Program Length: 1/2 hour
Produced: 1999

This study guide accompanies MuchMusic's Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Reading IV video. The video affirms the value of reading in people's lives and offers opportunities for listeners to better appreciate their favourite music. The study guide contains ideas and suggestions for discussion and activities that will help viewers better understand the relationships between reading and music and between reading and their own lives. It examines such questions as:
Where do musical artists get their ideas?
How do they keep their music fresh and interesting?
What is the relationship between their art and their reading?
How does reading fit into their daily activities?

Choose the most suitable activities from the following list. Some are better done before viewing, some after, some during. Do not do all the items, but select those that best match viewers' interests and what they want to learn about reading.

1. Byron Wong opens the video by saying, "What inspires rock musicians? With everything changing in fashion, film, television and, of course, the music industry, inspiration is sometimes very hard to find. But one of the biggest sources [of inspiration] always comes from reading."

Do you agree that "changes make it harder to find inspiration?" If someone were looking for new ideas, wouldn't it be easier to find them in a time of rapid change rather than slow change? Can change be so rapid that an artist is in constant confusion, and therefore cannot find inspiration? How might reading help an artist focus on an idea long enough to find inspiration and create art? Does reading slow us down long enough to reflect upon and choose ideas?

2. Courtney Love read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead when she was twelve and states that it changed her life. How can a book change someone's life? How do you think The Fountainhead would change someone's life? What other books can you think of that might change lives? Why are they life-changing books? Are life-changing books good, or are they dangerous?

3. Marilyn Manson describes three books that he read while producing a CD:
Kurt Vonnegut, Welcome to the Monkey House
Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly [Philip K. Dick also wrote the short story that inspired the movie Bladerunner]
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
What ideas are common between the work of Marilyn Manson and the work of these three authors?

4. "You must have the devil in you to succeed in any of the arts."
Voltaire [Candide]
What does this statement mean to you?
Does Marilyn Manson have the devil in him? Explain.
Can you see an aspect of the devil in most successful artists? Explain.

5. "They know enough who know how to learn."
Henry Adams [The Education of Henry Adams]
How does this statement relate to Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Reading IV? Do musical artists read to learn? What are they learning? Do you read to learn?
What are you learning?

6. VIP uses magazines to "get at our fan base." What does "get at" mean? What does VIP learn about its fans from magazines? How can VIP use this information to better attract and please its fans? Which magazines are VIP using to research its fan base? Look at some of those magazines. What do they reveal about music fans?

7. Music-oriented Books
The video displays many books written on popular music and musicians. Why do you think people are so interested in popular music and musicians? Are people interested because they want to be musicians? What other reasons might there be? Consider the following list of suggested titles. Which ones interest you? Why? What music-related books do you like that are not presented in the video? Why do you like them?
Moon : The Life and Death of a Rock Legend, Tony Fletcher
U2 at the End of the World, Bill Flanagan
Good Girl, Bad Girl: An Insider's Biography of Whitney Houston, Kevin Ammons, Nancy Bacon
Hip Hop America, Nelson George
Walk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith, Stephen Davis
Blackbird: the Life and Times of Paul McCartney, Geoffrey Guilano
Hit Men, Fredric Dannen
Breaking into the Music Business, Alan H. Siegel
Your Own Way in Music, Nancy Usher
How to Pitch and Promote Your Songs, Fred Koller
Book Your Own Tour, Liz Garo
Neil and Me, Scott Young
Musicians in Tune: Seventy-Five Contemporary Musicians Discuss the Creative Process, Jenny Boyd, Holly George-Warren
Nick Drake, Patrick Humphries
On a Cold Road, Dave Bidini
"The big print giveth and the fine print taketh away," J. Fulton Sheen [Selling Catholicism : Bishop Sheen and the Power of Television, Simple Truths : Thinking Life Through, Characters of the
Passion: Lessons on Faith and Trust, Way to Happiness : An Inspiring
Guide to Peace, Hope and Contentment]

8. The First Time, Cher
Cher suggests that the "media are not as intimate as writing." What do
you think she means by this? Can someone be more honest or detailed in writing than in a song or a video? Why or why not?

Cher also states that, "There’s no place less safe than the media." What do you think she means by this? "Less safe" for what? How can the media be dangerous? If you were to create a message, how would writing it be different than making it into a video? What are the differences between an audience for a written message and an audience for a video message? How do these differences change the way artists might conceive and present their messages? How might the audience differences influence an artist's openness and honesty?

"Creative minds have always been able to survive any kind of bad training."
Anna Freud, [Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (The Writings of Anna Freud, Vol 2)]
 
9. Neil Gaimon, author of The Compleat Alice Cooper: Incorporating the Three Acts of Alice Cooper: The Last Temptation. Also the author of Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes; Sandman : The Kindly Ones; Sandman: Brief Lives (Vertigo.)

