with some pretty sick base and guitar lines. On vocals you'll find that the way its mastered will muffle them out or make them sound far off almost making it seem like they're trying to direct your focus elsewhere or when they sort of want you to pay attention to the vocals they'll make more audible while still keeping them slightly muffled, they also have some pretty good harmonies that help drive home the song. Also to wake you up after  a chilled song, they'll hit you with something a bit more upbeat, like the transition between Isea and YAYAYA, yeah you can see difference just in the text. One thing I really like is that no matter how minimalist the lyrics are, the rest of song covers it though I suppose it's a preference thing with lyrcis, for example I can live with songs without lyrcis (or bands ahem, Explosions in The Sky) while some prefer lyrics like Ann yesterday in the car said there wasn't any lyrics or they weren't easy to follow, so lyrics is definitely a personal preference.

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?feature=plcp&v=1EL03Pl4oL4 Atlantis

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?feature=plcp&v=_YsjVTdq5og  Beach Monster

These are the videos they have so far and on each one you'll see the different sounds described.
A cool thing I found on Miracle Mile is that if you run it without a gap between the songs  they all (almost all) connect perfectly. I would put up more links, but I would end up listing every song they have so I suggest going to spotify and start at Reptilians, move to Miracle Mile and then go back to the older albums like  Jupiter and Starfucker and Heaven's Youth which is cool because it's the Reptilians demos and you can see how the songs changed and progressed. So my advice is listen to EVERYTHING.

On an off note I'm going to listen to Phoenix's new album!!