Post AP tests school

All of my classes seem to just kinda ended since AP tests happened. Even my regular classes, except for Algebra 2 cause math never stops, have been watching a lot of movies or having "work time." Even though finals havent even happened yet teachers seem like they're already on summer. Not that I'm complaining about doing nothing but why do have to come to school to do nothing? Even a majority of my finals are "reflection letters" so basically an easy one hundred.

All the festivals

After having been to ACL, and SXSW, and seeing the line up for Fun Fun Fun Fest, I realized that while i love them, they arent as important to me as they are to other people. I like seeing the bands and the experience of course but
 1. they take like all my money even if my parents do pay for it, between food and stuff im broke afterwards.
2. Theres a lot of stress leading up to the festivals figuring out rides, times, and the schedule of everything thats going on. Especially with girls when everyone is way too dramatic making solid plans is difficult.

Even though i say all these things I'm probably still gonna go to as many festivals and concerts at SXSW as i can in my life.

Fun Fun Fun Fest

I've never been to Fun Fun Fun Fest but its another thing that i dont feel like im missing out by not going. I'm definitely one of those people that loves festivals but hates them at the same time because i can not just stand in a crowd for hours waiting for the band to come on. I feel like im going to pass out the whole time that we're waiting. When the band actually comes on I'm fine then because i have something to focus on besides the fact that i'm really close to people and it would be almost impossible to get out.

More about ACL

I liked the line up for last year more because i think that the headliners and the smaller bands were both really amazing and pretty well known. Where as this year i think the line up is more small time bands that no one has heard of and then really popular headliners. I'd love to go but im not sure if the few people i want to see are worth the money and if the money is worth standing waiting all day for those few people. Also a lot of the people coming are people that are in Austin like all the time for a lot cheaper that ACL.

ACL 2014

I'm apparently like the only one in the world that isnt psyched about the line up for this year. Dont get me wrong i think the people coming are pretty cool and am probably going to go, I'm just not as pumped about it as i was last year. Part of it has to do with the fact that two of the main people that i would want to see, Foster the People and Childish Gambino, i just saw FOR FREE at SXSW. I really like Gambino but I dont care enough to see him again when the concert at SXSW was awesome and hes not coming out with a new album between now and then I'm pretty sure so it would be basically the same concert i think. I just dont think that the concerts i just saw could be topped because it was exactly like an ACL concert.

Lauryn Hill

Shes one of those rappers that make people think that current day rap is going way down hill. Lauryn's really good at putting words together in a clever way to say what shes trying to say. We of course have listened to her awesome line in Ready or Not multiple times and every time its still just as awesome. She isnt like current female rappers that rap very similarly to male rappers but in a high pitched voice, she makes each verse completely her own. While being really talented at rapping, her singing voice is just as good. She hits some crazy notes and makes the song very unique.

The Fugees

I liked the album we listened to by the Fugees and it was one that i could have listened to the whole thing and not have complained. I liked how they had a lot of variation in their voices between the guys and Lauryn. We have talked about how talented they are before and listening to the bits and pieces of the album just showed that. They are really clever about how they rhyme and the meaning of the words they say. I was surprised how many of the songs i knew without knowing they were by the Fugees.

Snoop Dogg Documentary

I dont listen to Snoop Dogg/ Snoop Lion ever but after watching the documentary I dont think im missing out. He's one of those musicians thats just kinda there for me, like i know who he is and I know some lines from his most popular songs but i dont have any desire to learn more about him or listen to him more. The documentary didnt make him seem cool to me and it definitely didnt make it seem like his Snoop Lion career is something that deserves my attention. I just thought it showed a side of him that if people didnt know about before, which they probably did, didnt make him more appealing. It just made him look stupid to me and ridiculous for the large amounts of weed that they focused on.

Broadway Idiot

I thought the documentary about the making of the broadway production was interesting, despite not liking Green Day much. For me Green Day is one of those bands that i like the songs that everyone likes by them. The ones that were played on the radio all the time are the only ones i know. I dont know much about the actual broadway version except what was shown in the documentary so i dont know if it was actually good or not but it seemed from how much work they put into it that it would be good. Just guessing but its probably something like Mama Mia since they had to form the show around the songs so it has potential to be really good, but also potential to be bad.

