4 March 2015 (Wednesday)

Today 9 students came to class.

The previous week I had mentioned to the class what my phone ringtone is and that led me to wanting to hear what the students have as their ringtones. So I started class by asking each person what his/her ringtone is.

To my great surprise, almost everyone has the default ringtone! They said it's too much hassle to change it or create a new one. 

The one person who has a custom ring tone has "22" (video, lyrics, song info) by Taylor Swift (info). She put it on when she turned 22 years old herself and just hasn't changed it since.

Someone said they previously had "Don't Look Back In Anger" (video, lyrics, song info) by Oasis (info).

Another student had had "From Nowhere (demo version)" (video, song info) by Vaquero (info).

I know we next watched "Summer (live version)" (video) by Joe Hisaishi (info). But now I can't remember if the person who chose it said it was formerly a ringtone.




Someone else said they had a ringtone from "Saints Row" (info) video game, but I don't know which song or part of the game he used.

So much for ringtones... now we got into regular song choices.

One student said he is going to a concert this coming Sunday by 2:54 (info). We watched their song "Scarlet" (video, lyrics). Cool song!

One of the other students reminded us that she went to see a concert by Leighton Meester (info) the previous week. She said that it was a good concert. Her favorite song was "Heartstrings" (video, lyrics). 

In an class a few weeks ago a student had said she was really into the artist Rodriguez (info), especially his lyrics, who the film "Searching For Sugar Man" (info) was made about. A student mentioned he watched the film. I still need to see that movie!

The next song chosen was "Youth Knows No Pain" (video with lyrics, song info) by Lykki Li (info). The student who chose this song likes the 60's sound of the song. He discovered it by a friend emailing a different song by Li, which the student didn't like, but then tried this song and likes it.

The 60's sound of that song inspired me to ask if one of the guys in the class who *loves* Arctic Monkeys has ever heard of the band The Last Shadow Puppets (info), which features the singer/guitarist for Arctic Monkeys. To me it's a brilliant update on the 60's sound. As a sample I played "The Age Of The Understatement" (video, lyrics, song info).

For some reason we started talking about "shoegaze" music (definition) and the next song chosen was "Uzu Ni Naru" (video) by Kinoko Teikoku (info) as an example of "the most shoe gaze of all shoe gaze bands". The student who chose this band like *all* their music!

The next song chosen was "おしゃかしゃま" (video, lyrics) by Radwimps (info). The student who chose this song said the band was very popular during his high school. He listened to them again this past weekend or the first time in a long time.

The next song was chosen by a new student: "Lalala" (video, song info) by Standing Egg (Facebook page). She started liking this band before they got popular.








Unfortunately I don't remember the explanations for why the last two songs of the day were chosen, but the songs were:

"15 Step (live at the Grammy's)" (video, lyrics, song info) by Radiohead (info). 






 

and

"Give You What You Like" (video, lyrics, song info) by Avril Lavigne (info).


With that our time for the day was over.