Hybrid Essay Remastered

Jonathan Matlalcuatzi
English 114B @ 9:30
Sean Pessin 

Hybrid Essay: Rock Music

The blog that I created simply focused on rock music. Its main theme was to inform people of how rock music came to be and where it has gone since. While informing people through my posts I was also able to learn things myself and I was able to explore a variety of rock music styles.

It was interesting to know that rock music was not always called rock. Before the term “rock” this genre had other names that eventually led to the title it has now. Here is the process that it went through:

• First, Paul Silvester Pier coined the term “race music” which simply was black music.
• After that Scott Pelver changed race music to rhythm and blues.
• It was Alan Freed who first introduced the term “rock” to this genre when he coined the term “rock and roll” in 1942.

Through this I learned that it was not only the genre that constantly changed over time but as well as its name. I believe that the different change in names was influenced by the genre itself. Whatever was heard and whatever was played is what led to the change in name in the genre.

The task of searching for articles that contradicted my topic seemed a bit complicated to me. I didnt know why would people contradict rock music other than because some think its the devils music. I looked for articles that described a problem or flaw in rock music. Upon doing this I stumbled upon an idea, flaw, contradiction, whatever you want to call it. While searching I had found two articles that had the same idea, their thesis was that rock music was dying. It was interesting to find out that some people opinionated that rock music was dying and it was simply not the same as it was before.  These articles looked at some statistics like how many rock songs have been best sellers and top hits. Through this they assumed that rock music is slowly dying and that it has lost it root. I of course, like a great rock music fan challenged that opinion through my blog. It was there that I stated that rock music was not dying. In my opinion rock music has evolutionized and has gotten outside of its comfort zone and there has been more creativity added to it. I also believe that people are only focusing on the main rock genre rather then exploring all these sub genres it has like:

• Indie
• Rock pop
• Punk
• Hardcore
• Alternative 

Exploring these sub genres would change the opinions of many and would lead them to think that rock is not dead.

Searching for articles that related to rock music was not such a hard task. I had found a few quicker than articles that contradicted rock music. I had found an article that had to do with a music festival and one that suggest a band if you liked another specific band.

Above is a picture of a festival in Japan. This festival is known as the Fuji Rock Festival and it is one of the biggest one in Japan. While looking for an article that had to do with rock music I stumbled upon one that spoke about this rock festival in Japan. This rock festival was something new to me and was introduced to me through this article that I had found on the internet.

There is another article that I stumbled upon through my search. This article had to do with both old and new rock music. The article basically matched you to a certain modern rock band if you liked a different band from the past. This was pretty cool because you could see how rock bands and music from the past influence modern day rock bands and music. You can also see how the genre’s root is still there in these modern day bands and songs.

Through this blog I also wanted to show people the variety of rock music that is out there. It was my opportunity to show the audience the songs that I liked. This worked out well because while I presented to them to music that I liked I was also able to show them a variety of songs from some of the sub genres of rock music. I was able to put up music videos of the songs I chose with some information of the band that played the song so the audience could know a bit about who played the song. In this process I was also learning some things that I didn't know of as well.

The reason why I choose to do my blog on music is simply because I just cant live without it. I don't think anyone can. Although it is true that not everyone likes rock music but to each his own. Whether it be rock, hip-hop, blues, R & B, jazz, country, etc. people just cant live without music. I choose rock music in specific because it is what I like and what I listen to the most. I thought this was a great idea because it was my opportunity to show people what I was interested in.

Sleepwalk

Santo and Johnny is a duo group. The group is composed of two brothers, Santo and Johnny Farina. Both brother came out of the city of Brooklyn in New York. Santo was born on October 24, 1937 and Johnny was born on April 30, 1941. At a young age their father was drafted into the army and was stationed in Oklahoma. While their father was there he heard a steel guitar play on the radio and he called his wife and told her he wanted his kids to learn to play an instrument. When their father came back from the war they searched for a man who could teach them how to play the steel guitar. Years after they formed a band and began playing at church dances, weddings and at some clubs. Through this they acquired some fans in Brooklyn and Long Island. As their popularity grew they recorded some demo tapes. One day Johnny went to a music publishing company to record a song. There song "Sleepwalk" gave them huge success and helped their fame spread to other countries like Mexico and Australia. Since then they recorded 40 albums worldwide. Here is the song that reached the top of the Billboard pop chart and sparked their success. Enjoy!

