Goodbye but Hello

So this was the last day of class. It’s the day the music died – at least from my college educational standpoint. I do hope some of the kinks, like the various styles and strange last minute edits of the song reviews, don’t count off of the overall splendid quality of our class website. I’m pretty proud of it, and I’d say next semester’s freshmen have a lot to live up to. I have a feeling this class has had an impact on me beyond what I can see and feel in the moment. It actually was a little sad to leave knowing we wouldn’t return. Now doing things like arguing the musical styles of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Thank You”, Joni Mitchell’s “Free Man in Paris” and Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” will have to be fun activities I perform in my head. I guess what I want to get across in this post is some sort of thank you, but I’m not sure to whom. Elvis? Patti Page? Sam Cooke? James Miller? Lewis Shiner? Dr. Campbell? My classmates? I guess I could say to all of the above. So, “if you’re ever in Houston and need your stereo fixed, you should give me a call. I’m in the book.” -Shiner

Song Mixes

There’s just something special about song mixes. I admit there’s nothing better than the experience of listening to one CD composed by one artist or band in its meant and original form, but I’d say mixes deserve perhaps not an equal but still a significant amount of appreciation.

With CDs more often than not, there is going to be at least one song that after a few listens you (or at least I) decide is worth the “next” button on your stereo/computer/portable CD player. This is where the wonderful world of CD mixes compensates. For example, I recently exposed one of my friends to The Apples in Stereo and he absolutely loved the songs he heard. I have a pretty good grasp on what my friend’s musical taste is like, so I knew that there is a fair amount of The Apples in Stereo that he wouldn’t appreciate quite as much. Therefore, when I made him a mix, I put the best of The Apples in Stereo and managed to expose him to a lot of other really cool songs that fell in line with the “fun” songs he goes for. He’s been listening to this CD non-stop since I gave it to him a couple of weeks ago.

As far as compiling mixes goes, there’s nothing more fulfilling than finding each song and each song adding its own special something to the mix. I find as I’m adding songs, they start to order themselves. Each song transition flows like a story and the final product is, to steal from the Edgar Winter Group, like Frankenstein. It doesn’t have to kill people, though, because everyone thinks it’s beautiful and worthy of life.

I hate this!

I hate blogging! Ahh!! I used to blog on xanga a few years back, but I have since dropped the habit, for I hate it so. It’s a bit ironic that I have to complain about how much I hate blogging in a blog. The blog might punch me in the face any second now, but probably not since my blog is not easily offended. He’s a cool blog despite being a blog. He’s as cool as blogs can get I guess.

 So I’m a bit concerned about this class website. It’s not really going anywhere, and Dr. C isn’t going to force us to do it since it’s OUR grade. Of course, I can say I’m concerned but I probably won’t do anything about it. I don’t know how to put a website together. I’m not completely certain what we are supposed to be doing. It seems like the website design people have the toughest job. It also seems that’s what needs to be done first so that we can start putting our songs and reviews and things on the site. I guess I could mention these things to everyone else instead of the secludedness of this blog of mine. I’m pretty sure no one in class reads each other’s blogs, simply because we are all lacking in enough blog knowledge to understand how. That’s my problem at least. I guess I shouldn’t say everyone. Not everyone is as ignorant as me.

Man, time flies by when I forget about blogging. I recently moved from a double into a triple to be with my friends, and my life has suddenly become much more musical. We listen to communal music constantly because our tastes overlap. For instance, Joni Mitchell is currently being played. One of my roommates has a rather progressivey, souly taste and a lot of her music is rather obscure — some of my favorite stuff to play in this room. I’m starting to really appreciate what this class has done for me. I hear so much more in songs when I listen to them now. Different factors are determining my appreciation of various songs. I must say I’m rather pleased with this. Music has become more valuable to me.

How Great Thou Art

I can’t listen to the hymn ”How Great Thou Art” without crying now. We sang it at church today and I pulled a big rubbery one. It was rough. A few years ago, I never cried while singing or listening to this hymn. But that song will forever be connected to my grandfather’s funeral now, and I’ll always hear the words to the tune of my cousin Amanda singing it behind the podium.

My father’s father was in the military, and consequently, came out a raging alcoholic. He verbally abused his first wife (my dad’s mom) and basically made my dad’s childhood rather hellish. My father, today, is a devout Christian with a Ph. D in philosophy, though he works as a computer programmer. He taught himself everything he knows about programming. Perhaps his motivation was to not be like his dad, and regardless, he succeeded. I love my father unconditionally. I saw him cry at his dad’s funeral. I wasn’t sure if they were tears of regret, of sadness, of anger, or what. But I knew that he was hurting in that moment. I saw him crying as my cousin sang “How Great Thou Art.” Now I cry. I would love to be like my dad when I am older.

Wow, it’s kind of like the “dealing with father’s death” theme in Glimpses. Although, I’m not sure how torn up my dad is about it today. He may have overcome any regrets or sadness by now, considering he feels solace in the fact that my grandfather became a Christian after he sobered up.

Okay, I hate blogging. I’m done.

I’ve had music blaring directly into my ears basically all day. I haven’t done this in too long. It feels pretty good. Pretty freaking amazing.

Of the two books it seems we’re sort of reading simultaneously right now, Glimpses and High Fidelity, I must say High Fidelity is much better. With Glimpses, I can’t get past thinking of Ray as a pathetic human being. And no, I don’t feel like explaining why and as long as we’re not in class discussion about it, I’m not going to. I haven’t gotten as far into High Fidelity, so maybe I won’t like it so much either. Honestly, I just hate reading. I must say I was disappointed when I found out all of the reading we’d have to do for this course. I just wanted to listen to music and listen to people talk about music. Ah well, it’s still an awesome seminar, and I’m sure it’s a much better seminar than the one about Ancient Rome or whatever.