Documentaries

I think all the documentaries we have watched in class are pretty cool. I probably wouldnt watch documentaries on my own time or anything but theyre cool because they show parts of music most people probably wouldnt know. It shows how much that the general public doesnt gather about the musicians lives and why they do what they do. It shows how much thought goes into every type of music even if the music seems kinda stupid and poorly thought out.

Semi-Personal Post

I found out this past weekend I'm apparently related to a pretty famous jazz and blues musician from Austin. W. C. Clark is apparently my great uncle. To understand why I didn't know until recently i guess you have to know that im adopted. Its not a sore subject for me at all so i dont care talking about it but basically my birth mom and birth dad had me and my birth dad wasnt in the picture and my birth mom was in jail. I went to live with my birth moms sister and her husband until i was 6 months old but being ended up being adopted by them and they are now my mom and dad. Occasionally my birth dad sends me money and we never really understood where he got the money from but it now makes since that it possibly could have been from his uncle, W. C. Clark. Ive looked him up a little bit and its really cool to know that im related to him, assuming everything we've been told is true. I'm pretty sure he doesnt know about me and i dont want to try and reach out to him or anything, its just an interesting connection to music for me.

Rules Continued

Also since this rule has been around they apparently also decided you cant use your own laptops anymore. Thats on a whole different level of stupid because we have to be logged onto education wifi to use them anyways. What about when people are using them for research they have to do for class? For example in my english class we are all writing papers and college essays and having to use a computer all class, but now since we have to use only school computers  half of us wont be able to use computers sometimes because there arent enough netbooks for the whole class. Not letting us use our electronics is not in anyway gonna stop the bullying thats happening. All the stuff that had been posted had been stuff that had been going around the school all year. Its not gonna keep people from talking. The part about not being able to use the phones in the bathroom either is not only dumb but impossible to control. People arent going to the bathroom just so they can cyber bully other kids, and even if they were you dont have anyway of knowing what they were doing in the stalls.

No Phone Rule

I think the main problem with this rule (besides the fact that the school is only protecting themselves not the kids) is that its causing students to talk about everything that happened more and making them mad. Now that everyone in the school has to follow the stupid no electronic rule everyone is talking about those girls even more. From what I've heard in the hallways people are almost blaming them for the rules being made, which of course is ridiculous since they didn't want to be talked about. Theyre being talked about even more now because the posts about them led to these rules. If the school was going to make this rule they should have done it along time ago.

Singing Along

This may have been from being in this class and when we listen to music we just sit and listen but ive noticed that its started to bother me sometimes when people sing along to songs. I dont think its the fact that they are singing with the song, i think its that when they do it loud enough theyre completely distracting from the song. Also i think part of it is that the people that usually sing along really loud to songs arent the best singers.

Hair Metal

To be honest hair metal day wasnt as bad as I was expecting. I'm not gunna download it ever of course but it wasnt painful. The worst part for me was just watching the guys perform. It was weird enough were it distracted fromm the song, so I guess the song could have been really terrible and i wouldnt have noticed. Also to my surprise i recognized a few songs.

Along with censured versions

Probably the stupidest song i have ever heard is "My Hitta." Its the clean version of "My Nigga" which is dumb enough as it is, but cleaning it up to my hitta is even worse. In the original version they say nigga like 11 times in the first 30 seconds so thats 11 times they have to say hitta right after each other. Thats not even a word so the little sense that the song made before just lost everything that made sense about it.

Censured versions

I honestly dont get the point of censured versions of songs. I know songs with a lot of cuss words of course cant be listened to by like kids and stuff, but why are you getting a song that has a lot of cuss words in the first place if you dont want to hear those words? It actually takes away a lot from the song when theres random pauses or they put made up words that sound basically the same as the cuss word just with like a different beginning. I know some songs have put chich instead of bitch which doesnt even make sense.

John Legend

This was problem from all my main stream radio listening but i really like john legend now. My favorite song by him is All of Me, and i think its because 1. the lyrics sound good together and 2. the guy can actually sing. I think most of the stuff played now a days is super auto tuned which makes for a pretty poor live perfomance usually but John Legend sounds like he can really sing and would be good live.

