Tag: music

Classic Holiday Entertainment

Jordan Brown Leave a comment

From Black Friday to January first, Holiday music and movies are playing nonstop in stores and on TV.  Most of the classic holiday movies also have very popular songs to accompany them.  Here is list of classic holiday songs and the movies that accompany them:

Rudolph, the red nosed reindeer

The popular song, “Rudolph the red nosed reindeer” actually came from a book written in 1939 by Robert May.  The song was created in 1949 by Johnny Marks.  The first claymation movie adaptation was created in 1964.

Santa clause is coming to town

The song “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” was written in 1934 by John Frederick Coots.  The claymation movie was made in 1970 starring Kris Kringle, A.K.A. Santa Claus, and his journey of becoming Santa.  A book was written in 2008 to accompany the song and movie.

Frosty the snowman

The song “Frosty The Snowman” was written in 1950 by Walter E Rollins.  The first movie adaptation was a 2D animation created in 1969.  Many more movies have been created after this showing Frosty’s life and featuring the song.  There have also been countless books that depict his life as it is laid out in the song.

Little drummer boy

The song “Little Drummer Boy” was written in 1941 by Harry Simeone, Katherine Kennicott Davis, and Henry Onorati.  The claymation movie were released in 1968.  Ezra Jack Keats wrote the book adaptation in the same year,1968.

The Year Without a Santa Claus

The classic songs “Heat Miser” and “Snow Miser” were in the claymation movie “The Year Without A Santa Claus”.  The movie was created in 1974.  Unlike the other classic Holiday songs on this list, the songs were written for the movie and become classics and popular through the movie.

Grandma Got run over by a reindeer

The song “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” was written in 1979 by Randy Brooks.  The animated movie adaptation was created in 2000.  This newer movie has quickly become a classic for people under 30, with the movie appearing on Cartoon Network frequently over the Holiday season.

Jingle Bells

The song “Jingle Bells” was written in 1857 by James Pierpont(not the man Pierpont Commons in named after).  The song was originally called “One Horse Open Sleigh”.  There have been many movie adaptations of this song, and many other movies have used the song to add a Holiday feeling to them.  “Jingle Bells” was the first song to be broadcast from outer space.  The two astronauts sang the song to mission control with bells and a harmonica after pulling a prank on them!

American Idol vs. The Voice

Jordan Brown Leave a comment

The fall season is about the weather, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and TV shows.  All of the good shows worth watching come back on in the fall: the dramas, comedies, game shows, reality, or a combination of several.  A popular mix between reality and game shows are talent shows; these include things from American Idol to Cake Wars.  It’s a staple genre all throughout the world, not only in the US.  A big chunk of the talent shows have to do with singing.  There is the X-Factor, American Idol, The Voice, about half of the contestants on America’s Got Talent, and Boy Band.  With so many shows for people to choose from the question is: How do you decide which show(s) to watch?

 

 

How do all of these shows have an audience?  Is it the same audience watching all of these shows?  Or do different people watch?  If that’s the case then how do people choose which show to watch because they are all virtually the same show (except AGT because you can do more than sing)?  

Do they decide what show to watch based on the judges?  This is likely, because once Paula and then more notably, Simon, left American Idol the show lost viewers and ultimately ended until it will be rebooted next year.  Then The Voice has Adam Levine and Blake Shelton to get viewers who like pop a

nd/or country so they could potentially be reaching more people.  Then The Voice added Miley Cyrus for younger viewers and for people who wanted to see what she is doing now after her wrecking ball phase and they watch to see if she will actually be a good judge.  So Miley brings in more viewers.  The Voice is good at getting people to watch more based on the judges then based on the talent and the a

ctual show.  The X-Factor had Simon as the main judge after American Idol (because he created the show) and the show ended within 5 seasons because it wasn’t producing stars like American Idol had and the judges weren’t good enough to watch on there own compared to the entertainment on The Voice of watching Blake and Adam talk and argue back and forth.

People don’t watch the show because they like the way its set up better than other singing shows.  Each show is essentially set up the same way: auditions, cut offs, then live shows where people can vote from the top 24 contestants.  So there is really no difference in the big picture, each show just changes a little bit in each stage to make it unique.

People could possibly watch for the stars that arise from the show.  If that’

s the case then American Idol should not have stopped because they were the only show that brought any big stars like Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, and Daughtry (and Daughtry didn’t even win!).  No other show has created a star on any level like the ones that American Idol produced.

Based on these factors and more people decide which talent singing show they want to watch.  For some, they can also be interchangeable based on the judges and contestants each season.

What’s Your Study Playlist?

