When it comes to alternative, punk, pop-punk and other subgenres of rock music, fans are diehard. These people, who have formed their own culture, come together for a common cause: to support their favorite bands, who some fans claim have done as much as saved their lives through music. With fans so invested in this music and the performers within it, every headline in Alternative Press is breaking news: new albums, record deals, tour dates, break ups.
Pollak Theatre was filled on Saturday night with a crowd ready for some acoustic music from local songwriters. Songwriters by the Sea is a series of concerts hosted by musicians Joe D’Urso and Professor Joe Rapolla, Chair of the Department of Music and Theatre. The round-robin style concert brought together three local professional musicians to play with D’Urso and Rapolla, while three university students opened up for the professionals.
In a world where indie music runs the gamut of quirky synth pop, lavish baroque pop, and guys wearing suspenders who sell lots of albums, it’s hard to forget that, for a while, indie rock wasn’t hard to define – grungy, sloppy, yet heartfelt rock music a bunch of guys probably wrote in their friends basement.
The University was host to the inaugural poet Richard Blanco on Tuesday, March 25. Speaking in Pollak Theater, as opposed to the usual Wilson Hall auditorium, he served as the most recent installment in the visiting writer’s series as well as one of the most prestigious speakers to come to campus in the last few years. This event was co-sponsored by the honors school.
When The Pretty Reckless first broke onto the scene with their album “Light Me Up” back in February of 2011, their blend of hard rock roots and aggressive, sexually charged lyrics set them apart from both other bands and from their female-led musical predecessors. One of the other main factors for their huge popularity was the chatter all across the internet at the band’s choice of frontrunner and leadsinger, Taylor Momsen, a name that left some going, “Who?” while others said, “Cindy Lou Who!”
Of all the feisty teenage heroines that have populated television culture in recent years, perhaps none were more quick-witted or unflinchingly self-aware than high school detective Veronica Mars. Played with a familiar snarky attitude by the pitch perfect Kristen Bell, Veronica was revived from a premature television graveyard to solve one more mystery on March 14 in the film adaptation, “Veronica Mars.”
The University’s student-run record label, Blue Hawk Records, will be dropping their third EP and hosting a live show outside the Rebecca Stafford Student Center on Wednesday, April 30. Having already launched two successful compilations since the label’s inception in 2013, Professor Joe Rapolla and his Music Industry students are currently working hard to write, record, and deliver new tracks.
The films of director Wes Anderson have always had a sort of architectural sense to them, with every minute detail, from the dialogue to the music to the stance and position a character is standing in a shot, being meticulously crafted and constructed as a small piece of a greater, more elaborate whole.
Boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy finds mysterious plant from outer space and feeds it humans in order to achieve success and keep girl. While this may not sound like the typical love story, it is what happens downtown in the University’s spring musical “Little Shop of Horrors,” which opened on March 5 in Lauren K. Woods Theatre.
Pharrell Williams (also known as Skateboard P) is back at it again, hoping to gain much more positive exposure with his second solo album “GIRL,” released on March 5. His first solo album, released back in 2006, “In My Mind” didn’t turn out so good within the eyes of the critics and his fans. Now, at the age of 40, he’s hoping for some positive results, and he is headed on the right track with his newly released single “Happy” after it shot to number one on the music charts.