Radio

Lately ive realized ive been listening to the radio a lot more recently, which i wouldnt say is like a bad thing but i dont think its a good thing. I play music all night while i sleep and i wake up to the radio on kase 101 listening to the bobby bones show. I think since i started waking up to that i started to like country more and since i dont really buy country i listen to it on the radio. Then when there are commercials on ill flip to other stations and i guess since that became kinda a habit i started listening to the songs on the "main stream" radio more.

***flawless performance

I listened to parts of beyonces new album when it first came out and i did like it but i didnt actually download any of the songs until now. I went to the Mccallum Dance Major's dance show on Saturday with one of my friends who's a Musical Theatre Major. The dances were really cool and of course the dancers were really talented since they had to like apply and stuff to get in. The second to last dance was a hip hop dance to ***Flawless and thats probably when i realized i really liked the song. It was really fun to watch cause the dancers were so good and the music matched perfectly.

Nirvana

This was one of those bands that i was surprised that i didnt hate. My brothers all definitely listened to Nirvana while they still lived at home, but ive never listened to it myself. The first time i probably heard some of those songs was probably on guitar hero or blasting from my brothers rooms. I was surprised about how many songs i recognized.

SXSW- Saturday

On Saturday we went downtown about 4-ish. We parked at Whole Foods and walked to Butler Park and when we got there there were a lot of older R&B artists,that i never had heard of, doing covers of other songs. We knew that Snoop Dogg, or Snoop Lion whatever his name is this week, was supposed to be coming on sometime between 2:45-5 and apparently he hadnt come on yet when we got to the park. When he finally did come on he was with some other R&B guy and they did a song together, then he did one or two songs on his own. I realized that I dont actually understand why he's that big of an artist. It may have been because he wasnt actually doing a concert but he seemed to just be telling the crowd to say "Hell yeah" a lot. He didnt actually seem to do much. After that we went to P. Terry's to eat then headed back to the park to wait for Childish Gambino. Unlike for ACL shows there werent that many people there waiting for Gambino, which I thought was weird since it was free show. We got back about 6:00 and still got really close to the stage and had enough room to for all of us to sit in a circle to wait for the next group to start.  When the group started we stayed seated because there still werent enough people there for us to get trampled. During the show we realized they were pretty good so we stood up and listened for the rest. After that we waited for a hour for Gambino, He had a lot of lights going and a twitter feed projected on the back of the stage which was pretty hilarious. When he finally came on it was so fun. I had heard he wasnt that good live at ACL a few years back so i was excited when the first songs were so good. Also he can sing pretty well which I thought was cool so during the chorus and stuff like that he sang the parts himself. He ended up doing like 3 encores and the last one being a freestyle about Austin and SXSW. He also changed some lines in his songs to make it relate to SXSW which I thought was cool. In the end there were 20,000 people there, and i have never been that close to anyone in my life, but it was definitely worth it, since he did all of my favorite songs by him, even the old ones, such as Heartbeat, 3005, and Freaks and Geeks.

SXSW-Sunday& Friday

I liked SXSW this year quite a lot but i didnt get to go as much as i would have liked. I went down there on the first Sunday of spring break but not to see any concerts. I actually went to a "puppy hour" which is basically when Austin Pets Alive puts a bunch of really freaking adorable puppies in a room and you can just sit in there for hours and play with them. Obviously they were hoping that the dogs would end up getting adopted but my friends and I just played with them. On Friday a group of friends and I went to whole foods to see some of the bands there. We saw A Great Big World first and also got to meet them, then we saw Bad Things, which is Shaun White (the Olympic snow boarder)'s band. We also got to meet that band and take pictures with them after which was super cool. After that we went to Butler Park to get good spots for Foster the People. We sat through the other two bands who were pretty good but not good enough for me to remember their names. When Foster the People came on it was an awesome show right from the start. I didn't listen to them a lot before but enough to know most of the songs a little bit. My favorite song by them is Coming of Age and they played it towards the end of the show. The singer was really good and kept the show interesting.

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson is one of those people that i feel like a lot of other people would say they really love him and he has made amazing music that has "affected their lives" in whatever way that music can affect peoples lives. For me I think his songs are awesome and he had real talent for song writing and performing but he hasn't affected my life. I know we have talked about this a lot before in class but when it comes to Michael Jackson, that football player that killed people, and other famous people who clearly break the law but just didn't technically get charged, i don't think they should be as loved as they are when they have done such terrible thing. I know you don't have to agree with what artist do in their personal lives to like their music, but i have a hard time saying Michael Jackson, and those other people, are some of the greats in their profession because they have hurt other people and been found not guilty.

