English, baby!

Vampire Weekend

Date: Jun 02 2008

Themes: Music

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

The way bands get famous is changing. If you just learn about new music from the radio, you could miss a few things. Even if you keep track of music online, if you blink you might miss the next big thing.

Blogs and social networks have a history of breaking bands, but they are even more powerful now because traditional media pays attention to them. Jason recently saw a band on the cover of a magazine that he had never heard of before. Looks like he wasn’t reading the same websites the people at the magazine were.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Jason

Beren

Jason: So it’s not often that there will be a band on the cover of Spin that I never heard of at all, just never even heard their name. Who is Vampire Weekend?

Beren: Good question?

Jason: Is it even a band? Or is it a weekend? I don’t know.

Beren: It’s a band! It’s a band. These kids from…They all went to Columbia University. And their whole shtick is they have this afro-pop guitar thing, kind of like Talking Heads.

Jason: Afro-pop? OK. Huh.

Beren: Yeah, but they’re like preppy. It’s like preppy rock. Like prep-rock. It’s weird. It’s sweeping the…

Jason: What does prep-rock/afro-rock have to do with vampires and the undead?

Beren: I don’t know. Maybe it’s some obscure reference, like somebody’s a lit major or something, ‘cause they went to Columbia.

Jason: Oh, fair enough. So they’re a little heady.

Beren: Uh-huh. Yeah. A little heady. A little pointy headed.

Jason: But where’d they come from? I mean like…I’ve never heard their name and all of a sudden they’re on the cover of magazines.

Beren: It’s this weird new phenomenon. The blog culture. It’s out of control right now. Bands will have a CDR they send to a blog and the next day they’re going to be famous.

Jason: Really? So blogs blew them. Which blogs?

Beren: Stereogum, brooklynvegan, Pitchfork.

Jason: Really? Those are pretty hard to get into, I feel like. Those blogs are pretty much as hard to get into as Spin or Rolling Stone in way, you know?

Beren: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason: But I guess they just move faster because they can get a CD in the mail and put it up right away.

Beren: Yeah totally. If they’re into it. Right, right. I’m sure they gut hundreds, maybe even thousands of CDs. Like, Stereogum’s pretty big, but it’s probably not as hard to get on as Pitchfork, but then there’s the trickle-down effect. Everybody who links to Stereogum.

Jason: Crazy. So if you don’t pay attention to cyberspace, you won’t know what’s going on in real life too, apparently.

Beren: Most likely. I don’t know. And the weird thing about that too is the turnover’s so fast. You can be famous for like one day now.

Jason: Yeah. Vampire Who?

Quizzes

Go Super to take Quiz

Lesson MP3

Go Super to download full lesson MP3

Go Super to Ask Ebaby! teachers your questions!

The iTEP^® test

Sponsored by

Schedule an iTEP^® test and take the official English Practice Test.
Take Now >

Discussion

How often do you see a band on the cover of a magazine that you have never even heard the name of? It’s pretty rare these days since you’re likely to hear about new bands online. So Jason was surprised when Spin featured a group called Vampire Weekend that he had never heard of. (Although this isn’t the first instance of print media following the lead of a website.)

Beren explains that the band has an African-influenced guitar sound and went to Columbia University. The reason Jason hasn’t heard of them is that they were launched into fame quickly by blogs. Magazines are continuing to help them get popular.

Blogs don’t have to wait for pages to print, so they can make artists famous very quickly. But such artists are often easily forgotten. Jason jokes that Vampire Weekend’s 15 minutes of fame is already over and it remains to be see if they will be just a flash in the pan.

Where do you learn about new music?

Comments

abdullah999

Seychelles

It doesn’t matter for me this dialogue

xiaosa521

China

hello.

pls add my msn:./

ths

guiltylove

India

I think blog is a big platform to communication ! I like read different blogs ! That is good experience for myself! I can learn some important things in Blogs! I wanna try to write something that i like in my blog!

sanion

Azerbaijan

So strange band but Travis is better////

ruanjable

China

I DID LOG ON THEIR BLOG, AND FOUND THEIR MUSIC A BIT STRANGE, BUT SOUNDS GOOD.

IT'S NO IN MY WAY.

TAHIR HUSSAIN

Pakistan

I NEVER HEARD ABOUT THEM BUT IT DOES'NT MEAN

SÉRGIO

Brazil

I usually met several bands by the internet, it's a good way to search it. I often download many new music from good unknown bands. I like a lot of kind of music very much!!

zhoumin

China

o(∩_∩)o…

giska

Congo, Democratic Republic Of The

I learn about new music in watching TV and listen radio.

epicatin

Nicaragua

I feel identified with this conversation because there're many singers who I have never seen before and then I watch on t.v that they are very famous and have a ton of mony and I wonder who buy their albums because for me they are not famous, but they are.