The Beatles

The Beatles was an English rock band formed in 1960. They originated from the city of Liverpool. The Beatles consisted of four band members, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. The band started off by playing in clubs in their hometown of Liverpool and Hamburg over a three year period. Over the years the Beatles became popular throughout the UK and soon enough Beatlemania started to grow. The Beatles were also called the fab four. The Beatles tried to sign with Capitol Records but they were denied and instead went to Vee-Jay and Swan records and they took them in. After signing with these two record labels they went off on tour to the U.S. Not know how much there popularity had grown they landed in New York's John F. Kennedy airport and were greeted by thousands of screaming fans. The Beatles recorded about 12 U.K. LP's and have had more number one albums on the British charts and more singles sold than anyone else. They are the best selling act in the U.S and up to day they are still very famous although they are not together anymore. Here's one of there songs, Enjoy!

Hybrid Essay

  The above is an image of what the blog that I created looks like. In English 114b we were asked to create a blog on a certain topic of our choice. The project seemed very exciting yet scary. Here are the things that I knew about blogs: 

-They were composed of multimedia.

-There are many kinds.
Thats about as far as it gets as to me knowing about blogs. Now here is what I didnt know:

-Where to create one.
-How to create one.
-How to upload things to it.
-What would be an interesting topic.

   It was obvious that I didnt know much about blogging and that is what made this project exciting and scary at the same time. Having this in mind I didnt back down from the project instead I was interested in the whole blogging thing. So I kept my cool and I waited to see how things would turn out.

   “Everyone this is Blogger, Blogger this is everyone,” thats what we basically heard in class when the professor introduced us to blogging. Blogger is part of the Google team and their role is to help people have their own voice on the web. How do they do this you may ask, well through people creating blogs in Blogger. During some class sessions our professor showed us how to create a blog and post stuff in it. We learned to put videos and pictures on the post’s and also tag posts. Suddenly it didn't seem as complicated as I thought and I was very confident on being able to create a blog.

I already knew how to use Blogger to create a blog. The next thing that I needed to do is to find out what my topic was going to be. This was a bit harder than I expected. I needed to choose a topic that would work out well and keep my blog alive. I finally decided what my topic would be and I needed to present it in class. I had to do this through a fifteen second content pitch. I had to stand in front of class and present in fifteen seconds my topic and what it would consist of. This was something new to me and it seemed difficult but it was simply presenting key points to your audience and it was a great way to do so. My topic was approved by everyone so I moved forward to putting it on a blog.

The topic that I chose was rock music. In my blog I presented people to rock music, on how it came to be and where it has gone to. I posted different things on my blog. Some consisted of articles and others of videos. On some of these posts I had to look for some articles related to my topic on the web. This was a bit challenging to do but I managed to get through it. Posting videos on the blog was much easier for me. i already had an idea of how to attach a video to a post so it wasn't difficult at all. What was really interesting was tagging every post that I uploaded to my blog.  I wasn't familiar with that type of stuff but it was fun to do. It was simply finding key points of each post and using those as the tags for each post. 

Some posts consisted of basic summaries and opinions about articles that I found interesting. It was like a little tease from the article in order to get the audience hooked and give them that desire of wanting to read the articles. There was articles that supported my topics and there was articles that totally went against my topic. What I learned through summarizing articles was having the audience one click away from these articles. I had learned to link the articles to one word in the post in order to redirect the audience to the article. It was an easy learned task and made the post look more clean. Clean in a sense that there was no url that was visible in the post.

