Well, its what i was going to do.

So this weekend I planed to attend the Jazz dance, and I really wish I could of, I heard it was good. Unfortunatly I became rather sick this weekend and was unable to attend the dance because I was already asleep and felt like shit. I was also going to write a blog about the Jazz dance, so here I am, writing about a lack of Jazz dances in my life...

The radio show was like sex with a dwarf in a bowl of cottage cheese

Well the radio show has come and gone, here are my reflections.

We had a pretty low turnout at our portion, the other group by contrast seemed to have more then half there class there (We had 4 or 5 people). I really wish Joe would have shown up to play his cazzo to a rap song, but it was fun never the less. Really the radio show felt like anyother that I have done over the past few months. The only real new thing is that I actually used the MP3 cord and we played a bunch of one liners, which were alot of fun to listen to. That first one we played, the "Kumm is like sex with a dwarf in a bowl of cottage cheese" one caught me completely of guard. When we weren't messing around with one liners we seemed to have a hard time deciding what to play, and no one really wanted to talk about any of the artists. We ended up doing some talking but probally could have done more.

Ive been DJing here at morris for a while now, but ive actually DJed before a couple of years ago on a jazz radiostation in minneapolis. KUMM is quite different in that i pretty much can play whatever I want, with a few exceptions, and it is a very different experiance. I would like to suggest that you all think about getting a radio show at KUMM. I may hate getting up in the morning to go to my show, but I always have a good time at my show and come away feeling glad that I did it.

A Couple of thoughts.

Why have so few people been keeping up on there blogs? I mean its not that hard. You just do stuff and write about it... Well its really to bad. There are some people that havent blogged in ages.

Other then that little bit I would just like to tell everyone, meaning the few of you who might actually be reading blogs other people post, that if you are ever awake at 8am on a tusday and have nothing to do you should listen to my radio show. Next semester ill have a different time but whatever. KUMM plays some good stuff sometimes and people should try to listen. Its fun and stuff.

Well thats all I got. Im gonna do something else now.

You're as pretty as a twig in the moonlight, Twig in the moonlight

Yesterday after swing dancing (which all of you should attend next semester, especially those of you in the other section who swing danced for jamboree) MaryBeth and I went to the open Mic night. We mabe it in about half of the way through, and sat down to watch. This was not the first open mic night ive been to here, but I didnt think to blog about the other one. It was fun seeing lots of talent from around morris. There were singers, guitarists, writers, and poemers... I know thats not a word but it will do. Particularly memorable were a story about the end of the world which was quite funny and a song from which the title of this post derives. All in all it was a great night and I encourage more people to go. Dont say you are bored here at morris. There is stuff to do. You are just not looking hard enough.

-You're as pretty as a twig in the moonlight,
twig in the moonlight,
You're as pretty as a bat.

Jamboree

I must say I enjoyed the Jamboree much more then I expected. Going in i was not anticipating having that great of a time. But when I got there I was almost imediatly greated by a friend of mine (he is in the imperialism group) yelling about how potatos are wrong before being attacked by a bunch of people in paper hats brandishing duck tape weapons. Things did not stop there. I was arrested withing 5 minutes for wearing head phones (imperialism at work again) and i mangaged to break 2 other of there laws before escaping from prision. This was all very entertaining to me. Soon i began to defend our native booth, which happens to break just about every law imperialism put in place (Native dance, Native music, Native food, ect.), by removing potatos from our stand. The time I actually spent at our booth was rather tame. A few people came by and i gave them food and told them about our video and about the other groups swing dancing, but i did not end up doing to much. I had lots of fun though, siting there watching people in to cardboard ships throwing potatos at eachother in an epic battle. It was kinda funny coming back later to see how the imperalism group had their empire decline (Much like real empires). At first they were all in similar garb, jailing those who broke laws. But by the end their stuff was falling apart, they had a big mess on there hands, they were jailing there own people who were rebeling and the were stealing stuff from other groups. Everything about their little enpire was falling apart. I think i just might have been a better potrail of empires then they were going for. Well Jamboree was very entertaining to me. I had my doubts going in but i was proven wrong.

