Help-The Movie

The Beatles movie Help is quite subtle and very goofy. I don't know why they came up with the Idea of some middle easterners trying to capture and kill Ringo for his ring they must use for preforming sacrifices. It would seem more serious when Ringo found out he had to die but he was so nonchalant about it and said "I've only got a few more hours to live" in such a easy going manner. This whole plot and acting was just really cheesy and silly, but the music they played from their album help was fantastic, I think it is one of their better albums they have made. But the movie was okay, had some quite absurd parts in it like when the icehole was created and a swimmer popped out asking for directions, and when they were in the forest and John looked like he had Ringo on a leash. Overall the movie was entertaining, and it was in bright color which was surprising for a movie that came out in 1965.

80's Hair Metal

The whole 1980's decade was not the best time for music. Things were going great in the 70's with awesome bands like Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath,  Deep Purble, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Queen, The Who, Rush, and many other great rock bands coming out and rocking the whole world. But something horrifying happened. Rock went from revamping music and being awesome, to a bunch of dudes trying to look like chicks and singing bad, thoughtless songs about (99.5% of the time) sex. Some of these hair metal bands that destroyed rock and roll for a decade include Motley Crue, Poison, Def Leppard, Cinderella, KISS, Ratt, W.A.S.P, Skid Row, Duran Duran, and Great White. I do not like these bands because a lot of them are extremely cheesy with techno pop mixed with rock (which are polar opposites and should never be blended ever). They also all look like Chicks, which is a huge turnoff, and don't have any real deep meaning to their songs besides sex. Some Hair Bands that I can deal with are the Scorpions, occasionally Gun's and Roses, Van Halen, and Iron Maiden, because their songs actually sound like rock and a lot of the time have deeper meanings to their songs.

Make Up Blog

I already play the guitar, drums, bass, keyboard, and if i wanted to I could sing, but the most intriguing instrument to me that I want to learn how to play the most is the Banjo. Playing the guitar is great and all, but so many people play guitar and I want to play something somewhat unique. Banjo is a lot like guitar and I think I could pick it up quick, and not everyone in the whole world plays the banjo like how everyone plays the guitar. I also like the sound of it. It has a more raspy vibe to it than guitar, and I think it just sounds fantastic if it is being fingerpicked at incredible speeds. I think the next instrument I'll try to learn is going to be the banjo because it is less common than guitar, can sound just as good, and requires a different technique than guitar which I would like to learn to help me become a better fingerpicker.

Bob Dylan

I used to not like Bob Dylan because it used to be that I've only heard his newer music, when he was already old, and it just didn't appeal to me. But now, I think Bob Dylan is a good and bad at the same time. The goods are that he is an amazing song writer, with some of the best messages in his lyrics that I've ever seen, and in some of his songs you can hear that he's a great musician as well by the way he plays his guitar and banjo. But the bads are that he doesn't have the best voice, a lot of his songs are not in my taste in music (folky blues kind of stuff), and his harmonica is the most loud and obnoxious thing in the face of humanity. But his voice wasn't really a turn off to me, he still sounded good until he started playing his harmonica, which is definitely the biggest turn off to me. I think Bob Dyaln is a great musician with incredible amounts of musical talent, his voice is tolerable but not the best, but there are some songs that he writes that sound like a dying cat. And not to mention his Christmas album where I think he just played a joke on everyone. I'm pretty sure he made it sound like crap on purpose just to see who would buy it just because he's Bob freaking Dylan.

