"This night is great!"
"Yeah, it's awesome. Please don't write about it."
I had this same basic conversation with two different people on Saturday night, both of whom, ironically, book or promote at clubs in Seattle. But this wasn't either of their nights, and it was at a kind of perfect critical mass, totally packed but with all the right people and just enough room to dance all night long. So, I won't mention the name of the place or the night, but I will say it had mad soul, and just leave you to the internets to work it out. Or you could call and ask our receptionist, Nipper—he'd be happy to tell you all about it.
Of course, the weekend also had less-guarded secrets. On Friday and Saturday, the EMP Pop Conference (free and open to the public) took place, and it was much better than last year's. Maybe not surprisingly, this year's theme, "Shake, Rattle: Music, Conflict, and Change," elicited slightly more thrilling presentations than last year's relatively sterile theme about time and place. Joshua Clover's talk on M.I.A., "Terrorflu, or Where in the World Is M.I.A.?" was nothing short of stunning—a perfect mix of the academic and the poetic. He started in 1972, with Jonathan Richman and "Roadrunner" circling Boston on the city's ring road, soaking up fading rock 'n' roll Americana and road lust, talking about highway infrastructure and impending oil crises. Then he jumped to the Asian financial collapse of 1997, then to Norman Cook's remix of Cornershop's "Brimful of Asha," then to avian flu, then to M.I.A., circling round and round on the global ring road that neoliberalism built. It was deeply humbling to see someone wax eloquent about a subject I've been mumbling around for the last couple of years. This, really, is the great thing about the EMP Pop Conference: It shames you into stepping up your critical game.
Other great motivating moments: Steve Waksman's manic dissection of the soon-to-reunite Green River's nostalgic appropriation of Blue Oyster Cult's antinostalgia anthem "This Ain't the Summer of Love"; Douglas Wolk's well-researched and sharply funny history of the 1966 pop oddity "Ballad of the Green Berets"; J. D. Considine's Billboard-scanning charts and graphs; pretty much the entire "City Charivari" panel, which went from the "Apache" beat to Public Enemy's iambs to England's antirave Criminal Justice Act over the course of four presenters. Charles Mudede's off-the-cuff discussion of the situation in Zimbabwe and why he's a Marxist ("I don't believe any of this neoliberal stuff. It's bullshit, and it makes me angry!") was inspiring, as always.
During the lunch hour on Saturday, Blue Scholars played in the EMP's Sky Church. Even at one in the afternoon, playing for a sparse, sleepy crowd made up of a surprising amount of kids and families, Geologic spits sparks, a political descendent of Chuck D but with a more slippery flow and subtle cadence than PE's hard-consonant bombs. Sabzi's beats rumbled mightily on the Sky Church's sound system; his record drops were consistently spine tingling. After all the academic hand-wringing of many of the conference's presentations, Blue Scholars' broad populism was refreshing. Later, during a break between panels, Jimi Hendrix's famous performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" was playing on the Sky Church's giant video screen: patriotic democratic anthem as revolutionary statement as codified rock tradition—a reminder that revolution can also mean spinning in circles.
Finally, Saturday felt like the first day of spring. Ignore the gray, hanging drizzle that's likely outside right now. On Saturday night, the air was T-shirt warm, and a high-school prom was coming in to use the EMP for their reception as the Pop Conference was letting out. Kids in white tuxes and flower-colored gowns were posing for pictures in front of their cars. If being a teenager was as cool as it looked in the movies, their last, crush-fulfilling slow dance of the night would've been to something from the new M83 album, Saturdays=Youth. M83 have gone from vague cinema scoring to straight-up John Hughes montage music (see the Pretty in Pink doppelgänger on the album cover), sounding a little like Psychedelic Furs crossed with Air (who, of course, have done their own dreamy teenage soundtrack work). This album is killing me right now. My favorite song currently is the swooning, shoegazing power ballad "Kim & Jessie" ("Kids of the woods/They're crazy 'bout romance and illusions"). The album came out this week. M83 play Neumo's on Sunday, May 25, if for some reason you're not going to Sasquatch!. 
