27 November 2012 (Tuesday)

Today only 3 students showed up.  But we had a nice conversation nonetheless.

I told the students I am going to see a concert that night: the band RNDM (info).  I actually didn't know anything about the band, had just been invited to the show by a friend. To find out what kind of music RNDM play I showed the video for "Modern Times" (video). None of us really liked it; one student said the music is kind of flat.

The bass player for RNDM is in the famous Seattle band Pearl Jam (info). To show what kind of energy Pearl Jam have, in contrast to RNDM, I showed the video for "Even Flow" (video, lyrics, song info). 


 



Next one of the students showed a video on her phone of her band in Japan. Unfortunately the video is not online so I can't link to it here.

The next song was "These Days" (video, lyrics, song info) by Foo Fighters (info).  The student who chose this song likes how powerful the lyrics are. We talked a little about whether heartbreak and/or disappointment has its positive side; whether it makes a person stronger.

The next song was the musical version of "21 Guns" (video, lyrics, song info) by Green Day (info).  The student who chose the song had heard it on Pandora (info). This song is taken from the "American Idiot" musical (info). [For contrast, here is the original version of the song (video).]

Since "21 Guns" is about a person losing his/her way, for the last song of the day we listened to "Rehab" (video, lyrics, song info) by Amy Winehouse (info).   


With that, class was over for the week.

Note: Next week's class (4 Dec) will be the last one for this quarter. The Language Of Music will start again in Winter Quarter (January 2013).