EMP 2008 Pop Conference

RACIST!

Hehe, after Lethem finished his keynote speech, he fielded questions from the audience, included one guy who was all "RACIST!" and Lethem was all "O_o", but xgau defused the situation pretty well. Then he called on some high school kids sitting by the back wall who asked him "What do you think of the theory that Kurt Cobain didn't commit suicide, but was murdered instead", and Lethem was all "o_O" and said he had no opinion whatsoever and was kind of visibly flustered by these dumb questions.

This whole time I was sitting with Alfred and a couple other Stylus types, across the room from everyone else I knew. After the misbegotten Q&A section ended, Matos and Ned and Mackro came up to me all like "Rodney WTF!!!", and I was like "O_o" because I had no idea what they were on about. Apparently, they thought I had asked the Cobain question, but no, it was the kids in the back. What a trip.

rev do you think bush orchestrated 9/11

Why does Bush never want to rock?

I think Bush, the '90s grunge band, orchestrated 9/11.

Aw, here we go...

Opening night great, reception wonderful, Lethem speech v. cool, q&a session afterwards...interesting. Especially the Kurt Cobain question.

-- Ned Raggett, Thursday, April 19, 2007 10:57 PM (Thursday, April 19, 2007 10:57 PM) Bookmark Link

I wanna know if the Cobain guy is going to ask that question at every panel. I thought it must be Richard Lee (Seattle's infamous "Kurt Cobain was murdered" guy), but apparently not.

-- AKA Mr. Jaq, Thursday, April 19, 2007 11:18 PM (Thursday, April 19, 2007 11:18 PM) Bookmark Link

Ned, you were mad wrong for trying to blame the Cobain question on me!

-- The Reverend, Friday, April 20, 2007 1:42 AM (Friday, April 20, 2007 1:42 AM) Bookmark Link

Gwen Stefani: The Real Terrorist!

My planned proposal on Lancelot Link and the Evolution Revolution was doomed to failure.

I support you, Joe.

Rev, I wasn't in the middle of the L.A. Riots, but I was close enough when it happened. If you need perspectives from a dumb college radio white boy in Orange County in April of 1992, I'm your man.

And I'll add similar perspectives from the same general locale (in this case from UCLA).

Anyway, the Rev's proposal had best be accepted dammit. (As should everyone's!)

rev do you think bush orchestrated 9/11

People who don't believe the official whitewash. Lol.

I submitted mine yesterday morning. Good luck to everyone.

Alright. Thanks, Mackro, Ned.

Haha mine is already doomed to ignominious failure, but it got in under the deadline so eff the haterz.

What is yours?

luck, all.

I will only tell in the hopes that Ned & Alf tell theirs: “A Luscious Bitch She Is, True: George Clinton Countering the American Counterrevolution.”

Sweeeet, I'm rooting for you.

Holy Moley, I wanna see that! Yours, too, Rev.

You too, that should be awesome -- my friend Wendy was a high school teacher in South Central and was escorted to her car and out of the neighborhood by her students.

Haha, that's a brilliant idea Matt. :-) Yay!

Mine: "Wide Awake in a World That Sleeps: Reenergizing with VNV Nation"

Let's see how Ned can combine his with mine: "Staring at the Sun: The Larynx of Bono Across the Curriculum."

Best title!

I'm singing that title to Ultra Vivid Scene, who had a song called "The Mercy Seat" (not THAT "Mercy Seat"), which was about S&M, which is seen to be the province of industrial music to a large degree, which VNV Nation is grouped in. Yay.

Panel proposal, then.

If we're not all accepted for this shizz, I quit. Not sure what I'm quitting but still.

i have my own ideas, but i'd be interested in the topic of

* why protest/topical/political/etc music is usually so awful and uninspiring except for the minutemen and "we are the world". maybe there is a thread on that somewhere.

well, my quick answer would be:
* some music is political
* most music is so awful and uninspiring
hence...

A less nerdy answer is: there are lot more great political music groups/artist than we think. We just don't think of them as political groups or artists.

I kind of like "Actually, you're wrong, there is plenty of great protest music, WE are the problem" instead.

But of course I don't have the time to back this boring-ass opinion up yet.

well, the latter comes from the former partially. So yeah, that too.

Actually, you're wrong, there is plenty of great protest music, WE are the problem" instead.

