I’m probably the wrong guy to be teaching about punk rock & the Sex Pistols. The most wrong guy that could ever be found, perhaps. But I’m doing it anyway, and boy am I grateful that I ordered that Greil Marcus book Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. And that I didn’t get rid of it the first time I tried (unsuccessfully) to read it. I may actually meander my way through the whole thing sometime soon. It’s interesting, if a bit circumstantial at points. UPDATE: As if on cue, I came across something at Antti’s site, …
Category: MUSIC
Anomie Pop
I have the first of my two or three class meetings for British Popular Culture planned out: a powerpoint giving a basic “crash course” in British popular culture, followed by an episode (probably episode 1, or else the Pub Quiz episode) of The Office, with some discussion interspersed. For the second lecture, I’m thinking we could discuss sport culture, and I have a great episode of the TV program Life on Mars which deals with soccer, hooliganism, and all kinds of 70s pop culture. The third (maybe, probably) meeting, I’m thinking we could watch some of Brassed Off, and I …
Ruben’s Tube
In music school, I learned to “see” music in a different way, but nothing like this. (Via my classmate Caroline, though the link isn’t on her site, not yet anyway…)
whitney music box
The very cool Shawn Scarber emailed a bunch of us something too good to miss: whitney music box takes me back to the days when I studied electronic music. We had a very early synthesizer in the Electronic Music Studio, a room that had gone unmarked for years at the University of Saskatchewan. I swear, the synthesizer looked like something out of Star Trek — you controlled it with cables and pins stuck into various appropriate-sized sockets all over the front. I did nearly nothing with it, though some of the guys in years following mine spent hours in there …
Eugene Mirman Rocks
If you haven’t yet, it’s time to experienceEugene Mirman. And what’s up with MC Hawking’s site? Is it dead? His Wikipedia entry doesn’t say so. I hope not. Nerdcore amuses me.
… San Peu-ran-shi-seu-ko~~~…
UPDATE (11/09/2006): There are a number of factual errors in this post, as to the derivation of specific Korean pop-music words. Check out Charles’ comment (appended to this post) for more info. Yeah, just goes to show you that you can’t take it for granted when people explain something to you that they actually know what they’re talking about, as I was assured of the derivation of these words more than once, back in my Iksan days. Shrug. Actually, that’s an exaggeration. The title of this post, I mean. Tonight, on the way home from the grocery store, I decided to …
Do You Know This Song?
Sounds like it’s form the 70s, but that could mean it’s new. It’s sung by a woman and she sings off-key. There are strings in the accompaniment. She sounds a bit like Nico, and she’s singing these lines over and over that are vaguely like, “Yesterday is a day like any other day”, or “Yesterday was a day like everyday…” but I can’t remember what exactly. It’s very melodramatic and it was just very amusing and strange, and I’d like to hear it again. If anyone knows, please do comment. I heard it in a taxi the other night and …
Tune the Damned Thing
While I have been trying to rest my eyes, one of the things I’ve noticed is that trying not to look at anything too long, or in a way that strains your eyes, leads to you noticing more about your aural surroundings — the sounds that surround you. This morning, I woke to what I think were magpies — black birds with blue and white patterns on them. Someone upstairs hollered out his window at them, in English: “Hey birds! I can’t concentrate!” I can see why. They were really dreadfully loud, and their “call” sounded a lot like electric …
Those Percussion Groups
If you’ve ever seen a really tight percussion/performance group, and wondered how they got to be so damned well tight, so deeply in unison, I can tell you. They practiced like mad. Like absolute mad. The dance steps and everything. Outside my window. If I had more time, I would grab some audio and post it. Maybe tomorrow. They’ve been practicing for hours every evening and I’m sure they won’t suddenly stop tomorrow. I’m not complaining, by the way. I can always put music on, and it basically drowns it all out. But it is quite amazing how singlemindedly dedicated …
A Cappella and Other Thoughts
Yesterday I attended a concert on campus. There’s a shy girl in one of my writing classes who came to me, ticket in hand, and asked me if I would come and see her sing. She’s a nice kid, and a diligent student, so how could I refuse? Well, it turned out to be a cappella music concert. You know, where vocal groups sing without instrumental accompaniment (aside from a little beatbox work by some of the guys in the ensembles, and that’s still not really instrumental). Now, it may seem strange to those of you who think of groups …