7 February 2008

Today was the first day of the Chinese New Year: The Year of the Rat!

There was a good turnout today: 12 students again, including one new one -- Deniz from Turkey. She is a friend of Pinar and had come with our group to see U2 3D on Tuesday evening.

Speaking of the U2 3D evening, Minnie was very kind and had made prints of some pictures she had taken and gave them to the participants in the evening. It was such great fun -- I look forward to our next class trip!

As the new student in the class, I asked Deniz to pick the first song. She chose "Under A Violet Moon" (video, lyrics) by Blackmore's Night (bio).

Deniz said she likes this song because of the vocals, though she doesn't understand the lyrics. Since she doesn't understand the lyrics the song relaxes her. Lyrics tend to move her and make her listen more closely to the song, so sometimes it's *good* to not have lyrics which are understandable in order to relax to a song.

I asked how she discovered Blackmore's Night. She said a friend played her a song, then she downloaded more songs. At this point I polled the class:

• How many purchase cds (answer = 1)
• How many download songs (answer = almost all)
• How many buy songs online (answer = almost none)

The results of this informal poll are, of course, anecdotal evidence of something the record industry already knows (and feels in their pocketbooks!).

Naturally, if you are going to talk about Ritchie Blackmore (bio), you have to mention one of the most famous riffs in rock and roll: "Smoke On The Water" (video, lyrics) by his first band, Deep Purple (bio).





The next song request was something equally tribal in feel to the Deep Purple, but a totally different kind of song: Drumline (video) from the movie Drumline.


I had never even heard of this movie. The student who chose it says he enjoys watching the YouTube video and the whole movie itself.


This instrumental, percussive music reminded me of a DVD I gave my little nephews: Animusic. To show what the DVD is like I played a little clip, Pipe Dream. This is such a cool way to engage kids with music!

I also mentioned that I have given my nephews the Fantasia film DVD (info) . I wanted to show a clip of the Sorcerer's Apprentice, but it's not on YouTube :-(( .

I'm not sure how Animusic and Fantasia inspired the next choice: Tenacious D (bio) "Tribute" (video, lyrics). Seated over at one corner of the table each week are a few guys who are metal fans. They recongized parts of the song "Chop Suey" (video) by System Of A Down (bio) in the song. I thought *I* am good at rock trivia, but in this case my students are way better than me!

The student who chose this song is clearly a big Jack Black (bio) fan -- when I asked why he chose this song the student just said "Jack Black is FUNNY!!" It's true, JB has a big fan base. My neighbor in Amsterdam also was a big fan of Jack Black and his band, Tenacious D. And one afternoon recently a colleague at work was showing the movie "School Of Rock" to some other colleagues -- see, Microsoft isn't *all* humorless! ;-)) .

At this point I remembered that these metal guys in my class had previously talked about the band Dragonforce. I remembered that I had seen that the band is coming to Seattle with a festival, the Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival on July 9th. It's actually not exactly *in* Seattle -- it's at the White River amphitheater in Auburn, about 45 minutes drive from Seattle. The guys seem excited about the concert, not only for Dragonforce but for the other bands, too.

I don't recall now the conversation that led to the next choice... The song was "Rebel Moves" by Bandare, which is sung in Turkish. Pinar said that the band mixes Turkish and English and that everyone in Europe knows this song. But no one in our class was familiar with it...


The next song requested was "Something Stupid" (video, lyrics) by Robbie Williams (bio) and Nicole Kidman (bio). I mentioned that my favorite Robbie Williams song is "Feel" (video, lyrics). One of the (female) students said the first time she heard Robbie's voice she thought it sounded very sexy so she went and bought his cd even though she couldn't understand the lyrics.

To keep the gender balance I asked the guys in the class who a sexy *woman* singer is. Someone said Sade (bio). We listened to "Smooth Operator" (video, lyrics).

Another male student said he thinks Mandy Moore (bio -- her birthday is the same as mine!) is sweet when she sings "Stupid Cupid" (video w/lyrics)

The conversation ended up at Coldplay (bio) "Clocks" (video, lyrics), but that's what we watched next. If I may editorialize a bit here, my favorite Coldplay song is "God Put A Smile On Your Face" (video, lyrics).

I could see the rock guys at the table were getting restless, so I asked for a "rock" song. Evanescence (bio) was chosen. We started watching "My Immortal" (video, lyrics) but the music wasn't "rock" enough so we went to "Going Under" (video, lyrics).

Keeping on the theme of hard rocking women singers I contrasted Evanescence with another female-fronted band we heard last quarter, Nightwish (bio), "Bless The Child" (video, lyrics).





To end the class I played one of the original women-fronted hard rock bands: Heart (bio), who are actually from Seattle. I was surprised that a number of the students know about Heart! Ann Wilson is one of the best rock singers ever. I showed what she looked like in singing Crazy On You (lyrics) in 1976 and in 2000. Yes, she's gained a lot of weight, but Pinar said she thinks her voice has matured greatly and sounds better now then before. I like both eras -- Heart is one of my favorite bands! Ann Wilson is a force of nature!


With that class ended for the week. The next class is on Valentines Day: everyone is to bring songs of love and/or heartbreak! I look forward to seeing which songs the class picks!