Neil Gaimon and Byron Wong match the fictitious "Endless" family members to personal bands. In doing so, they reveal their interpretations of the characters in the novel.

Choose a story you have read recently. Based on what you know of the characters, describe their favourite bands and their favourite books. How does this exercise help you better understand the characters?
"When the music’s over turn out the lights."
Jim Morrison
[The Lords, and the New Creatures, Poems, Wilderness : The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison, The American Night (The Writings of Jim Morrison, Vol 2).]
[No One Here Gets Out Alive (the story of The Doors) by Jerry Hopkins, Jery Hopkins, Danny Sugerman.]

10. The last statement in Rock 'n' Roll 'n' Reading IV is "Arm Yourself. Read." What does this mean to you? How can reading "arm" you? What could reading arm you with? What could reading arm you against?
In the movie Rambo, the main character states, "Knowledge is the greatest weapon." How does this statement connect to "Arm Yourself. Read?" Can you describe an experience in which reading "armed" you?

11. Reading and Musicians' Lifestyles
How might reading a book or magazine fit into the daily activities of a musical artist? Consider travel by bus, car or plane, waiting rooms, hotel living, recording studios, dressing rooms, TV appearances, music video shoots in studios and on location. What are the qualities of a book that make reading appropriate to this lifestyle? What other time-filling activities might suit this lifestyle? How are these activities similar to and different from reading? What moments in your life are well-suited to reading?

12. Several artists state that their reading has inspired some of their songs. What qualities of books might do this? Choose a music video or artist and discover the influences reading has had on his/her music. What connections do you note between The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, and the music, or life, of Courtney Love? What are the similarities between Marilyn Manson's videos and the writings of Kurt Vonnegut?

What do your favourite musical artists read?
Does their reading influence their music?
Do they have good taste in books?
Research to discover answers to these questions. There is an extensive
list of artists and their favourite authors that you can draw upon in
MuchMusic's" 'Word for Word", found at www.chumcity.com/events/w4w/.
Using the search function of your browser, find out how many different
musicians read the same author (at least two read John Grisham and another two read Leonard Cohen). What are the similarities between the musicians, their music and their favourite writers?

13. Reading and Viewing
Some people think that reading is an intelligent, beneficial activity, while watching video is for couch potatoes who are "rotting their brains." Does Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Reading IV’s descriptions of musical artists' current reading of books make their music seem more important? Does it make reading less important?
Do people usually identify reading with being smart, or nerdy, or unpopular? Do Jewel's comments about seeming a nerd in school support this concept? Take a look at the library associations' posters, which use celebrities to promote reading. Samples may be found on almost any library wall. Do these posters make reading seem smart, glamourous, and non-nerdy? Is that also the effect of Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Reading IV? How has Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Reading IV made reading more attractive or acceptable?

14. Fiction and Non-fiction
Some people prefer to read fiction and some prefer non-fiction. Novels are fiction, while biographies are non-fiction. Do you have a preference? There are many titles described in Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Reading IV. Which ones appeal to you most, the fiction or non-fiction titles? Read one of the suggested books. Did it fulfill your expectations?

15. Fascination with Music Industry Books
Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Reading IV describes many books which deal with the music industry. Why do you think people have such a fascination for the music industry? Do they want to get involved in the industry or just know more about it?
What would you like to know about the music industry? Which of the suggested titles might help you satisfy your need to learn?

16. Environmental Print
Several times during the video, the camera reveals many examples of what some people call "environmental print," or the print that we read without even knowing we are reading. Some of the examples shown are street signs, clothing logos, and T-shirt messages.
Predict the number of environmental print words people might unknowingly read by choosing a familiar activity - travelling to school, going to the mall, watching an evening's television - and research the number of words you read during the activity. Complete the activity list and count the words. How accurate was your guess? What did you learn about the amount of environmental print? How different would the experience be for someone who cannot read?  Explain.

How many words do you think you read while viewing Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Reading IV? 100? 200? 300? 1000?

Other titles mentioned in Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Reading IV:
Post Office, Charles Bukowski
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, Deepak Chopra
Martin Luther King: the Peaceful Warrior, Ed Clayton
The Weir, Conor McPherson
Motel Chronicles, Sam Shepard
A Night Without Armor, Jewel
I, Jedi (Star Wars), Michael A. Stackpole

Written by: Neil Andersen
Neil Andersen is an award-winning Curriculum Consultant with the Toronto District School Board. He is also a speaker and consultant in media and communications technology. His most recent work includes the Between the Lines CDs, the teachers' study guide for the award-winning Scanning Television, and study guides for Space, Bravo! and MuchMusic's Cable in the Classroom broadcasts of original media literacy programming.

For more information about MuchMusic's educational programming -- or to give us your feedback -- please contact: 

Calla Dewdney
Public Affairs Coordinator
CHUM Television
416-591-7400 x5940
callad@chumtv.com