Help!

So Ringo had some ring.... And these tribal guys needed it for a sacrifice.... and something about him dying... Yeah that was about as much as I got out of the movie. Before you jump to conclusions, yes I did actually watch it. It just didn't make any sense to me, some parts were so flamboyant and unnecessary I couldn't focus on the actual plot. With all that being sad, I thought that movie was pretttyyyy bad. Pretty bad. The music was good, I enjoy the Beatles music always, but the movie was just so stupid in my opinion. It lacked the dry humor that "A Hard Day's Night" really utilized, and their attempt at humor in this film was more immature and silly. I'd have to give it a 3/10 rating.

My Flavor of the Week

Dubstep. Again. I'm sorry, I really am. Yes it's not music, BUT it makes me want to go destroy something when I play some of my favorite songs. Knife Party is my flavor this week, I think I've mentioned them in one of my blogs before. I would actually argue that Knife Party makes what you would consider "music," unlike most dubstep. Yes Knife Party is still two guys, Australian in case you were wondering, who stand behind a desk and press a bunch of buttons that make crowds go insane, but like I said, they make crowds go insane. Just listen to a few of their songs, they show a lot of diversity in their music which is something that 99% of electronic musicians do not. Here's my favorite, it's called "Internet Friends," it takes a while to get going but when it does, it does. If you remotely like that please try out "Bonfire" or "Centipede"

GRADE INFLATION

I get what you're saying, but I have another way to describe it. We were actually talking about this topic in another one of my classes; we were talking about how the "median grade" is set too high. What I mean by that is that a 70 isn't where the bar is set grade wise. It should be that a 70 is the average grade that students should get, and students should get grades within 10 points of that margin. Instead, the accepted grade baseline seems to be around a 90 as if teachers have made everything easier so that students will meet that mark. Where does this come from? like you said, the better students do in the teacher's classroom, the better the teachers look; the better the teachers look, the better the school looks. I'm living proof of this theory, a little background (believe it or not) I'm one of the top students in my class, and have SAT and ACT test scores that rank in the 99th percentile nationwide. I've never spent more than an hour and a half either studying or doing homework in my high school career. The material we are taught seems to be a considerably dumbed down version of the actual concept, and apart from most math classes, all it takes is some simple improvising to get a very good grade. Don't get me wrong though, I've worked really hard in school, but I really didn't need to, and the school system seems to be designed to urge bad habits. Procrastination, doing things at 50%, forgetting assignments, it seems like that's all the system teaches us to do. And the curriculum has become so grade oriented that I feel like it has been dumbed down a bit.

Reggae mahn

My musical adventure continues. As you could tell from the last couple of musical adventure blogs I've been taking a lot of detours. My newest detour has to do with reggae. Well actually the Marley family, but they're pretty much all reggae is right? Anyway. Yeah reggae. Relaxing stuff. Now I understand why all of the stoner dropouts are obsessed with the stuff. It's relaxing music that can really go with any situation. It's upbeat enough to be pretty happy, but slow enough to be considered "deep" thinking music. I actually stumbled upon it through aimed instep I was listening to. I said in one of my earlier blogs that I prefer di step with reggae infusions, so after two years of listening to dub step I decided to actually listen to some reggae. Mostly Bob Marley, pretty much all of his hits, his non-hits were kind of crappy. Also a lot of Damian Marley, in a lot of respects I like Damian better than Bob, mainly because Damian tends to be a bit more up beat, and his voice sounds more Jamaican-y if you know. But anyway. Reggae. It's pretty chill.

What Is Rock to Me?

I am sad to say that you and I have quite different beliefs as to what we consider to be rock. My beliefs stem from the fact that I have had no musical experience in my life, I have a terrible singing voice, I couldn't manage to learn the piano or the guitar, and I really don't know at all what goes into making a song. Our backgrounds most likely have a lot to do with what we think on the matter. But the odd thing is that your answer to "what is rock" was something that provokes rebellious ideas and impulses. Something that makes you want to punch out a car window. But that seems like something that should be my answer, an answer from a kid who has no musical knowledge, which is weird. See my answer is something more technical, more revolved around the instruments and how they're being played. See I can't classify rock as being something that makes me want to rebel because the music that makes me want to go destroy something is either dubstep or bass heavy rap (A$AP Ferg, Waka Flaka Flame, Jay-Z and Kanye to some extent), and I just can't call that rock. To me rock requires a unique kind of vocals, to stereotype it needs a male with a deep manly voice. I'm just going to forewarn you that my explanation is going to make very little sense, I really have know idea what I'm talking about technically speaking, to me it's usually just a feeling. But anyway, manly voice, if it doesn't have the voice then it needs an up tempo instrumental that USUALLY has a lot of electric guitar and drums. To show you an example, my attached clip is "Black Dog" by LZ, when the instruments first open up, that's what I'm talking about. We can classify Little Richard as rock because of his voice, although it's not entirely "manly," but also because of the up tempo instrumentals. For me rock absolutely has to have drums, that accounts for my omission of rap and dubstep from what I consider rock. If a song has heavy electric guitar elements (Such as metallica) then it's definitely rock. If a song has up tempo instrumentals with a low pitched (man's) voice, then it's definitely rock. Like I said, I really have no earthly way to describe what I think rock to be, if you were to sit me down and have me listen to a song, I could tell exactly if I thought it was rock or not.

