Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Research So Far...

I found many things when I was researching for my event, “Star Course Presents The Academy Is…” which is at Foellinger Auditorium on November 18, 2009 featuring the Secret Handshake. I am going to this event, but it was very interesting what I found out during my research. Their style of music is characterized as punk rock, pop, and even emo. When watching and listening to their music, they like to be youthful and talk about the "good ol' days" of high school in their songs. One of their songs proves this point is their song “Summer Hair = Forever Young”. In this song, he sings about being in love with this girl though she’s moving on with her life, while he still wants to be young. Look at part of the lyrics to song: “Stop making plans, start making sense/Don't you believe any word they said/Sparked up, sparked up like a book of matches/Falling through the night and rising from the ashes/I'll never let you go/Don't ever forget/Tell me you'll remember /Forever young”.

I also looked at some reviews from their new “album”, “Lost in Pacific Time: The AP – EP”, and their old album, “Fast Times at Barrington High”. Some of the reviews were good, and some were bad. One of the reviews for their album “Lost in Pacific Time: The AP – EP”, they said that they were still going at their youthful ways, though many of the bands that they toured with (such as Fall Out Boy), have moved on and moved on musically and on to other topics. A reviewer from review rinse repeat said that they sounded like a “high school themed dime-a-dozen pop route” (http://www.reviewrinserepeat.com/2009/10/24/the-academy-is-lost-in-pacific-time-ep-review/). But others, such as the reviewer from ign.com talked about how they brought an “upbeat and hopeful feel of their earlier work” and even said they could be put into a mixtape (http://music.ign.com/articles/901/901197p1.html). If you read the review from Rollingstone.com, I think this one sheds a pretty good light on the album: http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/22214937/review/22664981/fast_times_at_barrington_high

Overall, I would say that after this research, their purpose is making music that is youthful and brings back old memories of high school. Definitely their target audience I believe would be high schoolers to some of the youth in college (16 – 24). But the older generation wouldn’t like it because of the sound and how they look (because some won’t exactly approve of a guy wearing a low v-neck shirt with a long haircut and tight pants). As for the posters, I looked at some of the posters from similar artists, and it seems they are all bright colored, have a random theme to their posters (some with deer or rainbows on them), but sometimes can be “rough around the edges”.

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