Jordan Brown Leave a comment

There are many components to the perfect study environment. How many people are there?  What is the temperature?  Are you wearing comfortable clothes?  Can you fall asleep in your study position?  Will you be hungry and need to move soon?  And lastly, what type of music do you want?  The answers to all of these questions will differ per person.  Some people like to study in groups and others alone.  It also depends on what a person is studying for on what type of environment they want.  

Most college students listen to something when they study; Whether that’s music, tv or something else.  The music that people listen to differs based on the subject and type of homework that they are doing.  The one thing that most people have in common is that they don’t want to have to sing along to the songs as they are studying because that easily distracts them.  This means that you need a different playlist for studying than for driving, where the whole goal is to perform a concert in your car.  People try to achieve this goal in different ways.  It’s hard to find a balance between music to listen to for fun and music to listen to for studying.  

This is because you don’t want to listen to music that you know and like to dance to when you should be concentrating on calculus.  Some people listen to music in another language so that they are not tempted to sing along and they just listen to it in the background.  Others listen to a different genre of music that they don’t know well so that they can’t be too distracted by it.  Another option is listening to instrumental music.

Once you figure out what type of words you want in your study music, you then have to decide how slow or fast you want the music to be.  Perhaps you want it fast to keep you awake when you are reading a particularly boring textbook, or you want it slow when you are trying to concentrate on a long specific problem.  You also need to choose if the music is relaxing or intense, or upbeat, slow, or somewhere in between.   All of these decisions depend on the type of work you are doing at the time and can also vary depending on your mood.  The seemingly simple task of choosing a playlist to study is actually much more complicated than you initially think.

A New Man and a Crispy Realization

jbaz Leave a comment

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On September 30th, Bon Iver released his newest album 22, A Million. Upon first reading the title, I didn’t understand it. What does the number-word combination mean? At first glance, why should I understand it? When you meet someone for the first time, are you supposed to know anything about him or her? Well, no. That’s the beauty of getting to know someone! I have never met Bon Iver singer-songwriter Justin Vernon and maybe I never will, but slowly I may get to know what Justin Vernon sounds like.

His friend Trever explains that the “22” represents the recurring symbol of the number 2. Growing up, he has seen this number continuously appear on signs, jersey numbers, and other patterns. Justin identifies with 2 as the duality he feels between himself and “A Million” people with whom he shares the world: the many people he will never know. Justin Vernon is just one of “A Million” people with his own individual sound. Read more at http://boniver.org/bio

We all have a collection of sounds for our life. Each day has a new sound. If you have a routine, then this song repeats like a chorus. When something shakes the repetition, a new verse begins. It’s difficult to learn the words of these unique lines as opposed to the chorus. Change is hard. But these verses contain the most spectacular messages hidden within the change in sound. The lines are in the song for a reason just like things in your life happen for a reason.

Bon Iver’s previous albums deliver a sense of reflection like the beautiful For Emma, Forever Ago he wrote as a recluse near his home town, Eau Claire, as a means of coping with longing and lost love. Compared to these previous albums, he creates more of optimistic tone in 22, A Million. The unique layering of sounds makes you peel apart each element of the song and think. Usually his songs let you wind down like unraveling the tension between two strands of tightly intertwined rope, but this album lets you wind down, then sends you into a new direction of thought like those singular fibers of a strand of rope becoming independent of each other and modified into a new shape. This journey of thought is one that you may take alone. The use of echoing vocals creates a sense of isolation, but not in a negative way. It’s as though you have rebuilt yourself from trouble in your life and have finally turned the corner into a direction of prosperity, into a new direction of thought. On Bon Iver’s album For Emma: Forever Ago, there is a song called “Re: Stacks.” This is one of my favorites particularly because of the honesty in one line when he says, “This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization; it’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away.”

Now it’s been a while since the For Emma: Forever Ago album. 22, A Million sounds like the transition to a new man and a crispy realization.

 

The Way I See It: Thoughts on Albums Part 2

Jeannie Marie Leave a comment

In a much earlier blog post, I talked about how I feel about the title “The Best Album of All Time.” In some ways, this is an arbitrary title to give a creative piece of work, especially considering how many millions upon millions upon millions of albums that have been made. But it also frames the question in a really unique way. Because beyond asking what your favorite song is, or even what your favorite album is, it’s just slightly more. It may not necessarily be your favorite, but it’s what you consider the best. It’s personal, it reveals your standards, and it reveals who you are, in some weird kind of way.

So this week, I want to talk about what I consider to be The Best Album So Far, since, as we all know, new and exciting music is being created everyday. In some ways, it’s my favorite album, and in others, I just consider it to be a musical masterpiece. And yet, I know that it’s flawed, it’s not perfect, and it’s not a widely shared opinion. But it’s mine, and I want to talk about it, and this is my blog, so ha I win.

