Hello and welcome to Morganchem, the home of all things NErDy at Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School and the official web presence of Michael Morgan.
I take your child's education very seriously. It is with that intention that I have provided this webpage for you and your child to help get a better understanding of what goes on in their Chemistry class. Here you will find our weekly and semester long schedules, copies of all the homework assignments and laboratories, daily announcements, and important information to help parents keep their children on track.
To learn more about my academic activities and the success of my students view my biography under the "about" menu. For those interested in the many different academic activities that my students are involved in on a daily basis outside normal class hours look at the Chem Club page on the "about" menu.
Over the past twenty years music education has disappeared from our schools. This becomes obvious when listening to new music on the radio only to hear music that is unoriginal or even bad. Most of today's so called artists do not write their own music or even play their own instruments.
So in the spirit of teaching you everything we can, this page features an Album of the Week. These are not ordinary albums in the history of music. These are the groundbreaking pieces of music that truly shaped how music was presented, recorded, and how it influenced other musicians and the public.
A few notes about the choices. They are albums and not collections of single songs thrown together willy-nilly. They were meant to be played in order. They often told a story or set a mood. Some of them defined a genre and some defined a generation. I strongly recommend that you ask your Parents/Grandparents to dig through their record collections and find their old copies of these and put them on the turntable and experience them the way they were meant to be experienced.
The Joshua Tree by U2. It was 1987 and music was having a decent time. There were people buying records and touring bands were selling tickets. But there was nothing truly definitive about the time. That was all about to change. In 1985 U2 played the epic Live Aid fundraiser and stole the show. The pure raw emotion that Bono displayed made everyone watching stand up and take note. Their epic 12 minute rendition of Bad from the Unforgettable Fire album brought the band to the forefront of music. In fact Rolling Stone called U2 “The only band that mattered”. The other breakout performance of the day was Queen.
After that U2 went into the studio and made what was to become their breakthrough album called The Joshua Tree. It brought emotion and political conscience back to rock music as if Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan had both pulled them in and said “Wake up boys!”. If nothing else the track Bullet the Blue Sky would have warranted it being one of the best albums of all time, but there was more. The influence of American music is found throughout the whole album. Gospel and Protest songs are...(continued)
The Joshua Tree by U2. It was 1987 and music was having a decent time. There were people buying records and touring bands were selling tickets. But there was nothing truly definitive about the time. That was all about to change. In 1985 U2 played the epic Live Aid fundraiser and stole the show. The pure raw emotion that Bono displayed made everyone watching stand up and take note. Their epic 12 minute rendition of Bad from the Unforgettable Fire album brought the band to the forefront of music. In fact Rolling Stone called U2 “The only band that mattered”. The other breakout performance of the day was Queen.
After that U2 went into the studio and made what was to become their breakthrough album called The Joshua Tree. It brought emotion and political conscience back to rock music as if Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan had both pulled them in and said “Wake up boys!”. If nothing else the track Bullet the Blue Sky would have warranted it being one of the best albums of all time, but there was more. The influence of American music is found throughout the whole album. Gospel and Protest songs are evident. In fact U2 realized they had no specific direction that they had to follow and just explored.
When it came out in 1987 this album had a huge impact on college campuses across America. Students listened to it regularly and it could be heard blasting out of dorm windows all weekend long. In fact it alerted many students for the first time to the idea that an album should be played straight through. Not just one song at a time. The tracks flowed beautifully from one to the next. The tour that followed its release became the subject of an amazing documentary called Rattle and Hum. It included a great cover of the Bob Dylan track “All Along the Watchtower”.