my students are superconnected!

at school, there is something called a "selective" class every thursday during seventh period, and the teachers offer "fun" courses that the students sign up for, like "movie appreciation" or "trivia club" or "beginner's italian." it's a good way to see the students outside of the regular (math) class setting.
i'm doing an indie music 101 class (with a not-too-subtle emphasis on the canadian music scene). we started last week and did an intro on song analysis and discussed stuff like song structure and time signatures. i explained how probably 99% of all pop songs will have a 4/4 signature and played them a few examples (stars' "elevator love letter," the stills' "lola stars and stripes") and then showed them 3/4 (matt barber's "sleep in peace"). then, to shake things up, i showed them how original and interesting it was to have a 7/4 signature by playing broken social scene's "shoreline (7/4)."
these kids have some pretty fine taste in music. one guy told me he owns all the radiohead albums (a kindred spirit) and some of the others were recommending stuff to me. one girl had a mix cd w/ a tune by a band they all wanted me to hear on it, so i played the song, and it sounded exactly like my kind of thing. instrumental, moody...reminded me very much of the high school band i caught at hillside last summer called motion picture cinema. this band's called austin tv, and they're from mexico city.
i got very excited about an actual music scene existing here, but the students all reassured me that nobody would ever play puerto vallarta. guadalajara--yes, but pv--no. oh, well. i'd be willing to take the bus up there to catch a live act. these kids are gonna teach me a lot. we're going to have a mexican-canadian (and american, i guess) cultural music exchange. i've asked them to bring in songs they want to discuss, and i'm going to play stuff that i love for them as well. i can't believe i get to do this at school!
my lofty goal is to somehow convince a canuck indie band to actually come down here and play a show in pv. but for now, i'll settle for catching a hot mexican indie band that doesn't just play covers.

one of the girls in my class told me today that she'd made me a copy of austin tv's new album that hasn't even been released yet. i asked her how she'd managed to get her hands on the unreleased album, expecting her to say it leaked on the internet or something, but it turns out she knows the band and used to date the bassist and whatnot. she also told me she'd bring in a song by another mexican band that also plays in 7/4. really, these kids amaze me.

this school kicks some serious ass and i will leave you now w/ a photo that has a view of the secondary side of the campus and what it looks like in the morning when we arrive there.