The Soundtrack to My Life

Music 101

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» Purchase Rolling Stone Cover to Cover

Another semester has started and I am once again overwhelmed with reading endless pages every evening. Along with literature and writing courses, I am also taking a music class this semester. Even though I am only one week into the course, I have never been more excited to learn about the history of rock and roll. Everything I know about rock and roll music, I have taught myself by reading biographies and watching documentaries (I miss Behind the Music). Even though the course is not going to be focusing on certain bands or artist histories, I am preparing to learn how to differentiate between a major chord and a minor chord and also how rock and roll music was born out of jazz.

            To make up for that, I bought Rolling Stone Cover to Cover: The First 40 Years. Rolling Stone magazine released every issue of their momentous magazine on four DVD-ROMs, which span from 1967-2007. Every article, picture, and advertisement is viewable through the DVDs. I can now experience the music and politics of the late 60’s and 70’s as it was happening and making history. I look forward to following Cameron Crowe as a 15-year-old journalist following the Allman Brothers Band on tour through the making of his films in the 1980’s and beyond. I have long admired photographer Annie Leibovitz’s stunning photographs of celebrities, always capturing them in intimate poses, using her black and white vision to represent the real person behind the art each creates.  

            I am also excited to re-experience the decades of music that I have lived through. For example bands such as Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots, and Pearl Jam helped define my teenage years in the 1990’s. Of course, I was also independently discovering Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones, wondering where they had been all my life.

            Music has always played in the background through all the ups and downs in my life. I play it in celebration of an important event or milestone; to escape from stress, sadness and pain; and on some level, to feel understood.  

            I am looking forward to increasing my knowledge of music this semester, and I will be sharing it in my blogs along the way.