The Shins

After only hearing the name of this band for a while, recently I was introduced to The Shins. It was my brother who showed them to me and I absolutely love them. They are probably my favorite band at the moment. They have an indie sound, if you ask me, and as far as I know, are only semi-popular. I'm almost glad that they aren't huge because I feel like once a band reaches the point where they're absolutely famous, their music has changed too much and they usually don't make as good quality of songs. This could just be my opinion though.

I absolutely love this song called 40 Mark Strasse. It's hard for me to put a finger on what I specifically like about it, but it's just an amazing song. I also love the story that it tells. It's actually about a young German boy who is in love with a German prostitute. He sees her "play in the street at night" and she sleeps with American tourists. The name comes from the German word for street, which is straße, and a street in Germany where I believe you used to be able to get a prostitute for 40 Marks. I guess the story just seems different to me, as far as a song telling one like it.

This song called New Slang is possibly one of their more well known ones. It is pretty calm sounding, but I love it. I don't know what it is about because I can hardly understand a word he says. There isn't much to say about it other than it's great. I do love the way that The Shins arrange their use of instruments. I love the bass guitar in this and the singing. I suppose it's just that everything blends together really well. I will probably write another post about The Shins just because they're so great and I couldn't possibly cover all of their good songs in one blog. 

Zeppelin IV

In class, we listened to Zep IV this week. In my opinion, it is definitely a better album than Zep III. In both albums, you can see the diversity of sound that the band uses. Even within individual songs you can here it. Stairway to Heaven changes immensely throughout the whole thing. I love it. I am just able to find more songs that I enjoy on IV.

I only kind of like this song but I wanted to include it to compare. It never gets to be a really high energy song. It is nothing like Black Dog or the heavier part of Stairway. I like the fact that the band will have such a diversity of songs within an album. It makes me able to scroll through their songs and find ones I love and ones that are just okay. I'm sure that other songs would appeal to other people. 

I included this song because it is a good example of how they can sound like a Rock and Roll band. The sound is classic in this song. It isn't original but it's just Led Zeppelin's take on it. Overall, Stairway to Heaven makes me have to choose Zep IV over III. I enjoy more songs on IV, but Stairway to Heaven makes the choice more than obvious. 

The All American Rejects

I really started listening to music back when I got my first CD player, probably around 6 or 7 years ago. One of the very first CD's that I got was Move Along by The All American Rejects. I listened to it for a couple of years and then kind of stopped. I recently listened to a few of the songs and realized that I still thought they were pretty great. The band influenced a ton of choices I made later, as far as which artists I listened to. I wasn't a musician back when I first listened to them, but now that I am, I can really respect some of their musical talents. For instance, some of the drum parts on the album interested me, so I decided to learn them and discovered that they were relatively difficult.

This is one of the songs that I really enjoyed back then. I think it's an overall great song. I actually really love their singer in almost all of their songs. The only real thing that I can complain about for this band is the one song "Give You Hell" that became popular a few years back. I honestly hate that song. I really enjoyed their album Move Along, and then could hardly make myself sit through "Give You Hell". It seemed really repetitive to me. I guess it's just one of those songs that I dislike.

Copyright laws

This week in class, we watched a video over the affects of copyright laws. The video evoked a lot of thought. We had also been talking about the same subject in my Spanish IV class, meaning that I was able to hear many different sides of the issue and how it affects various people. I, personally, don't always buy music on iTunes. Part of me feels like downloading illegally or pirating, takes away too much money from the people who created the things that were meant to be paid for. When there is a band that I really love and want to support, I will not only buy their music on iTunes, but also buy a CD on occasion. The other side of the issue is that music is pretty expensive. $1.30 per song seems expensive to me, especially when considering that I rarely just buy one at a time. I think that companies or websites that are for the purpose of pirating should pay money to the music industry or movie industry. I'm sure that those sites make some money from advertisements on their webpages. I realize that it wouldn't be much, but it may add up when considering how many websites are for pirating.

As far as using other artist's music for mash-ups and collaborations, I am kind of torn. I love artists like Girl Talk and many different mash-ups. But I kind of feel like a situation where a mash-up artist makes more money off of a song that they took from another artist is wrong. This situation seems possible to me, so I believe that the mash-up artist should either pay a percentage of their revenue or some predetermined and reasonable amount of money. The part of the video that had to do with the man who had made a mash-up using Radiohead material was very interesting to me. I thought that Radiohead did a great thing by aiding the man escape fines. I can't remember what they did exactly, but it was a generous thing to do. These are just some of my ideas on the issue. I love the idea of not having to pay for music and movies, but helping out my favorite artists feels really great to me.

RHCP

The Chili Peppers are band that I've been listening to for years. I won't pretend that I'm some huge fan though. I only really listen to one album. but it's fine for me because I'm content in doing so. I bough Stadium Arcadium probably back in 2007 and I still listen to it on occasion. One of my favorite members of the band has to be Chad Smith. I think he's a great drummer and adds a lot to the band. When I saw RHCP live at ACL, Chad Smith put on an amazing performance.

Snow was my favorite song for a long time back when I bought the album. It's still probably my favorite song of theirs today. I really dont know what it is about this song that I love, but one would be how their challenging guitar parts blend with the song so well. I think that almost everything they did, instrument wise,  was just about perfect for the song.

Charlie is a very interesting song that I like. Everything from the intro up until the chorus sounds like serious funk rock. Then the chorus comes in, and you get back the same RHCP sound that you have in Tell Me Baby and Snow. It's a cool song, and I don't think that everyone knows about it because it doesn't seem to be as popular as other songs. Even though I'm not a die hard fan, I like to think that I can occasionally listen to a few songs by this very talented band. 

Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath is a band that I've heard my whole life but never actually listened to very actively. I never had much of an opinion on them either, until we listened to them in class. I think that their music is too repetitive, and that they could sound more tight and together. I don't really like them actually. I just don't like listening to music that sounds so similar. Ozzy also has an unenjoyable voice in my opinion.

War Pigs is a song that sounds too similar throughout the whole thing. The guitar effects they use in their songs are also repeated in many other songs. As we talked about in class, they also have pretty terrible lyrics that don't add too much to the songs. These are just reasons why I don't enjoy Black Sabbath. I like the influence they had on music, but I can't really enjoy listening to many of their songs.