Looking toward Jamboree

As Jamboree aproches at the end of this week I just thought that I should reflect a little on what we have done. Ive made a fool of myself on camera, we have dance, played music, some of us have cooked, made listening things, and drew posters. It seems that jamboree and presentations have brought us a long way from what we were doing at the begining of the year. I can't remember the last time we discussed the book. I dont, however, see this as a bad thing. I like what we have been doing as of late, its been fun and related to the class. As most of our jamboree preperations are complete Im sure most people arent thinking to much about this class. Me, however, still have to think of the radio show. I think everything will go well. We are well prepared in my opinion.

Gospel listening.

So I went to listen to the second gospel listening today (11/19/06) one week after i listened to the other one. This time, however, the system seemed to be on the fritz. It took several minutes to load each song, sometimes would play multiple songs over eachother resluting in a chaotic mess on noise (Which the only way to remedy was to stop the song, which in turn made us have to reload the song for several minutes). All in all I would say I was there for around an hour, and only got half way through the list, spending most of my time being frusterated rather then listening intently.

From what I did hear though i got a picture that i hope is accurate. Many of the songs seemed to include one lead singer with a chorus line behind his singing lines in between his. Many times is felt kind of like call and response songs. The singers often felt like they were preaching rather then singing. Songs often had much clapping used as percussion, and the singers added rythems to the song.

All in all I was a little to frusterated with the system to do an decent job listening and writing about these songs. I hope by the time we get another listening assingment that the system is fixed.

Things to do

What a weekend. There were dance performances, jazz shows, and a 24 hour play. I managed to get myself to the Dance Performance and the 24 hour play, soory jazz show... at least i caught you last time. Anyways I would just like to say that these were both very good. The dance show had a varitety of diffecernt dances, so i liked more then others, and some that were just kind of funny (like the Pom squad...). But what im really glad I went to this weekend was the 24 hour play. All three of these short plays turned out very well, they were all funny, and they were all very good. I would like to suggest that anyone who missed these not make the same mistake next time around. The plays were very entertaining, and rather short so those of you who fear long hours in a theater dont need to worry. So i just listed three things people could have done this weekend. Don't say there is nothing to do here on the weekends.

Blog summery Nov 14

"Well in my search for recent blog posts I realized that there was not a whole lot of recent posts." -Jacknife's Jottings

The quote pretty much holds up for this week as well, with the exception that those of you who did blog almost all blogeged on the gospel music we were supposed to listen to. I actually feel like less of a slacker after looking through more then half blog pages. Its kind of ridiculous. There are people that haven't blogged in months and many others last blogs were the required ones for the folkways listenings.

Anyways, most of the blogs this week are on the gospel listening assinment. Most people took sides on whether or not they liked it, many in fact listed which ones they liked and which they did not. People also tended to make generalizations about the music, but some did things like comparing them to other forms of music. On that comes to mind was a blog was one where the author compared a song to Native American music. They talked about how the similarities and how the gosple lacked the powerful drum of the Native American Music.

There were several other blogs that were not about the gosple music. Several blogs were on various music shows that people have been to recently. I posted one on the Red Hot Chili Pepper Concert and someone else posted on the Decemberist Concert. There was also a nice blog by Jweb on the Blacks imitating Whites Piece that was posted on the main blog.

Well thats my blog summery. Hope you can get something out of this.

Red Hot Chili Peppers

So last weekend was the weekend I had been looking forward to for months. The Red Hot Chili Pepper Concert to which I had a ticket for the 15th row on the floor. The Concert blew me away, as i sang along to almost every song, including one of my favorites, I Could Have Lied, which i did not expect them to play. Needless to say it was one of the best shows ive ever seen.

After a while i got to thinking. What will future generations think of the music i am listening to now. Just as I look back on the music my parents grew up with, some good, some bad, (but thats true for all generations of music) I hear somethings that i just dont quite understand why people of the time thought they were so amazing. I mean, some of this is good, but i would not rank many older songs as my favorites. There are of chorse exceptions, but for the most part i wonder: What will people think of the music that my generation listens to? Where will musical forms go from here? Will my kids think of the red hot chili peppers as just some weird old band their father listens to? Is it a matter of what my generation grew up with as music? And what will future generations do to change the music?

