Recently, the Travel and Leisure Magazine came out with rankings of America’s favorite cities and lo and behold, Nashville was listed number 1 for concerts, the music scene, and also as the friendliest city around. Even only after a year of living here, I wholeheartedly agree that this is the place for music and entertainment. For those of you who are a bit skeptical, I’ve compiled a list of reasons that this ranking is well-deserved.
The first thing that I noticed walking in to Memorial Gym last night for Commodore Quake was the oppressive heat. The second thing that I noticed once I found a seat was the atrocious, garbled acoustics of our re-purposed basketball court. I wish I didn’t feel like I have to include these sour notes as the very first thing in this recap. I wish I hadn’t noticed these things about Quake at all. But most of all, I sincerely wish that these weren’t the most memorable aspects of my entire night at Quake.
“I feel like our previous music was fall and winter music. I wanted this new album to sound more like summer. I want people to feel like they walked outside on a summer day.”
– Ben Hardesty
I am lyrically challenged. I will be listening to a song and not even hear the lyrics most of the time. If I have listened to the song enough, I might be able to sing along even though I have given exactly zero thought to the meaning or even coherence of what I am singing. I also grew up listening to the mainstream pop punk, nu-metal, and metalcore of the early to mid 2000’s and held an active dislike for rap. These things considered, there is seemingly no reason that I should find myself getting into hip hop and rap at the age of 20. It turns out I just had to find the right stuff to serve as a gateway to the hip hop world. Here, I will list some of the artists that helped make the transition into the wonderful genre of hip hop a little easier.
Exit/In is one of Nashville’s most famous and beloved venues. One look above the bar at the wall of artists who have performed on its stage is enough to send the tingles of history down your spine. Monday night, though, Exit/In’s legendary stage was devoted to three local acts: Joel Levi, James and the Wild Spirit, and Vanderbilt’s own Kid Freud. The trio of bands, though quite different in genre and style, combined to put on one hell of a show.
We recently had WRVU members vote for the best and the worst song currently in the Billboard Top Ten. Here are the results from the 17 WRVU-affiliated responders. Hopefully their comments will shed some light on the current state of pop music.
Aftershock is an open mic & coffee house for students to showcase their talents. Any student is welcome to perform (and anyone is welcome to attend, of course)! If interested…
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New artists, new albums, and new songs are constantly being produced, and it can get quite confusing keeping track of what you have and have not listened to. But often times, a band comes along and drops an album named after the band itself, making our job of keeping track of it all a bit more easy. It is surprising to see just how many bands have eponymous albums, and below I have compiled a list of just a fraction of the bands that have one. Best part is, if you like any of them you only have to remember one name! Wow!
Note: The tragically mysterious Weezer story will be reiterated throughout for the uninitiated, but mainly this article is about Pinkerton.
It’s the early 90’s, and Weezer is the hottest rock band in America. Their self-titled ’94 debut is stuffed with timeless classics like “Buddy Holly”, “Undone – The Sweater Song”, and “Say It Ain’t So”. In a rock world taken with grunge, Weezer is a convincing reminder of rock music’s lasting pop appeal.
In ’96 Weezer follows that album with Pinkerton. This album trades studio glitz for rough self-production, and comparatively comes across as abrasive and uninviting. Gone are the quirky music videos, harmonica soloes, and songs about surfing. The lyrics are shockingly personal: 26-year-old songwriter and frontman Rivers Cuomo spills raw confessionals like he grabbed his teenage diary instead of the song lyrics. It doesn’t take the band long to depart from the goofy, clean-cut band that recorded Weezer.
For this week’s article I’m trying something new. Thinking about music and how it fits into my life, I thought about how I relate to a lot of my friends and family through music. My dad and I like listening to Neil Young on long drives, my best friend and I love going to see Manchester Orchestra whenever they come to town, and I’ve made a lot of close friends based on our mutual affinity towards certain artists.
Everyone has some sort of preference for music, it’s a very human process, and it can help them to relate to others. Going off of that idea, I thought, “I wonder what sort of music Vanderbilt faculty and staff members listen to.”
Everyone knows the big influential names in music: Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Radiohead, yada yada yada… Their influence is undisputed, and any sort of music fan knows their music. But there’s a whole plethora of influential artists out there that were your favorite bands’ favorite bands, and you may have never known that they existed! Some artists, no matter how ahead of their time, never seemed to hit it big. Whether it was due to their lack of popularity, stage fright, or just plain lack of a top-selling single, they never sold out stadiums like The Who or Nirvana. This list goes through some of my personal favorite influential artists that fit that exact mold (not necessarily the least popular or anything pretentious like that). If you’ve ever wondered where the revolution of electronic music was started, where so many singer-songwriters got their inspiration (besides Bob Dylan and the like), and who helped to start the post-rock genre that you listen to during late-night studying sessions, read on.
