Mus Hist 5: History of Rock n Roll

Term Project Prompt

Rather than an expository essay, we would like you to construct the materials for a class lecture in Music History 5. Your
lecture materials should cover some aspect of rock n roll and its derivative styles that I did not discuss, based in a 12-18
month period between 1954 and 1990 that does not overlap with the years I covered.
Here are the years from which you can pick:

1956-62, 1969-72, 1976-1982, 1986-1990

Your assignment will come in three parts:
1. You will construct a presentation like the ones I have used in class to present images, videos, quotes, demographic and
economic data, lyrics, and analytical discussion of music. The slide presentation should function for you like an outline of an
imaginary lecture in Mus Hist 5, with images, text, video, or graphics to illustrate each piece of whatever argument you want to
make about developments in the rock n roll world during the year you pick. Note that you WILL NOT NEED TO
PRESENT THIS MATERIAL IN SECTION. Your assignment is to do the preparation and show it to us for evaluation.
2. Most presentation software allows you to add presenter notes to slides in an actual presentation, this would be the place a
speaker would write notes to herself, or remind herself to make a particular set of points. We would like you to add notes to
your slides, telling us what the slide is doing in the presentation and (briefly) what you would say about it if you were stand up
in front of a class. (If your software does not work this way, youll need to write up a document with notes keyed to each slide.)
3. In addition to the presentation, you will create a playlist of songs in both document format and on Spotify. Model the
playlist on the ones I have been giving out that is, the playlist should come in sections, and the sections should provide a basic
outline of the large-scale structure of your presentation. (As you may have noticed, most of my own playlists have between
three and five sections, as do my lectures.) Be punctilious about listing the tracks, giving albums titles and dates for the songs,
as well as any other information (position on various Billboard charts, etc.) that might be useful in your imaginary lecture. If
you feel like prefacing the playlist with some key quotes that sum up the issues at play in your talk, thats very elegant and
will be appreciated. The Spotify playlist should be shared with your TA; consult with him/her if you are unsure how to do this.
Technical parameters:
1-2.

File formats, number and complexity of slides, length of annotations

You have several software options. Microsoft PowerPoint is the industry standard (its what I use), and you can assume
that we all have access to it. (Apple Keynote is OK, too, as long as you check with your TA.) If you are more familiar
with web-based presentation software, thats OK: Google Slides is a free alternative, and the online site Prezi has a nifty
panning and zooming spatial paradigm that might well spur your creativity. NOTE that we are not responsible if there is a
problem with web-based materials; be sure to save copies of your work, print out drafts, etc. so you are not left hanging if
there is a crash. (You have the same responsibility for files on your own hard drive.)
Your presentation must have a minimum of 20 unique slides with written presenter notes attached to each. (The presenter
notes are not the same as words on the slides themselves; there is no requirement for the number of words on slides, or
even that each slides has words on it!) The total word count for the notes should be 1000-1500 words. There is no set
upper limit to the number of actual slides you use; if you get into card-flip animations, that can multiply the number of
slides in your presentation. As a point of comparison, I estimate that I click to change the slide or trigger an animation
approximately 100 times in a two-hour lecture. You dont need to reach that limit, but I would think that 20 slides might
generate 30-40 clicks of the presenter mouse. You may also reference up to three slides from my lectures (you can
paste a slide image from my PDF versions on the CCLE site into your presentation), but these do not count towards the
20 unique slides you need to create. Note that you do not need to use animations or other complex techniques if you find
it too hard our focus will be on the content of the slides, not their complexity as PowerPoint art.
But DO attempt to work with high-quality images: you can ask Googles image search tools to show you only images
that are at least 800 x 600 pixels, which is the minimum that will look decent blown up to fill a slide. If you want to show
a video, please embed it in the presentation; there are a number of websites where you can grab content from YouTube
and other video sites for this purpose (keepvid.com is a decent one). Please DO NOT imitate Prof. Finks obsession with

elaborate and multiple typefaces, since these will not work when the presentations are opened up on your TAs computer.
(Stick to the standard fonts like Arial, Times, Helvetica, Courier, WingDings, etc.)
3.

