This is your last blog assignment! I want you to share and write about something you “got” out of this class. Whether it was a particular genre, an artist, a way of thinking about music, or maybe even something related to the blog, tell me what you will take away from class. Be descriptive: try to capture that magical moment when you were nodding off in class when suddenly a life-changing song came out of the speakers! Or when Garofalo’s riveting prose drove you into the arms of a bygone musical niche! You aren’t limited to specific class material: maybe you stumbled upon a rock ‘n’ roll band we didn’t cover, or maybe a classmate turned you on to something new. Let me (and the rest of the world) know what it was!

For this week’s assignment, you have two options. The first is to analyze how a hip hop song tackles a particular societal issue, such as race, sexism, poverty, politics, “keeping it real” (authenticity), materialism, or anything else you think works. Remember, hip hop doesn’t always (or maybe even doesn’t often) say what we want it to say about certain issues — at best, it draws attention to parts of our society we don’t always want to be confronted with, often through creative play and exaggeration. Try to meet the music on its own terms: what is it saying about a particular issue and how is it saying it? Why is the artist saying it in such a way — why did he or she make particular creative choices about the song?

Your other option is to focus on the creative work of sampling, which we will also talk about in our class on dance music. Post a song and the song that it samples from, and describe how the sample is used. Why do you think the producer of the track chose to sample a particular song? What kinds of connections are made between songs? You can choose music from any genre, not just hip hop.

Some resources on sampling:

• The Breaks – Site that categorizes sampled works.
• Illegal Art - Record label that releases works with uncleared samples.

Timbaland accused of theft for sampling Scandinavian computer music without permission.

Finally, a link: check out Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music before Wednesday’s class. It’s an entertaining and occasionally informative look at the many sub-genres of electronic music, some of which we will touch upon on Wednesday.

Hey, just saw this article on the BBC News site about emo. Thought it might dovetail nicely with some of our class discussion. Check it out!

Your task this week is to post a music video and give a little analysis of it: What is it doing? Is there a story? What is important to the video? Is it good/bad/mediocre/etc. and why? Use a video I didn’t show in class!

For your next assignment, I want you to post an example of what you consider “bad music.” I know that good or bad is up to the opinion of the listener, so that is what I’m asking for — your opinion. Make sure you explain WHY a particular song strikes you as bad: what is it not doing that good music should do, and what is it doing that good music shouldn’t? Do certain genres set you off? Certain artists? Certain styles or lyrics? Be specific — simply saying something “sucks” doesn’t do much to explain your taste or convince others to share your opinion.

Check to see what others have posted, and make a comment if you disagree! Try to get people to see the good in something they don’t like. I want everyone to make a comment this week.

For this week’s post, I would like you to write about one of the major concerns the “Rock Era” brings to mainstream popular music. You can pick one topic or the other for your post, or do both for extra credit.

The first is the  belief that popular music must be important socially or politically, and that it indeed can have a concrete effect on the direction of political movements. For this, I want you to give an example of music with a social or political message. Explain the message in detail — what issue is the artist addressing and in what way? What makes this song an appropriate vehicle for this message? What is/was/will be/should be its impact? Remember, it doesn’t have to be an explicit protest song – Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix largely avoided overt political statements while making music that was relevant to the social movements at the time.

The other option is to write about a concept album.  The Rock Era is the birth of the album as a unique, coherent art object, and concept albums feature themes and progression, both musically and lyrically, throughout their running time. Explain the concept and how the artist executes it. It would be helpful to include several songs from the album as examples if you can find them.

You should add lots of your own original content to these posts — don’t just copy from other sites! I am interested in your ideas that you get from your own thinking and listening. I want to see at least 300-400 words of original writing. Good luck!

Here’s a list of (almost) all the video clips I’ve used in class. Use them to study for your midterm. You have an extra week to do the assignment on independent radio.

Al Jolson – Mammy

Scott Joplin – The Entertainer

Leadbelly – Where Did You Sleep Last Night

Robert Johnson – Crossroad Blues

Blind Lemon Jefferson – Black Snake Moan

Bessie Smith – St. Louis Blues

Jimmie Rodgers – Daddy and Home

The Carter Family – Can the Circle Be Unbroken

Hank Williams – Hey Good Lookin’

Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire

Patsy Cline – I Fall To Pieces

Olivia Newton-John – Country Roads

Waylon Jennings – Ladies Love Outlaws

Louis Armstrong – Dinah

Glenn Miller Orchestra – Chattanooga Choo Choo

Sun Ra Freakout!

