Rossini

During my free time I watched Rossini's "The Thieving Magpie" arranged for a flute quartet. It was a very light hearted song. It almost reminded me as birds singing. The melodies are very soft and have a fast tempo. The piece constantly travels from high to low notes. There are two separate moods happening at once. A very relaxed, happy mood while a lesser heard sad or jealous mood occurs in the background. Almost as if there is one person laughing at another sad person. This song appears in Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" which is just that. A story about a man looking down and laughing on the weak and helpless. The song has a very strong membranophone piece. It has a very strong introduction and then calms down but starts to pick up after a few minutes. The melody would best be described as conjunct motions. Unfortunately, I could not get blogger to upload the video but I did add a link on the post. I would say although Gioachino Rossini is not as well known as Mozart or Beethoven he is able to hold his own as a composer.

Conclusion

You need to remember what this music culture means to you. The audience rarely sees how this music was made but rather how it is performed. People go out to these shows to have a good time and really nothing more. The majority of them will disperse out to the restaurants and bars afterwards and discuss the show. Then the next week they will do the same thing. I ask you to visit The Granada Theater, the same as me. It is the center of the Lower Greenville culture and it is where you will be able to take in all of the area.

What to own

This type of culture does not really require much. Since Yo La Tengo and Times New Viking are not main stream, the majority of listeners are ardent music listeners they would say that it is absolutely necessary to have an iPod or some other type of MP3 player able to hold a massive amount of music. Restaurants are very important to the Dallas scene so being able to splurge on fine dinning is always good. There are many famous restaurants around The Granada Theater such as Dodie's Seafood Café and St. Martin’s Wine Bistro. If you are of age it might also be necessary to have a good knowledge of alcoholic beverages and bars.

Genre, Influences, and everything you need to know

The two bands have many different types of influences. Yo La Tengo was influenced by Velvet Underground, Soft Boys, and Arthur Lee’s Love (Alias Records.) The type of music they play ranges from Garage Rock to New Wave to Experimental. Garage Rock originated in Canada and the United States in the late sixties. New Wave started in the mid to late seventies and started in the United Kingdom and the United States. Both of these types of music have roots in early punk rock. Experimental rock was started by different bands such as The Beatles, Velvet Underground, and Pink Floyd. This type of genre was most often associated with the drug culture of music. The majority of The Beatles songs that are classified as experimental were during the bands period of heavy drug use, LSD being the most used drug. New Times Viking’s sound has the same Experimental Rock and Garage Rock sound as well as a Grunge sound that was made popular manly in Seattle by bands like Nirvana as well as Dallas by bands like The Toadies. The lyrics of many Yo La Tengo songs do not have a real meaning but are more abstract. However, some songs such as Autumn Sweater are very descriptive about small events or relationships. These bands rarely ever write songs with political undertones. Times New Viking writes all of their own material with Adam Elliott and Beth Murphy doing the majority of writing for the vocals. Yo La Tengo started as a cover band and still does many versions of musicians’ songs. They have also started to write many of their own songs since they became more popular in the mid nineties. The average audience of this type of music is middle class youth. Although it is a very welcoming community, outsiders often stay away because they don’t like this type of music.

The Final Report

After experiencing this type of music culture as well as interviewing someone who has done the same, I feel that I have found out what the true ideas of this music culture are. The first thing about this culture is that it is almost purely for entertainment. People go to these concerts in order to relax and have fun. Second, it is a way for all types of different people to come together over a similar music taste. In Dallas, music can be played anywhere and still be appropriate; in the car, at a restaurant, in a garage, or at a concert. These different shows and concerts are very casual and as long as you have the twenty dollars, you will be allowed in the show.