How I alleviate stress

They other day, in our class census on how we alleviate stress, I wasn't able to fully elaborate on what I do. Usually if I'm having a crappy day it's because of a self confidence issue or something tragic happened (I.e. Somebody passing away). It really varies on what the scenario is. For the general crappy situation I really like to read. One, it passes time, and two, a lot of times it really gets you thinking. I mentioned that Robert Ludlum was one of my favorite authors, but in depressing scenarios, Ludlum is not my go to. My favorite author for some deeper thinking is Vonnegut. My favorite book of his is Cats Craddle, the way he mocks society in ways that I also mock society makes me feel less alone when I see people like Miley Cyrus and just think "what have we done.l" if you haven't read timequake by Vonnegut, I would suggest against it. That's my usual go to sad book, it makes no sense, it's basically Vonnegut relaying what he was thinking at that moment, he was probably incredibly high when he wrote it. But all of that aside I do really like to read. My favorite books are deep books that are pretty easy to read, usually ones that expose societal follies. If you've got any suggestions let me know!

Grimes.... Just why

I honestly have no idea what Grimes was doing on stage. Allegedly she's a very famous "artist." I say artist because her "music" was the furthest thing from artistical ingenuousness that I have ever heard/ experienced in my life. Like in all honesty is was horrible, and the fact that she made money off of that garbage makes my blood boil. But anyway, I was on my way to school the other day and decided "hey maybe I'll see if grimes is really that bad in a studio." She was. But it was weird, while I was listening to her I kept repeating to myself "wow this is the worst crap that I've ever heard," and I've heard a lot of crap in my life. I couldn't stop listening to it though, it was one of those things that's like "wow this is really bad, but I have to keep listening to see maybe if there's something people like about her." Nope. It was all crap. I would suggest listening to the song "oblivion" which is her top song. In order to get full effect of her crapiness I suggest listening to it in your "music cave" that you regret to a lot. Also apparently most people take acid before going to see her shows, so not suggesting that, but I guess people who do that really like her music.

ACL Friday Recap

The first band I saw today was Jimmy eats World and they were a lot better than I was expecting. I came in a little late, and happened to walk up as "Middle" started to play. I stopped and watched Fun. for a little while and they were also better than I expected. Their lead singer has a really nice voice although it makes all of his songs sound the same. Next was "Local Natives" and, as I predicted, they were really good. They had great vocals and every member of their band acted as a lead singer at some point. We then wait for about an hour and a half to see kaskade. Definitely not worth it. He's a dub step/ house DJ and he was pretty bad. Then finally came Muse, a big letdown in my opinion. I would consider them one of my too five favorite bands but their performance wasn't very good

My Sleeper Band For The Weekend

So last class, as we were reviewing the schedule for ACL on Friday, a band that really caught my eye was Local Natives. The name is really stupid I know, a bit redundant. But a lot of bands have really stupid names, so I'm over it. All that aside, the reason they caught my eye was that while I was on one of my many alternative/indie rock on Spotify, they came up a few times. The thing I like most about the band, and I really don't say this about most indie groups, is their vocalist. Like he actually has a good voice. And to compliment that voice they have some fantastic instrumentals. While a lot of people wouldn't call them a sleeper, or at least a lot of my friends, I still think that they are an incredibly underrated group, and they are competing against absolutely nobody in the time slot they have Friday. So if you haven't looked into them I would definitely check them out. I''l definitely be there tomorrow and I can tell you how it goes on Monday

Yeah We're Doomed

This is in fact a bit off topic, forewarning it has nothing to do with music. But earlier this week we were talking about society in general and if we were in fact doomed. So going back to that here's a haunting statistic, that far outdoes Miley Cyrus's recording setting YouTube video "Wrecking Ball." In three days, Grand Theft Auto V has reach a gross income of $1 Billion, setting the highest gross income across three days for any product ever sold ever. Yeah ever. So what these numbers tell me is, Grand Theft Auto V is more influential to the consumers of today then the iPod, or the computer, or the cell phone was in the day. A game where the sole objectives are to run a gang, go to strip clubs, steal crap, and kill people. So yeah. We're kind of doomed.