“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!.