Rewind

Rascal Flatts came out with a song a believe this year and i loved it. I've always liked Rascal Flatts so liking their newest song wasnt a surprise. Rewind, like most of their other songs, seems to have some deeper meaning to the people in the band. I think having that deeper meaning is what makes the lyrics really good. To me its not repetitive and is just all around perfect.

G-Eazy

G-Eazy is a beautiful man. I started listening to him last year when he came to Austin last year. Some of my friends went and said it was such a good concert so I decided to look him up. I became literally obsessesed with him and would do anything to be able to go to his concert thats happening this Sunday. Luckily, hes also coming to SXSW and (fingers crossed) I'll be able to go.

"Punk"

The first few songs we listened to that were considered Punk were not my cup of tea at all. When we started to listen to The Ramones i recognized like 2 of the songs. I didnt hate those songs but i wouldn't go out and buy an album of theirs. To be honest the only thing that comes to mind when i think of punk is this episode of Americas Next Top Model where during the photo shoots they all had a different music genre and one girl was punk and had no idea how to model the "punk look."

Cherub

I first heard about Cherub during the summer when my friend played their song Doses and Mimosas on the way to Barton Springs. I started to listen to them more and really liked their unique sound. Honestly i could see how other people would hate them cause their sound can get a little whiny, but i really like it. Doses and Mimosas and XOXO are my two favorite songs by them. Hopefully I'll get to see them at SXSW but it only has them listed as playing at a bar at 2 in the morning.

Arctic Monkeys

I never really listened to the arctic monkeys but one day I was listening to the radio, which has been a rare occurrence lately, and 94.7 started playing a song that i really liked. At the end of the song the radio DJ said the title, which was "Do I Wanna Know?,"  i looked it up afterwards and was really surprised to see that it was by the Arctic Monkeys. Im pretty sure that that song was the last song i bought.

SXSW

I started going to SXSW last year and i had a blast so i cant wait to go again. I like that the shows are all over austin but i get confused really easily about how to find the shows. When I actually am able to find the shows i want and get there i have a great time. I havent actually looked at the line up yet but im sure there will be multiple people that i can see.

Beyonces new album

When the album first came out i didnt really want to listen to it because im still getting used to listening to a whole album, but i actually sat down and just listened to all of the songs. I really like the album and i think its super cool that she didnt really make it very public that she was coming out with it. I like all of her songs usually and this album isnt any different.

Music has kinda changed

For some crazy reason i havent been listening to much music lately and havent been getting many new songs which i usually get a lot of new ones a month. I guess school has just been taking up a lot more time and i really cant listen to music while doing homework because i get completely distracted and then my homework ends up not getting done or being done well. Ive only been listening to music while im driving so i end up listening to the same songs on the 3 different CDs i have.

What i liked

Some of the songs people played i liked and i never actually thought i would like it. Sophie played 2 really good songs that i thought were kinda the opposite of what i usually listen to but i really liked it. I also liked the song that Antone said he made.

Reggae

I thought the reggae we listened to in class was interesting but totally different from modern day reggae. I could see how it originated from that from some of the beats underneath the music but the singing sounded different. When i think of reggae now i think of reggae fest or marley fest or whatevers its called which i dont really know much about.

the roots

When you first put on the roots i thought it was gonna be something like the beastie boys but in my mind it was totally different. I actually liked it alot and could see myself "buying" it online and listening to it later. I think if i were to listen to old school stuff like that i would like it more than new rap because i like the story behind them.

Rufus Wainwright

When we were first talking about Rufus Wainwright i was under the impression that his voice was gonna take alot of getting to used to and i probably wouldnt like it. That was not the case at all. He sounds like something i would listen to when i want to relax but his voice didnt seem weird to me at all.

Zep 2

Although everyone was complaining alot about Zep 2 i didnt think it was as bad as they made it seem. Of course i never want to listen to it again but it didnt make me want to leave class or anything. I just didnt like the long periods where it was just drums.

Joni Mitchell

Out of the things we have listened to this year those three songs we listened to by Joni Mitchell were by far my favorite. Her voice was so smooth and unique. The way she held certain notes made the song so much better. I really enjoyed all the songs because they all told a very unique story.