Phoenix’s 2013 concept-album-but-also-not-really Bankrupt! probably flew under most radars that year. It’s the year Vampire Weekend released Modern Vampires of New York and Arctic Monkeys released AM, and although a quick search on albumoftheyear.org (I didn’t even know this existed until today) finds a compilation of generally favorable, even highly praised reviews of it, even the slightly more than general indie band might find it hard to remember Bankrupt! because…well…Phoenix was old news. Although Phoenix at this point has been around for years and years and released multiple albums, their claim to fame was Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (another equally brilliant album), along with 1901 that I knew from the car commercial but I’m sure indie fans knew from other things. So then Bankrupt! was, in essence, that dreaded sophomore album.

And to be honest, the first time I heard the lead single “Entertainment,” I was not impressed. As a single, “Entertainment” is catchy, upbeat, fun, synth-heavy indie-pop. It’s likable, it’s pleasing, and made for the general indie population to consume and enjoy. But it’s not in any way brilliant, and it does not speak for the album as a whole.

So what is Bankrupt!? I call it a concept album despite the fact that the only concept seems to be non-concept. And yet, that’s what, to me, makes it so brilliant. When listening to the album all the way through, Bankrupt! changes styles at least 5 times, if not more. It never becomes content with the pop-infused sound of “Entertainment,” coincidentally the first song on the album. It can’t stay there, because that’s not the ending, but the beginning. The album constantly reinvents itself in a way that the listener cannot anticipate nor be completely satisfied with itself. And yet, in direct contradiction to that, none of the tracks feel jarring, or out of place, even when the songs get darker, slower, or vaguer. The album navigates the changes so smoothly that the listener barely even notices these changes.

I have listened to Bankrupt!, as a complete album, well over 100 times. Sometimes, I do listen to individual songs, and I had a phase where I did that. But then I started realizing that when I started with an individual song, even if it’s a few songs into the album, I kept wanting to listen to the rest of the album, rather than switching to some other artist or even another song by Phoenix.

And it’s clear that Phoenix intended the album to be listened to as a whole, as each song flows into the next, often playing the melody for the next song before the previous ends. Which is why it’s easy to see why “Entertainment” failed as a single in some ways – it was never meant to be a single. It was meant to be the introduction to Bankrupt!, with the rest of the album to speak for it.

I also personally love this album because the lyrics are just real enough to matter, and just absurd enough to be indie, always keeping you guessing. I also love the musicality, the way the music sometimes overpowers the vocals, like you’re hearing it live every time. I love everything about this album.

And for some weird, bizarre reason, I find it to be the best album of all time. I come back to it, again and again, and I’m always surprised by it. And that, to me, is enough to qualify it.

So then…I’ll ask again. What’s your best album of all time?

The Way I See It: Thoughts on Albums Part 1

Jeannie Marie Leave a comment

It seems fair, to me, that the same week as the Grammy’s I should be talking about music. Even though I haven’t quite yet gotten to watch the Grammy’s (it’s on my DVR I promise I’ll watch it soon), I’ve seen words flying around my news feed throughout the past week, artists like Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift at odds with each other.

Bu that’s not what I want to talk about this week. We all know that the Grammy’s aren’t necessarily the be-all-end-all, and oftentimes don’t represent the music community as a whole. So instead, I want to talk about something a little bit more personal.

If you run in any type of circle that cares a lot about music, especially alternative/indie/rock music, there’s a conversation that is bound to happen. What is the best album of all time?

That’s quite a heavy burden for someone to bear, to pick the best album of all time. This is more than just a hi, nice to meet you, what’s your favorite song? kind of question. This becomes especially difficult, too, since people who claim to like “good music” often bow down to the rock classics, to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Nirvana, U2, etc. And a lot of times these albums are picked as the best of the best of the best.

But it’s always seemed to me that this question is a thinly veiled disguise aimed at probing if you are “worthy enough” to be considered a true music fan. To navigate this exchange, you have to simultaneously pick something old, perhaps pretentious, highly acclaimed but perhaps not widely known by a general music fan, someone who listens to the radio (because who does that…besides most of the US population).

That’s not how I see this question, though. No, this may not be a first date, could-I-actually-like-you, I’m curious tell me kind of question, but I think asking about someone’s favorite album can be a lot more telling. Something they can listen to over and over again. Something that fits every mood, every whether. Their go-to for when their music runs dry. Not necessarily an album that they listen to constantly, but, even after a year, two, or three of not hearing one song on that album, they can go back to it.

To me, that kind of answer speaks volumes more about who a person is rather than asking them to nominate only one album as the greatest of all time. I think this week’s Grammy’s showed us that there can be vastly different opinions on how to choose an album of the year, much less of all time.

So that’s my version of that question. Simply modified, perhaps not easily answered (can you pick just one?). But I wonder: what’s your favorite album of all time?