As I have been browsing through my music collection, I have come to realize that I have an affinity for bands that have a name referencing animals. Is this a coincidence? Perhaps. I’ve been trying to figure out what else they all have in common, but alas, they are all excellent in their own right. I would like to share some recent artists I have come across with this theme and hopefully you can decide for yourself if they truly resonate unique styles of animalistic music.
So for this post, I thought I would tackle some of the more difficult music questions. Not the ones that are difficult in content, but rather the ones that you’re afraid to ask your musical friends because in all honestly, the window of opportunity to admit that you didn’t know the answer passed quite possibly years ago. Now, to try and make this as helpful as possible, I opened up the floor to you guys. Here are the questions you wanted answered (as well as one of my own):
Leaving us with high expectations and wide-eyed anticipation, Alt-J’s first album, An Awesome Wave, burst onto the music scene making a name for the English indie rock band with singles “Breezeblocks” and “Fitzpleasure.” Living up to and exceeding our expectations, their sophomore album, This Is All Yours, was released Tuesday offering us a different side of Alt-J that had not been shown in the past.
For those of you there on that fateful afternoon in Rand almost two years ago, you remember it as one of the oddest sensory juxtapositions in your Vanderbilt career.
It was, at first, an ordinary lunch hour for the students in our campus dining hall. Some were studying, their laptops and notebooks strewn about, taking up four-person tables all by themselves. Others were casually munching on their Randwiches and “gourmet” Chef James meals and chatting with friends. Many were multitasking.
Then, the music started. At first, it was just a rush of distortion in the background, barely registering in ears so unaccustomed to hearing it. But it soon became clear that this was no mere technical accident. The speakers in Rand were playing metal–replete with screams and growls of vocals and guitars and lacking any consistent melody or rhythm.
On August 16, 2014 this mysterious blimp, sporting the iconic Aphex Twin logo and “2014”, appeared over London. Soon after, the same logo appeared in street art graffiti-ed onto the sidewalk in front of New York’s Radio City Music Hall. While many refused to buy into the hype, discussion exploded in the music community about the possibility of a new Aphex Twin album this year, which would be 43-year-old beatsmith Richard D. James’ first full release since 2001’s Drukqs. Just two days later, Syro was announced via James’ twitter, and just one month after that music fans found themselves experiencing an Aphex Twin comeback.
On September 18th, virtuosic bass player Victor Wooten premiered his unprecedented electric bass concerto, entitled “The Bass Whisperer: Concerto for Electric Bass and Orchestra”, with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. Often times, it was hard to distinguish where bass ended and Victor began, making the night memorable for everyone in attendance.
An album two years in the making finally presented itself this past August. Dry the River’s Alarms of the Heart exudes a confidence that wasn’t as obvious in listening to the band’s first album. Actually, in a lot of ways, the two albums are super different.
Anyone familiar with the name Opeth most likely knows the Swedish band for being innovators in the progressive metal genre. Their extremely unique sound has led them to worldwide acclaim in the metal community, and the band has had much praise from the modern progressive rock community as well. Albums such as Blackwater Park and Still Life have become some of the most heavily-praised metal albums of the modern era. Many fans, myself included, love Opeth for their ability to change from an extremely heavy metal riff to a beautiful acoustic guitar with the creativity and skill that few bands can even manage to pull off a few times, let alone as consistently as the band has proved.
Sixteen cellos, one piano, and four dads from Utah. Together, they’re The Piano Guys.
Best known for their YouTube videos in which they combine classical music with pop songs, The Piano Guys played at the Ryman last weekend to a very enthusiastic crowd.
So you’re a brand new DJ. A little excited, a little nervous to talk aloud to who knows how many listeners. You know the words to every song on The Essential Billy Joel, both discs. In high school, you rode shotgun down two-lane country roads in your friend’s doorless Jeep, sticking your bare feet out the side while the first Mumford & Sons album drowned out the cicadas. No one else in 11th grade had heard of The Decemberists or Regina Spektor. You thought you were pretty cool; you went to public school. But now, in college, the older DJs in WRVU are intimidating, and you don’t know any of the bands they’re talking about. You’re me, freshman year.
Two years ago, I spent a lot of time hunting for new music, though I wasn’t very efficient at it. Pitchfork was the only music journalism site I’d heard of, and I spent lots of time there without understanding the context of most of the articles. If I could do it all over again, here’s the resources I’d have used.