30 October 2008 (Thursday)

10 students today, 2 of whom were new.

Before I write about the music we watched a note: As part of the idea to get authentic food from the international students' home countries, we decided that we will go together to a Turkish restaurant on Friday, 14 November. We will meet at our regular classroom at BCC at 5pm, then go to Meze (map), a Turkish restaurant in Kirkland. The meal will likely cost about $20 each. We have three confirmed cars going for a total of 13 people (including drivers) that can go. I will send more information about this activity in an email, but please think about whether you would like to participate.


On to this week's music!:

Before class I didn't suggest a theme for today's songs but on the spot decided we would talk about bands whose concerts we have seen. With that as a theme I mentioned that after last Thursday's class I had seen a band called Toubab Krewe (bio). An example of what that concert was like is here with "Lamine's Tune" (video).



I said that some interesting concerts are coming to town. In the next week I will see Secret Machines (bio, "Nowhere Again" [video, lyrics]) who are renowned for their amazing light show. I have seen this band twice already and am looking forward to seeing them again and being dazzled by their light show.



Another band I will see soon is Ozomatli (bio). This band is renowned for their great live shows. I will see them Saturday, 8 November, which is a show only for 21+, but the next night (Sunday, 9 November) the show is open to all ages. If any students can get down to the Showbox Market (map, it is right across the street from the Pike Place Market main entrance) Sunday night, it will be a great show and a unique cultural experience!

I tried to find some songs which are representative of Ozomatli. Here a couple:
* "City Of Angels" (video, lyrics)
* "Saturday Night (live)" (video, lyrics)

We looked at a website (Pollstar) for a list of upcoming concerts in Seattle to see if any of the students recognized a band they would like to go see. (Note, there is a link on this blog called "Big list of national/int'l concerts coming to Seattle" where you can see a current list of upcoming concerts. Next to that link is another link with information about local clubs and DJ shows.)

As we looked at the list of concerts someone asked how big each concert hall is. Here's a list of the main big concert halls and their capacities:

Key Arena (info) - 16,641
Wamu Theater - 7,000
Paramount Theatre (info) - 2,807
Moore Theatre (info) - 1,419
Showbox Sodo (info) - 1,500
Showbox Market (info) - 1,150
Neumo's (info) - 800

Benaroya Hall (info, 2,500 capacity) is where the Seattle Symphony (info, website) plays.

As we looked through the list of concerts I saw that local band Death Cab For Cutie (bio), who have had an extremely successful couple of years, are coming back for a concert in December. I mentioned that they had the #1 album in the US earlier this year. Naturally I had to play my favorite video by them, which is one of my favorite videos of all: "I Will Possess Your Heart" (video, lyrics). Everyone in the class liked this song, too and it was fun identifying all the cities and places shown in the video.


Now, to the concerts students in the class have seen! Hugo saw Eason Chan (bio), though it was not really his intention to see this concert and it was a funny story to hear how the situation came about. As an example of the music we watched this video (I don't know what it is called).




The next concert memory was of No Brain (bio), a band from South Korea. We watched this live clip (again, I don't know the name of the song).




Someone mentioned that this band reminds them of the American punk band Green Day (info), also the whole story about how long they were an underground band before breaking through to the big time. Many of the students don't know who Green Day is, so I played a couple of songs:

* "Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)" (video, lyrics)
* "American Idiot" (video, lyrics)
* "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" (video, lyrics) (their biggest hit song -- some people recognized this one!)


The last song of the day was "Agent J" (video) by Jolin Tsai (bio). I don't think it had anything to do with a concert, but it was a fun video to watch.


With that today's discussion was over. More about the trip to eat Turkish soon!