The Who

The Who are definitely a lot better than the Rolling Stones and have a lot more variation in music than most bands I've heard. The later stuff of The Who I think is better than the older stuff, but what I like is that the older and newer music sound almost nothing alike. Whereas, the Rolling Stones and many other bands, sound the same throughout their whole music career. I also think The Who has a great bassist, I don't hear many bassists that can groove as well as their bassist. And the Drummer is really dumb, but is entertaining. I mean who else would put TNT in their drum kit during a concert and not tell anyone. Immature and destructive to his band members, cause one of them lost hearing in one ear, but none the less entertaining. The Who's variety of sounds, stage presence, and good music make them a band that I would certainly listen to quite a bit

Make Up Blog

Recently I've been listening to a lot of Drum and Bass type music. Pendulum is my favorite and some of their songs can be classified as dubstep, but most of their stuff is drum and bass. I've also been listening to Lamb, Ratatat, and of course Glitch Mob. I usually can't stand dubstep or anything like it, but these bands are a few acceptions that dont sound like wub-wub garbage, but actually sound like music and not a computer in overload. I like Pendulum a lot because unlike a lot of drum and bass/dubstep bands, they actually use instruments and don't overdo the techno computer sounds. Like, most drum and bass bands use the computer to play the actual bass line and drums itself which totally kills the purpose of drum and bass music. In Pendulum, they play the actual drums and bass, and the drummer goes at such incredible speeds it's hard to believe it is not a computer looping it the whole way through. Not only that, but they play a wide range of instruments throughout their songs, with very limited techno sounds, which I really like, cause it's authentic and it sounds good.

Rolling Stones

Ok so I've never actually liked The Rolling Stones or listened to their music, but before this class I always thought of them as good musicians (because they're so famous) but just thought they weren't in my taste of music. Well now after taking this class and listening to two albums nearly the whole way through I can confirm that they suck worse than I thought and barely have any musical talent if any. I mean their whole first two albums were 90% covers which were worse than the originals, and the few songs they did write were even worse than the covers. They were complete garbage, lyrically, vocally, and instrumentally. First off, Mick Jagger is not a good singer. His voice sounds like Bob Dylan playing the harmonica and the lyrics he writes are so simple. And to match his voice, a raunchy sounding guitar that is sometimes off tune is there to back him up. I mean how on earth did these guys turn into one of "the greatest" most famous rock bands of all time? Like seriously? I can write better music than those "professionals." Listening to the Rolling Stones legitimately pissed me off.

What is Rock?

Rock is a very broad genre of music, has very many different branches, and is very hard to describe verbally. I can't really describe all of rock together but I can break it up into several branches and define it. Well first there is Rock and Roll, which is like Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Elvis, which is kind of the earlier sound of rock, which usually sounds quite crisp and clean, not really using distortion guitar and there's a lot of focus on singing. Then it moves to Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath, and eventually Metallica which is metal. Metal can be defined by having really loud and fast distortion guitar, as well as loud singing and heavy drum beats. It is usually quite fast and sounds kind of angry sometimes, like in thrash metal. There is also grunge, which can be described as sort of like metal but softer, and it uses non distortion guitar more often. Grunge also often goes off key/making off sounds on purpose to bring out a completely different, sometimes disturbing, emotion. Now there is all other sorts of rock I have not mentioned, and I cant possibly define the broad umbrella of Rock in just a paragraph but I can say that Rock is partly defined by the instruments (mostly guitar, bass, drums, vocals) the attitudes of rebellion (just how the music sounds gives a feeling of fighting or rebelling) and lyrics (which is usually a focus on sex, partying, love, rebelling, and many other things).

The Beatles Movie

That Beatles movie we recently watched in class that focused on the early lives of the band members and how The Beatles became The Beatles was very interesting. I like how Paul and John were in the same class together and lived not more than a few blocks away from each other, yet they were both some of the greatest musicians and influential people in the world that lived and studied in the same area. They didn't even really know each other well at first, but when they got older John joined a band and Paul went to one of his concerts and really liked it, which is what really started off The Beatles. If Paul would have been doing something else that day, or have come to the same area after John's band had already finished, there would be no Beatles. Also you can tell that The Beatles were quite immature and funny when they were young (as a lot of people are) because Paul got involved in setting a condom on fire after pinning it to a wall of a club, and John Lennon is just John Lennon, he's always kind of a sarcastic joker. I don't know something about the movie was just interesting. I guess it was just seeing how the greatest rock band of all time came to be and how they were a lot like me and my friends when they were young, all sarcastic jokers and what not. Maybe I should start a rock band.