These, I think, are a few interesting questions that i hope i remember in the future, say in 20 or 30 years. At that time maybe I will be able to reflect and find some awnsers to these quetions.

Episode 5

Harry Smith had a wealth of influences that helped him to put togeather this collection. Harry had a past full of the arts. He made movies, painted, all sorts of things. He also lived in many different environments such as New York and Oregon. He also was exposed to many different cultures. He lived with Indians and even though he was white he spent time around african americans. At that time that was rare. These experiances helped shape what he chose as well as his yearning to experiance things that were out of his norm. A lady from the radio said that "Harry did not collect the songs bases on what he liked." and there was a quote from Harry saying: "I was looking for exotic records."

She then told a story about how a man went to a library and found the set of records and brought them to Harry Smith. Harry said he had not heard them in 30 years. The man when away and came back and there were actually tears in his eyes. I think that he had many memories built into this anthology. I believe that he took his experiances that he had in his life and associated them with songs that he found, and upon hearing these songs later in life they brought back memories or his past.

Folkways episode 4

When I first tried to listen to this episode I was annoyed to find that about a fifth of the way though it would stop loading for me. So after borrowing someone elses computer I finally got it to work.

Episode 4 to me was a little less enjoyable then episode 3 was. It focus on a set of folk records released by folkways in the 1950s of songs that had long been out of print. What I found interesting about this episode was the fact that Smith intentionally release only songs that had been recorded by companies for sale before. He did this because these songs were released for people who really wanted to hear their own music. This was the true folk music of the time, what the people played. On top of that I found it very interesting that he did not list the race of the artists on the records so that the music would be judged on its merit. This probally caused some people to listen to songs they normally would have avoided due to racism or just that fact that they did not think they would like so called "black" music. The is a very good way to circumvent any possiblity of racism creeping into music sales.

This is about all im gonna write from this, i was kinda working on my performance at the same time. At least im honest.

Folkways episode 3

This is the first of three posts that we are supposed to make on the folk ways series. This is my post for the first required listening.

"What is Folkways? What can we say? Cause its so many different things. What you got to ask yourself is, What kinds of personality, what kind of mind, what kind of will would say in the latter part of the 20th century: I am going to make a document that is the sound archive for the 20th century." Michael Asch

The quote goes on to talk about how the creators goal was not money but to create the archive.

This is important because without people like Moses Asch we would not have these great recordings in all sorts of styles and some are not even songs. We get recordings of speeches like Martin Luther King Jr.'s I have a dream speech. We get ragtime recordings, poetry, folk music, Blues, Jazz, music from all over the world. Moses Asch created a archive of so much music that will last for a long time. Unlike music from the past this music will survive in its original form. Before recordings all that could be save of music was sheet music. This did not always hold every detail in the songs, like the feelings and emotions the writer felt. Not to mention many folk songs of the past would not have been written down at all. Recordings allow us to save all the great music created by the original artists, and allow us to hear the emotions they felt when they sang the song. Moses Asch set out to create a documentation of music of the times. He did not care for money that would possibly be made but instead cared about keeping this music around for the public to listen to when they needed it.

The connection to the course is obvious. These recordings are a great source of roots music that have survived to modern times as preformed by the original artists. This is the music that the music we listen to today grew out of. This is roots music, this is the memory of what came before.

The Carter style

Currently I am taking guitar lessons here at college, and we have been givin several handouts of stuff to learn. One of these books was on blugrass like guitar. Much of the stuff sounds like country and other older styles. On the last page of this book, which i found out recently, is a page entitled "The Carter Style." Because of my FYS I realized that the page was actually music from the Carter Family. I tried to play this for a while, and i realized that, me being new to the guitar, it was too hard for me to play. Just trying to play this song made be realize that country is not as simple as it often sounds to me. The speed at which the changing rythems are played was to much for me, so i ended up playing it much slower, often times with pauses that weren't supposed to be there but i had to create in order to play it. I realize that if I had more experiance on the guitar i might have been able to play this better, but still it comes to me as a suprise that rock music by Pink Floyd like "Wish you were here" is more simple then the Carter family.

Blues Chapter 3

Well I feel that I should blog about something that is more closely related to the class than my previous posts, so I would like to share a few thoughts on Chapter 3 of our good old blues book.