When discussing our music/life journeys in class, I think I very poorly portrayed what I meant to say (as usual). I agree with Jeff in that music basically complements my life. What I mean by that is it’s been sort of an aid, a mirror in my journey to self-actualization. When I was really young, I could only listen to the music that my parents exposed me to or allowed me to listen to. My sisters and I got really into listening to country music and we listened to some Christian artists like Point of Grace, Sandy Patty, and my mom forced some Vienna Boys Choir on us in the house. I was raised a pastor’s kid, and my family is Reformed Southern Baptist (meaning as conservative of a Baptist and as Biblically-based as you can get in the Baptist world). When I started school, I sort of followed the musical fads like the Spice Girls – not so much the boy bands. I was and still am a big fan of Hanson and Alanis Morissette. These are my only two long-lasting music loves, but for the most part, I’d say my musical influences in my younger years weren’t so much there to define who I was but to demonstrate the constraints I still had on my life. I was still following fads, being majorly influenced by society as most kids are. The country and christian music constraints were of me following blindly and willingly to the ways and customs of my family. I didn’t have my own philosophy on life; I had theirs, and for the time being, that’s all I felt was necessary.

It wasn’t until late middle school/early high school that I feel like I started to develop my own taste in music. Music became less of a custom and more of my own self-indulgance. I got really into alternative rock, while appreciating the occasional pop or rap song here and there. I found myself actually listening to lyrics, listening to instrumentation, and appreciating these values in songs, rather than hearing them with a deaf ear like before. I wouldn’t say that my particular passion in life is music, but it is something I feel I can rely on when most other things in life seem so fleeting. As I got further into high school, I got much more into indie music, mostly indie rock at the time. Although now, I’m into any variant of indie I can find.

As a kid, I was sort of a ham. I’ve found as I’ve gotten older, I am much more introverted than before. I find most of society to be ignorant and fake, so I often prefer to listen to my own thoughts than the thoughts of others. I see this reflected in my music taste. With indie bands, I’m listening to the concoction of one individual band. They’ve pulled influences but they are essentially their own entity. Whereas with mainstream music, you’re listening to the common sound with most every song you hear. This is the same with my religious values. I was raised Reformed Southern Baptist, and I still identify myself in this way. However, I am not this way because of my family. My only real and lasting passion in life is God, and I like harboring this passion inside myself. I talk about God with others as I feel a Christian should, but I take my personal relationship with God much more seriously than the communal aspect of Christianity, where a bunch of “Christian” teenagers get “fired up on Jesus.” If you’ve seen the movie Saved!, well, I share the sentiment that movie puts across.

So I guess that’s it. Music has been complementary to my life. I would never say that music is my life because I would never rely on a secular value to sustain my life. I see that as foolish. Music is splendiferous, though. Rather splendiferous.

Hmm, I guess I should redeem myself. I realize Dr. C gave us enough direction to work on this project. The root of my complaint, which I wanted to avoid admitting, is my lack of creativity for such a project. I have no right to complain about anyone else’s downfalls in all of this when I am just as or even more incompetent than everyone else. That’s not to say I won’t try and I won’t help out. I will. Today’s class starts in less than half an hour and I really hope we can get somewhere today. Some of the idea from last time weren’t quite right but I can see how a little manipulation could pull it all together rather nicely. Also, it really would be nice to get everyone talking and everyone involved. Now I understand  Dr. C’s frustration (for lack of a better word).

Aaaanyway, I’m excited about final projects. I know it’s going to be the hardest one even though it should, theoretically, be the most fun. It’s nice to be given a song to be analyzed, since it’s just nice to be spoon-fed in general. I guess spoon-feeding was what I wanted with this project. It’s time to grow up and go to college, kid.

Today’s Class

So class today was… interesting. It was definitely weird not having Dr. C there. It changed the dynamic of the class in a pretty major way. In trying to figure out what to do for this class website, I thought a lot of the ideas were pretty cool. I just feel like we’re missing the big picture. Sure, it would be neat to do something with musical influences or make up a class band, but what of it? What point are we trying to make? I surely don’t have these answers, but this is the difficulty of Dr. C saying, “Have at it,” and we’re left wondering, “Have at what?”

I’ve been thinking about it, and I just don’t know. I don’t really have that abstract or artistic of a mind, so I will rely on those abstract, artistic people in the class to have a vision for this website. I think Amanda Shank is the closest to getting what we’re supposed to be doing. Her suggestions had a bigger picture, a deeper meaning. The only problem is getting everyone’s voice heard in that class. Well, we’ll see. I have no resolve with this post, just we’ll see.

Progressive

I’m rather pleased by the way Dr. C has “taught” progressive in our class. I think that right when I asked him the question of why he never actually taught us what progressive is in class, I knew the answer. It’s pretty amazing how part of teaching is not actually teaching at all… almost makes me want to be a teacher but not quite. So our basic class definition of progressive has almost come to cover…. everything, including rock and soul at times. Interesting. Like I said one class, I’ve always thought of progressive as being experimental. A musician can be experimental in any genre of music, so it fits. But I guess that is where music becomes really abstract and artistic, which I have a bit more trouble understanding since I feel I have a more logical mind. I was thinking about the difference between the first round of presentations and this second round, and there was definitely a huge increase in the number of progressive arguments (though Conor and I have had a progressive argument both times). The increase reflects the increased music knowledge of the class as well. I think most of us are probably surprised by how much we’ve learned in this class beyond the readings — at least I am.