kazu googoo

reading, writing, and L mix R

so in my classroom i play music during study hall or anytime that the little kids decide to be quiet for two to three sequential minutes. every month or so i have the kids fill out a personal interest survey and we chart a billboard style top 10 list of hit songs, artists, tv shows and movies. i haven't figured out how i'm going to tie that back into the Oregon state standards yet, but i'm sure there's a way to squeeze it between math statistics and current events.

so most of the kids are hell bent for classic rock (ac/dc, G&R, led zep to name a few), country (you're on your own for examples here), z100 pop (any girl named simpson, ciara, or clarkson) and there's one kid who is a classical buff (who knew?). so i thought that today while the choir kids were in choir, i'd see what my band kids thought of portland's own L mix R.

prefacing the track only by saying that i was going to play a song that they had never heard by a band that they had never heard of, i asked them to play music critics and critique the song. i have only played L mix R once before and that's because " ghosts & whores" came on at random (to which the kids said, "we like this hippie music") so on a scale of 1-10, 1 out of 9 students rated L mix R's "god bless you portland" as a 5. There were 4 voting the track as 4 out of 5 stars, two voting 1 out of four stars, and two found that on a scale of 1 to 5, L mix R earned a zero (someone needs to teach these guys some math).

for kicks i asked them to explain their answers. One of the zeros simply said that the song "stunk." The fours were in the "pretty good" camp due to the guitars. The lone rating of 5 was due to the fact that the student's step dad "listens to this band all the time, so i hear it so much that i kinda like it." not likely i imagine.

the best response of all was from the student who simply asked me to press "stop! stop! stop! stop! stop!"

posted by kazuhank @ 2:35 PM