Enough yakking about Seattle showgoers always standing with arms crossed like they’re guarding secrets of national importance. You get the right entertainers in town and people will actually move. Case in point: the acronym-packed M.I.A./LCD Soundsystem performance at the Showbox last week. While there was a bit of the armchair appreciation society populating the back of the venue, the front half was very movement friendly (but I guess not pot friendly—what’s up with a guy grabbing a security guard because someone was smoking weed nearby?). Intolerance aside, M.I.A. (AKA Maya Arulpragasam) had a second MC and her DJ Diplo in tow, and she jumped around before a video screen of animated bombs dropping and wowed the crowd with sheer charisma. Reports of M.I.A.’s lackluster performance in other cities were proved wrong, at least for the night, as the Sri Lankan MC apologized to the enthusiastic crowd for running out of material: “I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel; I need to write more songs,” she joked. A lack of material from two artists who only recently had their full-length U.S. debut was a theme for the night, as LCD mastermind James Murphy also stammered in response to a crowd rabid for a longer encore than he could give. While M.I.A. gave Seattle an infusion of international color, LCD’s NY-rooted dance instigations were equally awesome live. Along with Dizzee Rascal’s set at Neumo’s a couple months back, electronic music’s rising radio stars seem to be coming through in person as well as they do in the studio.

Speaking of stepping up to the challenge… Seattle School have made good on their promise to hold the next Iron Composer competition with contestants of national importance. On Friday, June 17, the brilliantly wacky performance group will host Wayne Kramer of the MC5 and ex–Dead Kennedys loudmouth Jello Biafra in a smackdown of songwriting talent, super ego, and the ability to consume copious amounts of alcohol. The Genius Award recipients’ Þrst large-scale showdown will happen at the EMP’s Sky Church.

In other EMP developments, Ann Powers is leaving the music museum to become a senior critic at Blender (as Þrst reported in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last week). Powers has been writing for the mainstream music mag for a while (her resumé also boasts writing/editing stints at the New York Times and the SF Weekly, among other places) and she feels it’s a good time to leave her post at EMP, where she has been working in the curatorial and education departments for almost four years. “All my life I’ve alternated between writing and administrative gigs,” she says. “The cycle has turned and it’s time for me to go back to writing full time.”

And in the Þlm world, music fans would do well to check out this year’s SIFF, as there are a bunch of music documentaries about subjects ranging from Gram Parsons, the Gits, and Death Cab for Cutie to the original Rock School that inspired the Cameron Crowe feature Þlm playing at the Þlm festival. See The Stranger’s SIFF Notes pullout for details.