Much of the chapter seems to be focused on how blues records effected other artists and helped to make many of the Delta blues musicians what they became. But blues appered on its own before these records. The apperance of the record allowed other artists to listen to a song over and over again, thus being able to learn it. Learning it was one thing, but each artist seemed to chance the songs they learned to make them their own, much more so than what is practiced now in the current music scean. Now people must get permission from another artist before they can play a song of theirs on a CD. I see this as limiting the ways at which artists can express themselves, taking a song they enjoy and making it there own.

All throughout the Delta musicians learned from one another and played eachothers songs and its what lead to such great stuff coming out of the Delta. There were reconizable tunes coming out that people could experiment with changing in any number of ways. Each artist barrowed from another, and some people it the future barrowed from them. I believe it to be of great importance on the emergance of blues in the Delta.

What i am gonna do...

Well I have a bit of time before I have to preform, my date being in late october, but I am supposed to post about what I may be doing now.

So here I go, its still a long way off and I am still quite unsure as to what I would like to do. I am learning the guitar, and if I get good enought by then I would like to play something, but its probally going to be to soon. Other then that I was thinking about making some sort of video. Maybe like that thing the people did the other year where they went around recording people around dorms. We will see.

It has come to my attention...

That certain people posted on their respective blogs that we were being "too Critical" of the govener after her speech. I would like to say that I do not believe that we should consider the way were were talking to be overly critical, because she is a politician. It is our duty as voters to hold our politicians to high standerds or else we will end up with an out of control government that does not represent the views of the people. I mean just look at our government right now. No one is holding anyone responsible and everything is getting out of hand.

Song Choice

The Song I would like to do is "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" by Charlie Daniels.

Thats all she wrote.

My Second blog

Since I've come to morris I have done several things. The first is watch a lot of movies. The second is go to several music shows. Since I have come to morris I have seen the local band, Rictus (if I spelled it wrong I'm sorry), I went to the rap show to see The Crest Kansur and the MeandYouCrew, I went on a random roadtrip to marshall minnesota to see Motion City Soundtrack, and I saw a guitarist who I can't remember the name of at the coffee shop here in morris. This summer I saw several groups, but since I have come to college my shows per week is way up. At the same time however I am playing less music. I decided to pick up the guitar and am currently taking lessons, but I used to be in a band with my friends. We spent the summer in my friend's basement playing around on guitars, me on the bass or drums. It was a lot of fun. I would go so far as to say that the thing I miss the most about the cities would be playing music with my friends. I thought that I would reflect on my musical experiances since I've been here. Some of it has been good, some has been bad, and I'm sure I'm going to experiance much more while I'm here.

Summery of the Week

Disclaimer:
To begin I would like to let everyone know that may be reading this that I am a horrific speller. So be aware that there most likely will be many errors in what I say. This blog is a summery of what we talked about in class, written from the notes I took there. I would also like to say that I believe Mr. McPhee chose me to do this first week because I was late to class that day. I don't really believe what I just said but lets pretend I do.

Anyways on to the summery for the week of september 11th through the 15th.

Day 1: I was doing homework when I looked at the clock and realized that it was 3:05 rather then 2:05 like I had thought. Realizing I was 5 minutes late I grabbed my stuff and ran over to the science building arriving 7 minutes late. When I arrived Mr McPhee was in the middle of explaining what I am doing right now, the weekly summery. Oddly enough I was the person chose (at random he says) to do the first weeks notes. After saying that he chose me because I was late I took out my notebook and began to take notes.

The class began with many questions about our blogs. Most of the people in my class did not know what we should write about, and Mr McPhee attempted to remedy this. (I don't quite remember everyones name yet so please bare with me not mentioning and specific students) After some discussion we his on the fact that your blogs can be on all sorts of things, but if now and then you are able to link it to the class that would be best. Blogs are supposed to be you writting about what interests you (or complaining about what annoys you) so you can do it on any number of things. For this class, however, we should try now and then to hit on somthing relavent to the class. For this we can discuss what we thing of chapters in the book, music concerts you go to, or really any idea that comes up in class that you would like to list your thoughts on.