Items on playlist
Your playlist should have no fewer than six songs on it, and no fewer than three artists. Note that the fewer songs and
artists you present, the higher is the expectation that your presentation will dig deeply into the songs you do present. (I
worked from one playlist with only three songs, but one of those songs was 29 minutes long; I also presented at least one
playlist which had songs from only one album; but I did a complex analysis of that album.) As a rule, your presentations
will fall into two basic types: a survey (think about my 1950s rocknroll lectures), which presents a lot of songs to be
compared to each other; or an analysis, which presents fewer songs, but tries to explain them in depth, structurally,
contextually, or historically. You may choose to provide a lyric sheet if your argument about the songs you want to
present depends on sustained discussion of the words.

Some Thoughts on How to Succeed:

1. Some of you will immediately know what year you want to focus on. If you are looking for inspiration, here is a quick
overview of events, genres, and other things I skipped:
1956-57 Elvis as a major media star; rock n roll as pop culture phenomenon; rise of teenager as cultural icon
1958-60 payola scandals, moral panic, and backlash against rock n roll (congressional hearings, prosecutions, etc.)
1960-62 rise of West Coast surf music and instrumental rock n roll; heyday of NYC doo-wop, girl groups
1969-72 Charles Manson, Altamont; singer-songwriters; country/Southern rock; black rock/funk; rock operas, musicals; FM radio
1976-82 rise of UK punk and LA punk/hardcore; NWOBHM; UK reggae and two-tone; New Wave; birth of MTV; cassettes
1986-90 college and indie rock (Boston, Athens, GA, etc.); roots of grunge in Pacific NW; LA hard rock; the compact disc

2. I hope youve noticed that I try to build on previous lectures when I construct a new one; as the class progresses, we reencounter the same concepts, and sometimes the same people and sounds. In creating this imaginary lecture, you have my actual
lectures to draw on, and you can even use a few of my slides from a previous lecture to make a connection if you wish. Thus,
one way to approach the problem of your year is to ask what happened to the genres, issues, historical trends, structural
techniques, etc. that we have been following through the class. Some possible entry questions of this type: Is there a new
perspective on perennial issues like race and segregation; the baby boom and the counterculture; the music business; music and
community; sex and drugs; etc.? Does your chosen year include a major musical innovation? A new form of music consumption
or distribution? A new genre? A new historical perspective? The debut of a major figure in the history of rock? A landmark
song, album, concert tour, movie, etc.?
3. Dont spread yourself too thin. You dont need to cover everything that happened, even in one genre of rock, during your
imaginary lecture. At least try to see if there is an artist, event, genre, or issue that can tie together your presentation.
4. Another entry point highly recommended no matter what path you take is to look at the historical record left by the music
business during your year. You can, of course, use Wikipedia for quick and dirty chart information, and to scan the year in
question for bands, songs, albums, deaths, and trends. But dont stop there. We have free access to much more detailed chart
info from Music Industry Data (MusicID), and a reservoir of rock criticism in Rocks Back Pages, as well as databases of music
industry periodicals (Muse, JSTOR, Lexis/Nexus Academic Universe), through the UCLA Music Library Website. Check out
this KEY list:

http://guides.library.ucla.edu/content.php?pid=459313&sid=3843097
Due Date: submit your materials (presentation file/link + document file or PDF + Spotify playlist link) as links or
attachments on a single email to your TA, which must arrive in the TAs mailbox before the start of your scheduled
section on June 3-5. (Leave time for network congestion.) ALSO bring printouts of your slides and handouts to the last
section and hand them in personally to your TA.
Warning: skipping the final section and/or handing in the presentation afterwards will result in a serious compromise
to your grade. We reserve the right to lower your grade one mark (A to A-; B- to C+) for every 24 hours your
assignment is late.