THERE'S A CHERCE WE'RE MAKIN', WE'RE SAVIN HOUR OWN LAHVES.

http://www.bigozine2.com/cdcvrs/images3/BSwegottagetout/BSwegotttagetoutFr.jpg

xp I hear ya, Big Mack.

A less nerdy answer is: there are lot more great political music groups/artist than we think. We just don't think of them as political groups or artists.

Quite. This in part is the focus of my paper (without pretending to have heard everything that could be described with said term, VNV's album this year was easily my favorite politicized release, or at least spoke to me on that level most strongly).

yeah, i am partial to that view. something about music being explicitly political is problematic.

except when it is and i like it

http://www.84tigers.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/crass4.jpg

(example of overtly political music that, IMHO, is awesome)

As artdamages says, it depends on the point of view of the listener. The Mexican American community, for example, loves details. Two of my favorite protest music things this year are quite explicit: Los Tigres del Norte's "El Muro" ("The Wall") basically tells Bush "go ahead build your wall, we'll burn it down," and Chingo Bling's whole album They Can't Deport Us All has been targeted by all those crazy Malkin clones for months.

PublicEnemyPics.zip

I fear we have taken this thread into a weird area.

I keep forgetting to seek out that Chingo album.

xpost - do you like weird areas?

if you do, you should come to the Pop Conf, whether you get accepted or not. (then again, not sure how far away you are from Seattle)

I am very far away, and I'm not sure it's going to be all that cool for me to just be like "see ya family". On the other hand, maybe we could all use a vacation that week....

agreed that crass is often. sorry to derail the inside music critic baseball that was intended.

by often i meant awesome or alternately that i often listen to their music

no no dont be all defensive like that artdamages; i was just pointing out that the thread had gone all wonky. but i like wonky, and the discussion is good.

Hahaha

Always amazing when the left and right go so far around the bend they meet up again. Sounds like (based admittedly on no direct exposure to her writings) her quasi-progressive critique of science's aspersions to truth would dovetail quite nicely with the recent fundamentalist attack on science.

And it ain't just Xgau. I bow to the genius in every sentence of this Scott Seward review:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0228,seward,36351,22.html

Skot (and I as his significant other) got death threats from "Jukies" in response to that review. It really riled some folks. Someone sent me a msg that if I ever set foot in Brooklyn they'd smash my face in the pavement.

holy shit, that first paragraph is hysterical

The second for me:

El-P's rhymes are as wack as a lumberjack swinging an ax made of wax from the ears of Tears for Fears after they drank all the beers and found Britney Spears in arrears for illiciting too many middle-aged leers and hipster sneers. On the other hand, instrumentally, he's good.

Yeah, I haven't read much Scott Seward, but every time someone posts something of his, I find that it's the new best thing ever written. Line Ned posted is definitely a favorite from the El-P piece.

"I'll make ya quake. Scare ya so bad your ass will be Farrah and your drawers will be Cheryl Ladd."

*** *** ***

I suppose the value of academic/technical jargon is that it allows you to pack very complex ideas (and idea sets, ideas about ideas, references, etc.) into small spaces, where they can be played off each other. This assumes an audience familiar with the terminology and its implications, so yeah, it can impede broader communication, but broad-channel communication isn't always the #1 goal. Sometimes you just just want to get the concepts across as efficiently as possible.

Ned beat me to it. EXCELLENT review. The best line that sums up what I like and don't like about the latest El-P.

Like Skinny Puppy made a record and let their plumber sing.

Someone sent me a msg that if I ever set foot in Brooklyn they'd smash my face in the pavement.

Ha ha, I'm imagining the guy furiously text messaging this.

Neoliberalism, neoliberal, neoliberals: know what they mean, can see why they're used, but avoid them myself. They might fall into the category of an ideology that goes nameless in order to pass itself off as "common sense," but conservatives would say the same thing about left-wingers who don't like communism, liberalism, or anti-Americanism as labels. I prefer openly argumentative language, such as "free-market true believers" or "free-market hucksters" or "the self-serving ideology of First World international lenders," etc.

At EMP "neoliberalism" was code for "Clintonism."

Lol I'm def making an ass of myself

No you're not. You're managing to have a humane argument on ILM for which I'm grateful.

Someone sent me a msg that if I ever set foot in Brooklyn they'd smash my face in the pavement.

You've got to be fucking kidding me! So much for the underground.