Arctic Monkeys

Arctic Monkeys are a band I discovered not too long ago and at first I took them as a joke because of their band name. Like I honestly thought that they didn't do serious music and just made songs that were parodies like Lonely Island. But once I actually figured out who they are and first heard their song "Do I wanna know?" I instantly thought they were the bomb. I listened to their first two albums "Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not" and "Favorite Worst Nightmare" the full way through and needless to say there wasn't one song I did not like. They sound a lot like the Black Keys and they are one of my favorite alternative rock bands.  Now I am not a huge fan of a lot of indie rock, the Arctic Monkeys can truly make it sound great because of their singer's voice, lyrics, and interesting blues/rock guitar/bass lines in the back that usually remain constant but set up a perfect beat and melody for the vocals. I'm glad the Arctic Monkeys were on the ACL lineup this year because otherwise I probably would of always thought they were a joke.

Silvertide

A fairly new and really good rock band really caught my attention. They're called Silvertide and they sound like a combination of AC/DC, Soundgarden, Led Zepplin, and Aerosmith. I mean, there's nothing really original about them compared to these bands beside the foul language (which was usually censored back in the 70's ) and if you heard them at first you would probably think that they were just a band from the 70's. But probably the reason I like them is because they have an amazing solo guitarist who can play as fast as lighting, and a singer who looks just like Layne Staley (even they're not nearly as good as Alice in Chains). And also, I like a lot of 70's rock, and I haven't really listened to it for a good long while, so at first hearing the band sounded great like all the other bands I previously mentioned. Now I know they don't have a lot of originality but they sound like a really good 70's band, and I just like it.

LCD Sound System

I thought that both the Movie "Shut Up and Play the Hits" and the band LCD Sound System were both not at all entertaining.  The Movie was just clips of the band, and quotes that were extremely boring and didn't really have any inspirational value or true meaning to music itself. The reporter that asked the main questions gave dead give-away answers to his questions such as "Is playing concerts more a musical experience, a cultural experience, or 50/50?" Anybody would have answered 50/50 (or most musicians) because the answer that makes your band look better would obviously be the 50/50 answer. And the movie was just really boring, they had no plot beside a crappy old person trying to rock out but didn't know what he was doing. The band was just so unoriginal, and almost every sound they made was just a bad knock off of the band Shit Robot. If you listen to Shit Robot you can obviously hear the same thing lcd sound system tried to copy. And I don't even like Shit Robot. Im glad that "rock" band finally quit because they were old guys that didn't know how to rock or put anything new on the table musically. I kept almost falling asleep during that whole movie but it was too loud.

Make Up Blog

Though I really dont like the line up of either the fun fun fun fest or ACL, I think I would rather go to ACL.  Most of the bands in ACL are not in my taste, such as Fidlar, Shovels and Rope, Whiskey Shivers, Bobby Jealousy, My Jealousy, and many many more, because either 1) They're too boring and quiet 2) Their studio sound is okay but when I hear them live they have a horrible, wretched vibe that hurts my ears (Cough cough Fidlar) 3) They're not my style of music, such as country, or pop 4) I don't know why I just don't like them. But there are a couple bands that I would definitely go see at ACL that would make it kinda worth it, such as Muse, Kings of Leon, Phoenix, ARCTIC MONKEYS,  Portugal the Man, and Depeche Mode. I like these bands because they are my style of music, sound great live, or have a unique twist to music that sounds great. I like the Arctic Monkeys the most because they remind me of one of my favorite bands The Black Keys. In the fun fun fun fest on the other hand, I don't like almost all of the bands that I've looked at on their website, because most are either really loud and obnoxious heavy metal bands such as Misfits, Slayer, and The Impossibles, or they're rap which I cannot stand now a days, such as Snoop Dog/Lion, M.I.A. (which is like a rap-techno mix), Fat Tony, and Antwon, or bands that just aren't entertaining live, like Title Flight, The Impossibles, The Locust and many more. If I'm spending well over $100 to go to a music festival, I wan't too see at least a few bands I like, rather than just one or two, and that's why I would prefer to go to ACL.