From there we went on to spend the rest of the hour discussing our performances. People did not know what exactly we were supposed to do, I myself am still unsure as to what I will be doing, maybe if I learn enough guitar by that time I will play something, but you never know what will happen. Anyways, we can do our projects on anything that you can relate to class, but you must be able to respond to questions about it. Music, art, videos, if you can relate it to class you can do it. Mr McPhee also offered to perform for us in a multitude of ways, including: Singing, Acordian, Drums, and Harmonicas.

Finally on the first day we were told that Open mic night will be thursday the 21st in Oyate for anyone who is interested.

By the way, I'm sorry if Im being long winded.

Day 2: I was not late this time.

Class began with a little discussion about what good things have happend to us so far in college, but it quickly moved on to a question someone had raised a few days before; Why were there so many musicians with blind in their names? Our class discussed this and I will now go through much of what we said as quick as I can. Most of the musicians with blind in there name were actually blind (there were a few impersonaters). But why were there so many blind musicians at this time? Our answer was that at the time there was little blind people could do, and it is said that the blind develope better sences of hearing. Music was a resonalbe option for these people and could allow them to get by. From there we briefly talked about a armless guitar player...

From there we talked about what Mr McPhee had been wanting us to talk about: why was the poetry reading metioned at the begining of Deep Blues? There where many ideas put forth and I will do my best to report on them. What this section is showing is the differences in culture between the Blacks and the Whites of the time. While white (middle class and the rich mostly) people listend to poetry and folk balleds the black of the time were creating there own poetry inside of blues music. Blues held influences from the African American culture brought over with them from Africa. Africa had very differnet music then then Europe, so it is no suprise that African American music went in a differnet direction from what Whites were doing at that time.

There was a visable cultural seperation between the two groups. Whites that socialized with blacks were rare. When Lomax (that recording guy) was going onto plantations to record black music he was nearly arrested for not getting permission from the plantation owner to talk to them. Times had it so that if blacks and whites talked to eachother, and somthing was seen as in appropriate, blacks were liable to get hurt or killed.

This section speaks to the improtance of poetry, and music being a powerful form of poetry. Blues is evendice of a culture mostly ignored for quite a long time. The fact that Cagen and black culture was mostly ignored shows a tendency to ignore or downplay the importance of other peoples cultures.

That about sums up what we discussed in class this week. Im sorry if i wrote a lot.

FYS assinment Numero Uno

Why did you sign up for a roots music FYS section?
It sounded like an interesting class, was open, and didn't conflict with any of my other classes.

If you could take 5 pieces of music with you to a desert isle, what would they be?
This is a tough question. When thinking of all the songs I listen to I have far to many to narrow down to just five. I have many bands I enjoy and this is quite tough, but I will make an attempt.
1. This Velvet Glove, by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This one was easy being one of my favorite songs.
2. An Ode to no one, by the Smashing Pumpkins.
3. I Might Be Wrong, by Radiohead.
4. Life In a Glass House, by Radiohead.
5. Hard On Me(live), by Richard Thompson.

What's a piece of music you associate with a parent, grandparent, or someone you know well that's at least a generation older than you.
One of the artists is listen to is Richard Thompson. I associate all of his music with my father because he was the person who really got me to start listening to Richard Thompson. He listend to lots of him while I was a kid and recently I have begun listening to Richard Thompson on my own.

If we all decided to replace the national anthem with a new song, and everyone agreed that you got to choose, what would you recommend?
The song I would choose to replace the national anthem is by one of my favorite bands, Radiohead. And just to be funny I choose the song National Anthem to replace our national anthem. Ya. I think I'm funny.

What kinds of music related performance stuff (if any) do you do?
Before I came to college My friends and I had a rock band called The Opposite of Us. We played several shows including a battle of the bands at the taste of Minnesota. I played the bass and sang, but I also play the drums. Here in college I have decided to learn to play the guitar, and so I have signed up for a guitar class. I also was involved in my highschools band program. I also, two years ago, volenteered at a jazz radio station, where my friend and I would create hour long jazz shows from their CD collection.

Given the readings and what (little) you know about Governor Blanco, if you had a chance to ask her one question, what would it be?
Knowing what you know now, if you could go back in time to a month before Katrina, what would you do differently?