2011: Ghareck's blog: ISU time :)

Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend is a band that has had an Album released after 95’, so I will pick them. They are an Indie band that does a lot of worldy like music. The members are Ezra Koenig, Rostam Batmanglij, Chris Tomson, and, Chris Baio. They all met while attending Columbia University, and started as a comedy rap group. They all showed an interest in African music and punk music. Their name comes from a short film by Ezra of the same name. After Graduating, the band worked on their first album while working full time jobs. The Bands first album Vampire weekend was released in January of 2008, with XL records, and it went to 17 on the UK Billboards 200. Their second album Contra was released January 2010, and it debut at number 1 on the billboard 200. After that the played a bunch of festivals. This album was nominated for a Grammy, but lost to the black keys (Who I think didn’t deserve it).

The music, as I said above, is very African inspired, so they use bongos and vocal harmonies. Their music is pop though, rather fast songs, hooks, listen to once and have it in your head. The instruments used are the generic band set up with guitar, drums, bass, singer, but they use a lot of bongos and cellos and violins. They draw a lot of inspiration from Paul Simon's Graceland. Their Style is very preppy with brands like, Polo, lacoste, etc, very high end brands. They where a lot of collard colourful shirts.

            The music is about weird stuff and lyrics like “who gives a fuck about an oxford comma?” which an oxford comma is a comma that is before an “and” in a list like for example: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Richard Starkey, and George Harrison. A lot of lyrics about nothing or to me at least, I’m sure they do but it doesn’t seem it. A lot of bongo-like drums are used in the recording of their songs. They sing about peter Gabriela, but there music is compared to a lot to Paul Simon's Graceland.

                                                               Paul Simon

    Paul Simon is an artist who started out in the duo Simon and Garfunkel, split off and became famous with his solo career. Paul Simon was born January 19^th 1941, in New Jersey, to some Jewish immigrants, and his dad played professional bass. Lil ol’ Paul remembers his dad complementing him on his singing and that could have made him think about being a singer. He started singing with Art Garfunkel at the age of 13. Paul started writeing songs by 57’ and some are on crappy unknown labels. In 1964 they got signed to Columbia records as Simon & Garfunkel. Their fisrt album recorded was Wednesday morning 3 a.m, but was a flop till they overdubbed guitar into the track Sounds of Silence, then they got big. After they got big they recorded four great records, Sounds of Silence; Parsley, sage, rosemary thyme; Bookends; and Bridge over Troubled water. Simon And Garfunkel disband in 1970. Paul went out to record some solo work, like There goes rhymin’ Simon, Still Crazy After All These Years, and most notably for this Graceland.

Though he has more folk music, Graceland is very worldy and inspired by African music. Vampire Weekend was inspired a lot by this album ;) so I will talk about that. Graceland was recorded in 1986 to Warner Brother’s music. Paul went to

south Africa

in need of inspiration of music. What came from it is a great record. He got the inspiration to go there after hearing some of there music in a tape he had. The music is African influenced and has African singing at points with him. It is also one of his most successful albums to date. It is raked as one of the greatest albums ever or like 46^th I think. The music uses African inspired drums and electronic music, and African singing. He sings more like folk singing like telling a story. His lyrics are like almost everyday things like conversations, and storys about kind of average people. Paul simon was inspired by folk music and a artist called Woody Guthrie.

Woody Guthrie

Guthrie was born july 14^th 1912 in Oklahoma. Everywhere he went his house was burned on fire and his sis died, they think the mom did it. Hi mother was locked up in an institution for being crazy. His dad had to work off debt, so the eldest brother raised them. He learned to play harmonica from a pal, and played for money or a sandwich. He wasn't a great student and dropped out of school ;). His dad brought him to texas and he played for a lil bit of money here and there. He lived there awhile and then moved to California. In California he achieved success as a radio host and played a little music there. He learned a lot about politics here, and left due to different opinions. He went to New York City there he wrote his most famous song “This Land is your land”, and recorded a lil music to victor music. He got a job making big bucks with another radio station and moved to central park west, but quite because they told him what to sing. He moved to Washington with a movie soundtrack/narration job, but the film never really happened. He got bored and moved AGAIN to N.Y.C and played music with his friends. He started recording a bit in 44 more profeesionaly called the Asch recordings. He died October 3^rd 1967.

Well, Woody is obviously a folk artist no arguin’ that. Instrumentation is just woody an acoustic guitar and a voice. His voice is not the greatest, like most folk singers (Bob Dylan), but you have to look past that to his lyrics. He mostly does preotest songs or songs that will change something. He is most famous for his song This Land Is Your Land ( I remember singing a Canadian version in nova Scotia ;)). He wrote famously on his guitar “this machine kills fascists”, which is another folk thing to do. But Not all folk is like that, some just tell stories. He dressed very 1930s :D.

                                                              Comparisons

Well simon was deff inspired of Woody becase anyone who knows anything about folk admires what hes done. Most of S&G’s music is just an acostic guitar and singing. But the music from woody to vampire weekend is very different, you go from African music to very American music. In a way it’s neat how 2 different genres can be linked so easily.    I mean Paul Simon might have been inspired by Woody, but also inspired by African music, so really, he doesn’t have one genre he listens to. They all tell a story though the song Walcot is a story where as Dimonds on the soles of her shoes is a story. I guess in a way Vampire weekend was more inspired by Graceland then Paul Simon, and Paul got inspired by a tape he had in his car. It’s hard both vampire weekend and Paul Simon kind of cross over in genres to make there own sound, where as Woody IS just folk. Vampire weekend also admired peter Gabriel, but I’d rather not do a preoject on them, and I think there music sounds more like Graceland. I guess I can talk about the inspirations to Graceland.

                                                         Boyoyo boys

  A very underground south African group. They became more famous through a gent named Malcolm Mclaren, who is a rapper who made raps out of everything in the world. And the song gumboots by Paul Simon is actually their song just he sang over it. They have a couple albums and there drummer died. That is what I got to say about that really.

Comparison again

well, comparing Boyoyo boys to Paul Simon is easy since he just borrowed there music, and vampire weekend. All African inspired music, a lot of drums bongos African like guitar. I think Boyoyo Boys are an instrumental group, where as VP and Simon are not. They gained inspiration from different sources. The instruments in Boyoyo’s music are just African instruments they here all the time, but to us it’s something weird. There is some new wave aspects to Paul Simons stuff and Vampire weekends stuff. Paul Simons “ you can call me al” and a lot of the contra album like “White sky” kind of electronic but TOO much. This really shows that people don’t just have one inspiration like Paul Simon and vampire weekend. I guess in away there both similar that way