I understand your point, Pete, but the descriptive phrases you prefer fail to do what the word "neoliberalism" does so effectively: encapsulate a complex set of ideas and historical references into a small space. Neoliberal is (or can be considered) good jargon, because it's much more efficient than a sidebar on the history of economic liberalism.

As a buzzword, though, it plainly sucks. Maybe the difference between academic obfuscation and beat-to-death buzzwords figures in here.

I gotta ask, though, Pete - is your favorite book Madame Bovary? It's mine...

I take Pete for a Portrait of a Lady fan.

Loved Bovary in high school, but what's the connection?

Le mot juste

Flaubert was obsessed with finding it

A blog posting from someone who is on the committee planning the next conference http://swtos.blogspot.com/2008/08/politics-of-race-bodies-on-popular.html

was recently asked to participate on the program committee of a major popular music conference that happens each spring in Seattle. If you know pop music, you know I mean the EMP Conference. Seattle is home to the great Jimi Hendrix and EMP has a great exhibit happening now on Jimi. The program committee selects the upcoming topic and puts the call for papers together. Who attends the conference? A mix of music journalists and academics. And some industry folks and publishers of popular music from A to Z.The conference itself has always struck me as driven by the participation of predominately white driven set and discourse of POP music. It occurs for me as a black female scholar that EMP has been dominated by the musics that powerful groups of white folks like or white critics talk about (Kelefa Sanneh is an exception though he ain't Greg Tate). It has also been about hidden conversations by all us "minority" folk still feeling and perhaps making ourselves others but NOT taking a stand on program committees to say what is usually backroom conversation for blacks only or with a few radical white folks who we trust or who we think are like us -- have no real power in the matter.

The committee is assigned to choose a title in the next few days so the CFP (call for papers) can go out by early Sept. One of the popular titles arising has to do with the EROTICS OF POP. Committee members are talking about how bodies get left out but rarely are they talking specifically about WHOSE bodies are left out and HOW. Right now we are at the generalizing stage. I suggested this title two days ago and some liked it, others did not. For one, it's too long:

Share, Remix, Reuse : Social Media, Music & We the People in 2.0(09)

What was behind my proposition was bringing issues of diversity out without making it explicit -- race, gender, nation, class -- as well as musical and cultural diversity in approaches to music-making. Check out this great video on creativity and video remixes:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.htm

My specialty as a popular music scholar is race, gender and the body. What I have been privy to as a speaker/participant at EMP, what has driven my own concerns about participating has been that I feel white concerns about popular music run the atmosphere and the conversation. It seems inevitable with a critical mass of white journalists and scholars talking about pop.

I notice the committee's conversations seem to already use the term BODIES without politicizing what it means to different audiences and people. The politics of the people of color whose BODIES and VOICES have been consumed, always present, but often disenfranchised by the pop machine seems to always get lost when we don't privilege REAL PEOPLE in our themes and discourses not just their bodies.

So here I am on the program committee and if you've learned something about me from my previous posts -- offending the status quo excites me when I really have the courage to do it. But part of me is withholding what I always wanted to say now that I got a little power. Crazy thing.

So I said it. Black folks already got issues about the way bodies are consumed in popular culture and popular music from hip-hop to McDonald's commercials and jingles. I shared with the committee that I think we must politicize the way people MIX in whatever title we choose and use it as a metaphor about the MIX in music. It's about sounds and people mixing. Not just money and markets on some chart. I shared in my last communication, if we bring the politics of race and gender to the CFP then I'd feel more at home with my participation in EMP as a whole.

The hidden transcripts among some folks of color I've talked since EMP began several years ago, particularly some notables in journalism and academia, is that the issue of race might be a topic of some paper, but not a issue we talk about as people readin'/writing popular music. I also told my compatriots that RACE and WE THE PEOPLE and WEB 2.0 in 2009 is a national tie in for the conference this year. Which is I am considered proposing the following title: WE THE PEOPLE in 2.0(09) : FORMING A MORE PERFECT MUSIC

I also added that the keynote speaker should be someone of color to bend the ear of the conference goers in the direction of race, gender and the body in ways that people of color can and do without trivializing that WE are the ones who often get BOXED IN in conversations of BODY.

I still want Success with the Opposite Ethnicity/Sex/Gender/Nation/Age. I want to shatter the illusion but going to the place that is heard as different, other, or out of place. I want to pull our attention towards the MIX and REMIX of DIFFERENCE. Like...Agree to be Offended and Stay in the Conversation Anyhow!! Kyra
Posted by Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D. at 11:15 PM