Louis Jordan – You Gotta Have The Beat

Muddy Waters – I Got My Mojo Working

Ruth Brown – Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean

Booker T and the MGs – Children, Don’t Get Weary

The Supremes – You Keep Me Hangin’ On

Delfonics – La La Means I Love You

Fats Domino – Ain’t That A Shame

Pat Boone – Ain’t That A Shame

Little Richard – Tutti Fruitti

Pat Boone – Tutti Fruitti

Elvis Presley – Hound Dog

Chuck Berry – You Can’t Catch Me

High School Confidential (with Jerry Lee Lewis)

Paul Anka – Diana

This week’s assignment: Listen to an hour of independent radio and an hour of corporate radio and compare! You may also listen to local programming on a corporately-owned radio station. Discuss not only the content (what you heard) but the style of the stations as well. Incorporate some poetic descriptive terms into your writing to try and capture the overall aesthetic of the station. Do the stations impact you differently? Do you prefer one over the other? What was the DJ/announcer like? Were there commercials or public announcements? How often? Take notes while you listen!

In your post, include what station you listened to, and when. Try to record song and artist information, as well as info about the particular show or block you tuned into. Link to the site of the station in your post: all the stations should have web sites!

Here are some places to start. Most independent radio stations have short range, so you can’t hear them everywhere — it will depend on your location. Many of these stations stream live over the internet though!

Chicago Public Radio: Lots of nationally syndicated talk, but check the listings for music shows.

88.1 WCRX: Columbia College Radio, heard in the Loop and slightly beyond.

88.5 WHPK: Hyde Park Community Radio, heard on the South Side.

88.9 WIIT: Illinois Institute of Technology Radio

89.3 WKKC: Kennedy King College

90.5 WRTE: Radio Arte – Bilingual Spanish-English Arts Programming. South/West/Loop area.

88.3 WXAV: St. Xavier University Radio.

88.3 WZRD: Not sure about this one…

88.3 WGDC: Downer’s Grove High School. If you live near the ‘burbs you might get this station.

88.7 WLUW: Loyola University. Northside/Evanston.

89.3 WNUR: Northwestern Radio. Northside.

This site has a longer list of stations for the Chicagoland area — I can’t vouch for all of them!

UPDATE

Some local shows that you could use for your comparison:

Power 92 (92.3 FM) has a daily mix show from 5-6 PM. At 7 PM DJ Nehpets has a Juke show – I think it might only be Tuesdays (his MySpace is unclear about this!).

WGCI (107.5 FM) has a juke mix show weekdays at 8PM.

Any others? Leave comments! I am pretty sure there are local hip hop shows on the urban stations, but I don’t know when they are.  Local shows use local DJs making their own playlists, NOT local DJs using playing the same stuff as every other station in the country. 

Oh, and one more link: CHIRP is a group trying to secure the rights for more independent radio in Chicago. Check them out!

Last week I showed different versions of the same song: for example, Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”…

…and Nirvana’s cover during their MTV Unplugged performance.

Your assignment is to make a post doing something similar: compare and contrast two versions of the same song. I want you to practice describing the sound of a song — what sonic similarities and differences can you note? How do those differences change the meaning of the song? Finally, which version strikes you as more authentic? It’s ok if you are still unsure about what qualifies as authentic; authenticity has many different definitions, so your job is to explain your own take on authenticity through the examples you use. This post should contain lots of original writing by you — this is about your thoughts and opinions!

I strongly recommend incorporating examples of the music in your post. Youtube and Google Video are your best bets. You might also find a streaming version on a website that you can link to. Many streaming songs can be found on imeem.com as well.

Don’t forget to tag and categorize your posts! You can always find my assignments under the “Class Content” category.

I thought I would make the following resources available to you since I’ve used them in class — no sense in hogging all the music for myself!

You can find an archive of mp3s made from record cylinders full of early Tin Pan Alley recordings and other odds and ends at University of California-Santa Barbara’s Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project.

You can find more “old-timey” music at the Internet Archive. They host lots of recordings of live concerts by contemporary artists as well, so check them out!

If you are interested in hearing more blues, particularly the “gut-bucket” variety (basically the dirty stuff), check out the podcasts at Uncensored Blues. I played part of the “Lesbian Blues” podcast found here. The music player runs on Flash, so you will need to use quota time to listen to it from school.