Thanks to the internet these bands can be found anywhere. They are all over the internet as well as iTunes, but unfortunately do not get much radio play. The best way for people to find out about these bands are from friends. Whenever I am at a friends house or in the car with my friend and they play music which I haven’t heard, I try to remember it so I can download it later. The performers make a decent living off their music but are by no means considered rock stars or millionaires. One of the greatest things about this music is that it is open to everyone. Often times there are the stereotypes that country is only for white people or that rap is for African Americans but anyone would be welcome to enjoy a show at The Granada Theater.

After interviewing Aaron Blankenship I learned a lot more about the valued qualities of this culture. He said that it is important to have good quality music but just as important for the performers to be passionate about the music. Yo La Tengo and Times New Viking did a great job of this. You could tell they were just as into the music they were making as the crowd was. Pearl Jam, unlike Yo La Tengo, made great music but have been criticized for creating it just for fame and money.

Research

Completing the research proved to be much harder than I originally thought. Once I made it to the concert it was very hard to see my notebook and was not able to write anything down. As soon as I got out of the concert on the ride back home I tried to write down as much as possible. It was easy at first to take notes about the room itself because I had plenty of time to look around before the concert actually started and the lights were still on. Once the show started, there was too much movement around me to keep out my notebook. After I put my notebook up I had to make sure that I was still keeping notes in my head.

Meet the Band, Meet the Stage

On the last day of January this year I went and visited The Granada Theater in Lower Greenville in Dallas, Texas. The concert hall reminds me of an old movie theater. It has the big vertical sign that lights up every Friday night and has the set list of bands that have letters which have to be set up by hand instead of electronically. The first thing you see when walking inside of the theater is a bar where tons of people huddle around before the show actually starts. Inside the actual concert room there is a general admission area closest to the stage, and about two hundred feet past the stage is an upper deck with seating. Overall the theater is very small in comparison to other centers such as the Yellow Pages Center or the Pepsi Center.

At the show there were two bands playing. The opener was Times New Viking. Times New Viking is an up and coming new band that joined Matador records early 2008. Their main type of genre is low fidelity which is known for a lot of technical flaws such as distortion and background noise. This gives the band a sort of grunge sound.

The second band to play, the main act, was Yo La Tengo. Yo La Tengo is an older band that has been around since 1984. The band consists of husband and wife, Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, as well as James McNew. The band uses many different sounds and often goes from types of songs that are subdued and relaxed to types of songs that seem to scream and make as much noise as possible.

Completing my music ethnography

This past week I have been devoting the majority of my time to completing my music ethnography which is due this upcoming Thursday. I was planning to go to a concert this past Friday for Aaron Weberg but was not able to because other plans interfered. Fortunately, I was able to go to a Yo La Tengo show back on January 30 at The Granada Theater. I am interviewing a fellow attendee of the concert, Aaron Blakenship. The hardest part of this project was conducting the interview. Coming up with different questions that will help fill in the gaps as well as looking at a different perspective of information I already had. The paper itself is rather easy once all the resources are gathered. Writing one thousand two hundred words become very easy when the topic is something you are interested in. I will have plenty of time over the next two days to make sure I can double check my project and be ready to turn it in on Thursday. After the successful turn in of my paper I will be able to relax and enjoy my Spring Break.

Aaron Weberg

My post for this week will be about my musical ethnography project. For this project I am interviewing Aaron Weberg a musician and student of The University of Texas at Dallas. Aaron Weberg plays in the North Dallas areas such as Plano, Dallas, and Richardson. One of the venues he has played is The Door in Plano, Texas. The Door is where many local musicians come to play as well as musicians that are on tour. He has also played at the comet cafe in The University of Texas at Dallas for Acoustic Tuesdays last semester. Aaron usually plays acoustic guitar as well as sings. He also writes all of his own lyrics and guitar pieces. Often times he is accompanied by fellow musician Nick Leal who does the backup singing. His songs can be described as uplifting with a fast beat. In many of his songs there is a climax where he changes up the rhythm and brings in a new verse. Mr. Weberg hails from Duncanville, Texas where he graduated from high school and first began to perform at venues. Seeing him live in concert was a great experience and I hope to see him in concert again soon.