Wednesday, April 22, 2009

MUSI V2010y Rock

I audited my friend Jenny's "Rock" class today. Yes, it's a music history course. Today's theme: PUNK! Awesome. I took plenty of notes. Yes, I am that geeky.


As you can tell, today we listened to the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, the Talking Heads, Blondie (?!?!), among others that I didn't recognize.

Note, of course, the "Fuck you Johnny Ramone!", my crappy little doodle of the Ramones logo, a little "Crap" sign next to songs I liked and a star with an exclamation point next to ones I did. Makes me *almost* wish I didn't save my core requirements for the last year so that I could actually take classes I enjoy, at least before entering the stifling single-department hell of graduate school...

4 comments:

Nora Elisabeth said...

Did you "!?!?" the idea of Blondie as a punk band? Because we might have to have a talk.

Julia Alekseyeva said...

That's what the "?!?!?!" was for! For serious! I even have qualms about the Talking Heads being on that list, however much I like 'em. He mostly talked about Blondie to demonstrate a new use of irony in songs... or something...

Nora Elisabeth said...

I'm with you on the Talking Heads but against you on Blondie, at the very least with regard to the s/t and Plastic Letters. [By the time we get to Autoamerican and the amazing horror that is "Rapture," the discourse changes.] If you ask me (which technically you haven't), Blondie is right there, stylistically and physically [at Max's I and CBGB] with the Dolls, Patti Smith, Television and other combinations of Tom Verlaine & Richard Hell, etc. [The Talking Heads were there only physically.] If anything, Blondie was more aware of their musical roots in the mid-70s than were, for example, the Sex Pistols ("?!?!"), and (perhaps as a result) always produced music that sounded more...mature (for lack of a better word), and thus perhaps less...punk. And that's the world according to Nora.

Julia Alekseyeva said...

I think Nora = right. Blondie sounds much better than the Sex Pistols. There. I said it, people.
I also think Nora would really like that rock class. I'd take it but I have to take music hum that Spring. Ho hum.