1 August 2012 (Wednesday)

Another nice, sunny day in Seattle!  The class during the summer quarter has been only lightly attended and today there were only 6 students -- 4 of whom were new.

I started by telling the students that if they heard loud noises and jet fighters in the air over Seattle this weekend not to be afraid: it's just the Blue Angels (info), highly specialized pilots from the US Navy in town to entertain for the annual Seafair Festival (info). In particular they do an amazing flying show over the hydroplane boat races (info) on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.  Here's some video someone shot of the Blue Angels this year. The video is pretty cool, but I can say from personal experience that seeing (and hearing!) them in person is much more impressive. 

About the hydroplane races: those boats go fast! As with the Blue Angels, it's more impressive to watch in person than on video.  Many people go to the races hoping to see a boat go too fast and flip (video).

As I told the new students about cultural things in Seattle, the subject of Bumbershoot (info) came up again. This year's Bumbershoot lineup looks really interesting to me, though it is a little bit lacking in world music compared to other years.  The students asked me which bands I am most interested in seeing at Bumbershoot.  Here's a quick list by day of the bands I want to see:

Saturday

The Spittin' Cobras

Skerik's Bandalabra

Gotye

The Soul Rebels

THEE Satisfaction

The Heavy

Jane's Addiction (one of my favorite bands in the 90's!)

Sunday

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings

Eldridge Gravy & The Court Supreme

Barcelona (maybe)

The Dirtbombs

Mudhoney

* I might spend a good part of this day watching short films and looking at art.

Monday

Cascadia '10

Bombino (from Niger, West Africa; I've already seen him twice in the past 9 months!)

M83

Omar Souleyman

Fishbone

Low

Star Anna & The Laughing Dogs

Fujiya & Miyagi

Those are just the bands I know now that I am interested in seeing. I will inevitably come across something I had no idea about while I am there! Part of the fun of Bumbershoot is walking around and discovering new music! 

Now I wanted to find out what kind of music the new students like. One student said he likes Linkin Park (info).  His favorite song by them is "In The End" (video, lyrics, song info).

The next student chose "Payphone" (video, lyrics, song info) by Maroon 5 (info).  The student who chose it like that song because it's about long distance relationship and how romantic it can be when people keep a relationship going by their strong love despite the long distance.

The next student said he loves British Rock like The Beatles (info) and Oasis (info).  He even went on a musical pilgrimage to England to see the actual places where the Beatles were from. I asked him which Beatles song is his favorite -- a difficult question, I know!  After thinking about it a while he chose "Hey Jude" (video, lyrics, song info).

The next new student said he currently likes dubstep music (info), but he chose something completely different to show the class: "Signal To Noise" (video, lyrics, song info) by Peter Gabriel (info).

I am not really familiar with what dubstep music is so I asked him to chose a song as an example of dubstep. He chose "Playing The Villain" (video) by Son Of Kick. I mentioned that this sounds to me a lot like Skrillex (info), who is playing at Bumbershoot this year.

At this point the building facilities person came in to kick us out.  We had time for one more song.  Julius, from Vienna, is a fan of the Seattle band Abney Park (info) and the steampunk style (info).  I had never heard of Abney Park until Julius told me about them, yet they are apparently very known internationally!  Julius wrote a review of their new album for the University of Washington student newspaper. He suggested we listen to their song "Automaton", which is closer to dubstep than their usual steampunk. However, since it is one of the few songs in the world *not* on YouTube we listened to it through his iPod and I can't do a link to the song. Sorry!

With that we had to break for the day.

A note: The class on 15 August will be the last one for the Summer Quarter.  There will be a break until early October when Fall Quarter starts.  Nonetheless, during the break I will be in touch with students via email and I hope we can do some fun music/culture things together.