The couple of post’s that contained articles that were agains my topic were very interesting. They all basically had one point in common. There point was that rock music was dead. In there opinion rock music was not what it used to be. Clearly it was true that rock music is not what it used to be, but that did not mean it was dead instead it was evolving. Those contradicting articles gave way for me, as the blogger, to show the audience the evolution that rock music had taken.

I wanted to show and share to the audience the type of music that I liked while showing them how rock music has changed over time and what it has gone to be around the world. I was able to do both of these things through the use of videos. Here is the process that I went through to do this:

1. I first decided what was a song that I liked and that would work great in this blog.

2. I looked up that video of the certain song.

3. I posted the video of that song on my blog.

4. Did some research on the band that played the song.

5.Posted that information with the video on the blog.

That is the basic process that I went through in order to post these videos on my blog. In my opinion this worked out well because I provided the audience with music that I liked. Not only modern music but also some stuff that was from the past. 

Eventually we had to create a poll and post it on our blog. Like blogging creating a poll was something entirely new to me. I didn't where to create the poll and how to create it. Learning the process of creating a poll was not very hard. The professor linked us a website where we were able to create a poll. This website made it simple and easy to create a poll and it led me through the whole process. After creating the poll I was able to uploaded to my blog. The poll consisted of one question which was, whats your favorite sub-genre of rock? They had five different choices which were, indie, blues rock, heavy metal, alternative and punk rock. To me it was very interesting to see what people chose.

If there was something that I would’ve liked to explore more in this project it would have to be the fifteen second content pitch. I founded to be something interesting and would’ve liked if we were given the chance to explore this type of idea some more. I believe that learning and mastering the fifteen second content pitch would’ve been very beneficial and of great use in the future. It would’ve also been interesting to go further into the idea of blogging and see some of the different type of blogs that are in web.

Overall, blogging was a great experience. All the questions that I had at the beginning were answered throughout the process of blogging. It was great expressing myself through blogging and letting people know a bit about my interest through this project. It was a bit hard but overall fun. Blogging has opened up another door not just for me but for many others in order to get there voice and opinion out there. 

Works Cited

"The Story of Blogger ." Blogger. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2013. <https://www.blogger.com/about>.

Miike Snow- Animal

Miike Snow is an indie rock pop band. This band came out of Stockholm, Sweden and was formed in 2007. This band consists of three people and they are the singer/ songwriter Andrew Wyatt and the producing team of Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg who are also known as Bloodshy and Avant. Most of the time the band is represented by a silhouette of a jackalope. So far the band has released two albums since 2007. The first album is a self-titled album "Miike Snow" and it was released in June 2009. Their second album is "Happy To You" and was released on May 2011. The following video is from one of their songs that is in their "Miike Snow" album. Enjoy!

The Coachella Music and Arts Festival

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival or known as Coachella Festival is an annual three-day music and arts festival. It is held in the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California in the Inland Empire’s Coachella Valley. This even features many music genres that include rock, indie, hip hop, and electronic music. There are several stages across the whole ground yet there are five main stages. These stages are the Coachella Stage, Outdoor theater, Gobi Tent, Mojave Tent, and the Sahara Tent. The first Coachella took place three months after Woodstock in the year of 1999. About 10,000 people attended the 2 day event. The only year that there was no Coachella Festival was in 2000. This was due to financial troubles after the inaugural event. Other than that the Coachella festival has been going on through out the years. To check out some live stream of the festival click here.

The Dead of Rock Music

In this article they speak of the dead of rock and roll. According to many, the rock genre is dying. This article has some statistics that “prove” that it is so. This article claims that the number of rock songs in the singles chart fell to its lowest level in half a century. There was only 3 rock songs that appeared in the top 100 best selling hits in the UK. It is said that the percentage of rock songs plummeted from a 13% in 2009 to a 3%. This number is low and falling bellow hip-hop, pop, and the dance genre. This brings great concern to the rock genre and all of its fans. It may be that rock will not live or be around any time soon according to these statistics. In my opinion this is not true because there are different rock bands rising up and become famous and putting themselves out there and they have many people who support them and this will continue to come as years go by.

