22 October 2014 (Wednesday)

Today we were in the accursed alternative room and sure enough I had technical problem getting the computer and projector to work.  Today only 5 students came to talk music.

As I worked on the laptop one of the students talked about how there were some famous Seattle music clubs he wants to visit. Back in the 90's Seattle was famous around the world for "grunge" rock music (definition). One of the original "grunge" bands was Mudhoney (info), who are still together. I told the students that Mudhoney is playing on Friday, 14 November at Neumos (website) on Capitol Hill, one of the famous concert clubs in Seattle. 

To show the class what kind of music Mudhoney plays I showed a clip of the song they are best known for: "Touch Me I'm Sick" (video, lyrics, song info). 

Two summers ago Mudhoney had the distinction of being the first band to play on top of the Space Needle! (video). 

I know Mudhoney's music is too hard and noisy for most of the class to enjoy, but at least four of us (so far all guys, hahahaha!) will go to the show. If anyone wants to join us, let me know!

Finally I got the computer to work and we could listen to some choices from the class.  The first song chosen was "Everytime We Touch" (video, lyrics, song info) by Cascada (info). 

Somehow from that song we started talking about Latin rhythms in music, especially "salsa music" (info). I mentioned that I used to help a band in Seattle that had a song with a salsa music dancing part. The band is Children Of The Revolution and the song with salsa dancing is "Isla Margarita" (video).

I also mentioned that one of the guys in the band, Geoffrey Castle (website) plays violin like Jimi Hendrix and showed a clip of him playing Jimi's song "Voodoo Child" (video -- go to 10minutes, lyrics, song info).

Now we came back to songs chosen by the class: "Riptide" (video, lyrics, song info) by Vance Joy (info). 

This song was covered by Taylor Swift (info). I was surprised that Taylor Swift would cover a song like this so I had to hear it: video.  The student who chose this song loves Taylor Swift a lot and even saw her perform in Paris!

The next song chosen was "Islands" (video, lyrics, song info) by The XX (info). The student who chose it simply heard it on the way over to class and liked it.

At this point I told the students about two of my favorite apps:

* Shazam (website) lets your mobile phone identify songs you hear in public.

* Spotify (website) is an online music service. It's almost like a library of all music ever recorded available on demand! And they have a student rate of $5/month, which is an amazing deal to have all that music at your fingertips!

The last song of the day was "Dixie" (video) by DLD. The student who chose it said it's like "Mexican grunge". It's true, they sound to me like Seattle's Pearl Jam (info). One of the other students said DLD sounds like Japanese indie music.

With that our time for the day ran out. Sorry that so much time was wasted on technical problems!

Next week's theme is pretty predictable: due to Halloween it is "scary songs" or "songs for Halloween".