Stones vs Beatles

I have listened to both these groups growing up my father is a huge Beatles fan. I am surprised my dad likes The Beatles over The Rolling Stones. As we said the beatles sound was monotone and the same every song, where as the Stones had much more variety in thier music. My dad claims the Stones did more of the hard rock songs, and the Beatles played a pop, pleasant sound such as "I wanna hold your hand." Also he says he liked John Lennon and Paul Mcartney and they had amazing composing skills. George Martin pushed the Beatles to look and sing a certain way, and to have a certain style that he believed America wanted. The Beatles gain alot of credit for being the first band to change over and make it big, but the Stones influenced many artists in the future.

The Rise of Rock and Roll

One thing that I learned this week from class was Black musicians were the first people to start the rise of Rock and Roll, and many white musicians stole there songs. These cover songs would gain all the popularity, and the black musicians would lose most of their credit and fame. Surprisingly to me Elvis was one of these artist, my mom is a huge fan of Elvis and she had no idea he covered hounddog. I always considered Elvis and Bill Haley to be Rock and Roll stars, but after the lecture i see there more on the country side, and the Rock side came from stars such as Big Joe Turner and Chuck Berry. I believe Chuck Berry was the first legit Rock and Roll star of his time uniting blacks and whites together through his music. This was a major breakthrough for black musicians in the later years. Alan Freed was one of these Dj's and concert promoters who began to play black musicians songs and give them the credit they deserved.

If I Could Turn Back Time

Better late than never? (Not at all! I understand I will NOT be receiving credit for this entry, but still!)

I'm not gonna lie... I totally forgot about posting a blog entry. But here I am nonetheless. I was a little bummed that we didn't have class this week! AMS is one of my favorite classes, it helps balance out my other dull classes. I totally registered for this class like a month before school started just to have a back up. I had originally planned to drop this class (before classes started) because I felt like I was taking too many credits. BUT NO. I went the first day and saw Lady Gaga on the first page of the syllabus... I knew it wouldn't be a typical class, so I decided to stick with it. I'M GLAD I DID!

I have enjoyed all of the topics we've covered (even if the text wasn't necessarily my favorite read). I really enjoyed the weekly articles. One that I found the most interesting was that of Rap music. I am a music lover, and whenever I get a chance to learn more about it in any class, I take it! The whole thing with MTV not wanting to play certain music videos was really interesting. It's weird looking at how much MTV, and our society, has evolved!

I apologize for the terribly late blog entry, but this week was kinda odd with not having class and having this due by midnight on Friday. My planner tends to be the last thing I look at on Friday nights, see you in class!

Semester in Review

I believe I'm with the majority of this class in saying they were pleasantly surprised with this course. The broad range of topics relating to America and American culture kept me interested and engaged with class. I especially enjoyed the unit spent discussing vampires and their origins. I feel like the more modern incarnations of vampires continue a trend of straying further and further from their true roots. I feel that this theme of adaptations based on the time period carries through to many other parts of the American Studies field.

Class

This course provided some really excellent information and commentary about society, and the indivial's place within society. The "other" was a very powerful theme that permeated through each concept that we studied. It's important to analyse how our ideological foundations have formed and changed as time has passed; and this course provided that analysis. The knowledge gained from this class will stay with me, and assist me in my other studies.

To be completely honest, I did not really know what an American Studies class was when I registered for it besides a course for my humanities credit. This class was completely different than any other class that I have taken. Most of my classes are in large lectures where we take notes and then go back to our dorms and memorize our notes. This class was completely different. I found myself going back to my room to look up more information on what we had talked about in class. The topics covered during class were very thought provoking and honestly things I had never really thought about at this level before. For example, we talked about disability in a way that was so far beyond the medical terms that I have learned in other classes. We focused on people instead of terminology and labels. Another thing that I got from the course is that there is more than one side to everything and definitely more than one opinion towards it.

Reflection

To be honest I did not really know what this class was gonna offer. I just took it to get enough credits. Once I got into the class I really started to enjoy it. It was very interesting to learn so of the things that you taught us. As the semester went on this was probably the only class that I actually looked forward to going to. It was the only class i did not skip atleast one class. Also I did not think that I would end up taking another AMS class but I really enjoyed this class so I wanted to take another. You were also a great teacher and made it enjoyable to come to class. You really opened my eyes to all the different things that happen in our society and what makes our country a unique place to live.