Is Rock n' Roll Music Over the Hill?

This article talks about how rock music has lost its foundation. It used to be that rock music was rebellious and all who listened to it were rebellious as well. According to this article rock music is now handed down from one generation to the other losing all its “rebelliousness.” Yes at some point rock music was for those who were rebellious and only they would listen to it, but things have change. Through out the years many things change and if it wasn't for that change the rock genre would’ve never expanded. This article also speaks about the advancement of music. It is stated in this article that the only advancement in music in the past ten years has been made by rap, which is not rock. In my opinion that is not true, rock music has advanced in many ways. That is why now in days we have many rock sub-genres. (To see more on this article click here.)

Poll

Howlin' Wolf

Chester Arthur Burnett or better know as Howlin' Wolf was one of the first influential  rock blues singer and songwriter. Wolf also played the harmonica and the guitar. He was born on June 10, 1910 in  West Point, Mississippi. One of his professional rivals was Muddy Waters, who was also a blues singer. This type of rock blues was one that established rock music.

This article is written by Val Haller, founder of the website valslist.com. She matches songs form her generation, which would be from the baby boomers, to that of this generation. In this article she matches two bands, Steppenwolf and The Black Keys. Steppenwolf is the band of her generation and they are a Canadian-American rock group. They have sold over 25 million records worldwide, releasing eight gold albums and twelve Billboard Hot 100 singles. The Black Keys is a rock group of this generation. They formed in Akron, Ohio in 2001 and since then have had many huge hits. Through this article you can see how past generations of rock music has influenced the former generation of this genre.

Japan Rock Festival

This article is about a man who brough the world of rock music to Japan. Missahiro Hidaka organizes a  3 day concert each year in Japan. He brings a wide variety of bands and artist to this event. Bands like My Chemical Romance to Red Hot Chili Peppers and others that fall into any sub-genre of Rock. Although this 3 day event is very big it stays independent and away from any corporate affiliation. Read more about this here.

Midnight City

M83 is a indie rock band that originated in Antibes, France.  The founders of this band are Anthony Gonzalez and Nicholas Fromageau. One of the interesting facts about this band is that it is named after the spiral galaxy Messier 83. Although it is filled with electronic sounds it still composed of the basis of rock, guitars and drums. This song "Midnight City" is one that has put the band out there and has helped them rise. Since this group is from France it comes to show how rock music has an impact around the world. Enjoy the song!

Cornerstone of this Blog (Hypothesis)

I chose to write about this topic because I love music, not just any kind of music but rock music. I play the drums and in my opinion the drums play a crucial role in the rock industry. Being a drummer I love to play different types of beats and be creative and you cannot do that to some low tempo music like sappy pop music that only requires computer technology and the same beat over and over again. I’ve listened to rock all my life and it’s the only type of music that i feel has any real meaning and isn’t just about sex or drugs, wether it’s a stereotype or not. Rock seems to be a very broad genre that has other genres within containing different styles and themes. It is a genre that has revolutionized over the years and keeps transforming. Thats is why I like rock music, there is always something new with it. 

Check this out!

98.7fm.com is a website from a radio station. 98.7 is a radio station that plays the most recent stuff that is out there in the in the rock world. This radio station is a rock alternative one since it plays a little bit of everything. When you listen to this station you can hear that one song is different from the next one that is going to play (Yeah that may sound kind of cliche). Different in a way that they all take a different theme and style. This radio station’s website has a lot to offer. If you navigate through the website it gives you updates on the latest concerts and shows. You can also view pictures and videos as well as interviews with artist. It also has a section where you can go ahead and listen to new music from popular bands and those who are barely uprising. There is another section where you view the profiles of DJ’s who play the music and their contact information. What I really like about the website is not only can you hear the station online but as it plays it also gives you a list of the last ten songs that were played. I find this to be helpful because if there is a song that I like I can always go back to the website and look at the last ten played list and find out what song it is. So if you have the time just check the website out.

http://www.987fm.com/main.html