15 May 2013 (Wednesday)

A rainy day in Seattle; 7 students came to talk music.

The rainy weather inspired the first song choice: "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" (video, lyrics, song info) by Madonna (info).

The student who chose this song had seen the musical it comes from, Evita (info) on Broadway, featuring Ricky Martin (info). Here's a clip of that production (video).

As we talked about Ricky Martin someone said he sang the official song for the World Cup 1998: "Cup Of Life" (video with lyrics, song info). I watch soccer all the time but don't usually pay attention to the "official songs" of the tournaments so was not aware of this song.

Since we were talking about soccer I asked the guys, who were all from Asian countries, how many players Japan has playing in Europe and how many Korea has. I can't remember the exact numbers.

At this point I had to play my favorite "soccer song": "Umbabarauma" (video), a song from Brazil. This song is on my "jogging mix".

One student said Umbabarauma reminded him of this song: "Tunak Tunak Tun" (video, song info). Hmmm, I see a slight similarity, but I could not listen to this song more than a couple of times -- it's too... energetic(?) for me!

I then showed an old tv commercial with Ronaldinho (info) showing his amazing ball control skills while trying out some new shoes (video -- go to 1:43) and asked the class if they thought he really bounced the ball off the goalpost back to himself or if that was a video trick.

For people who love soccer, there is a movie which is simply a soccer match where the camera follows Zinadine Zidane (info) through the whole match. The film is called "Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait" (info) and the music -- there is no commentary -- is by the British band Mogwai (info). Here's a clip from the film.

After this we somehow went back to Ricky Martin and watched "Livin' La Vida Loca" (video, lyrics, song info). The girls in the class think Ricky is hot -- the classic problem for women: gay men are attractive!

A Japanese guy, Hiromi Go (info) did a cover version of "Livin' La Vida Loca" called "Goldfinger 99" (video with lyrics).

The next song chosen was "Extreme Ways" (video, lyrics, song info) by Moby (info). I mentioned that Moby became famous in the early 2000's when he licensed *every* song from his "Play" album for commercials: no one had ever licensed every song from an album before! 

Somehow we got back to soccer: the next song chosen was "Fire" (video, lyrics, song info) by Kasabian (info), which is the official song of the English Premier League.

There are only a couple of songs I like by Kasabian, but I very much like their song "Where Did All The Love Go" (video, lyrics, song info).

This got us talking about British bands and someone chose "Don't Look Back In Anger" (video, lyrics, song info) by Oasis (info). The student who chose this likes songs when people sing along in concerts.


With that our time was done for the day! A fun day of talking music and soccer!