teach naked: punk edition

I was reminded recently of this midterm I used while teaching at mcnally-smith college of music in the hub.  I'd made some reference to a seminal punk band--the boomtown rats--and not a single member of that class of overlyhip, overlyhyped snottynosed brats even pretended to know the group.  so I created this midtern in order to get their priorities corrected.  feel free to try it yourself or use it to bring a class' appreciation of history to the fore. 

MIDTERM

Johnny Thunders died for your sins!  So you have a better knowledge and, perhaps, appreciation for the aesthetics of punk, you’re going to learn to write an album review.  You will choose one of the albums listed below, listen to it at least three times all the way through, and review it for a Punk Planet-like publication.  Reviewing doesn’t mean you say you like it or not—no one cares if you like it.  What you must do is put yourself in the frame of mind of someone who is the target audience for the album, the average punk consumer, and locate elements in the songs that would appeal to him or would turn him off.  The usual requirements are still the same—500 words, two double-spaced typed pages, no spelling or grammatical errors.  The change is that I’m going to read it exactly like an editor, which means I’ll read it with an eye toward whether I’m going to print it or not.  The grade I give it is the percent chance it would have of getting published.  (Unlike an actual editor, from whom you’d only hear “yes” or “no,” I’ll make corrections and suggestions and write comments on it.)  Wikipedia has an excellent article on punk and its definition at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk_rock, so it would be a good idea to start there. 

Albums

• Bad Brains, Bad Brains
• Bad Religion, The Empire Strikes First
• Blondie, Blondie
• Butthole Surfers, Locust Abortion Technician
• Buzzcocks, Flat Pack Philosophy
• The Clash, Combat Rock
• Dead Kennedys, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
• The Devotchkas, Live Fast, Die Young
• Elvis Costello and the Attractions, This Year’s Model
• Flogging Molly, Within a Mile of Home
• Gang of Four, Solid Gold
• The Mekons, Fear and Whiskey
• The Muffs, Blonder and Blonder
• Le Tigre, Le Tigre
• The New York Dolls, The New York Dolls
• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Best of…
• Patti Smith, Horses
• Pere Ubu, The Art of Walking
• The Pixies, Doolittle
• The Plasmatics, Coup d’Etat
• The Ramones, Rocket to Russia
• Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Blank Generation
• Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks—Here’s the Sex Pistols!
• Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Best of…
• Sleater-Kinney, The Woods
• The Slits, Cut
• Talking Heads, Talking Heads:  77
• Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground
• X, Under the Big Black Sun
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fever to Tell