pop conf
i went to the emp's pop conference again this year. caught something like twenty hours of talks over the weekend, a good portion of which were really great. the theme was "waking up from history: music, time, and place," which is a way better topic than last yeear's kind of lame "guilty pleasures" cop out.
highlights included sasha frere-jones' post 911 r'n'b talk, joshua clover's 1989 vs "1989" fall of the wall + pop songs talk, mark sinker's b-b-but what about space ramble, mike mcgonigal's dark was the night cold was the ground sanctified blues talk, simon reynolds' place and race in the uk dance continuum talk, getta dayal's examination of eauropean fetishisation of black american dance culture re detroit techno, michaelangelo matos' ripping on trustifarians re bob marley posters, douglas wolk's "the most famous rock star no one knows about" history of clydie king, jesse fuchs' insanely oveloaded and awesome overview of music videogames, robert christgau's pazz and jop ruminations, maura johnston's history of freestyle (the late 80's dance genre, not freestyle rapping), mike powell's examination of north korean pop music, brian goedde and elena passerello's intervies with iowan hip hop fans, tom kipp's secret history of montana post-punk, oliver wang's boogaloo talk, jeff chang's history of the bronx beat, and scott seward's extreme metal/pastoralism paper, and lots of other stuff too...
favorite part though was definitely the incredibly touching ellen willis tribute lunchtime panel, wherin people like sasha frere-jones and bob christgua and others that knew her or were somehow touched by her work got up and read pieces by her and talked about her. i went into the panel not even knowing who she was, and left obsessed by the need to seek out as much of her writing as possible. turns out she was an insanely brilliant popular culture wrtier and femisist/anti-oppression thoerist. i've been buried in a book of her collected crit for the last couple of days, and it is some of the best critical writing i've ever read. turns out she was also the new yorker's first pop music critc, and a lot of her stuff is still buried in the mag, uncollected and only accesible through the newyorker dvd/hard drive thingy. roommate has a copy, i think i might transcribe some of the better essays and post them, they are so good.
also heard a bunch of new to me songs during people's talks... i'm still tracking some down, but here's two of my favs, one from a boogaloo talk, and one from a techno talk. see if you can figure out which is which!
highlights included sasha frere-jones' post 911 r'n'b talk, joshua clover's 1989 vs "1989" fall of the wall + pop songs talk, mark sinker's b-b-but what about space ramble, mike mcgonigal's dark was the night cold was the ground sanctified blues talk, simon reynolds' place and race in the uk dance continuum talk, getta dayal's examination of eauropean fetishisation of black american dance culture re detroit techno, michaelangelo matos' ripping on trustifarians re bob marley posters, douglas wolk's "the most famous rock star no one knows about" history of clydie king, jesse fuchs' insanely oveloaded and awesome overview of music videogames, robert christgau's pazz and jop ruminations, maura johnston's history of freestyle (the late 80's dance genre, not freestyle rapping), mike powell's examination of north korean pop music, brian goedde and elena passerello's intervies with iowan hip hop fans, tom kipp's secret history of montana post-punk, oliver wang's boogaloo talk, jeff chang's history of the bronx beat, and scott seward's extreme metal/pastoralism paper, and lots of other stuff too...
favorite part though was definitely the incredibly touching ellen willis tribute lunchtime panel, wherin people like sasha frere-jones and bob christgua and others that knew her or were somehow touched by her work got up and read pieces by her and talked about her. i went into the panel not even knowing who she was, and left obsessed by the need to seek out as much of her writing as possible. turns out she was an insanely brilliant popular culture wrtier and femisist/anti-oppression thoerist. i've been buried in a book of her collected crit for the last couple of days, and it is some of the best critical writing i've ever read. turns out she was also the new yorker's first pop music critc, and a lot of her stuff is still buried in the mag, uncollected and only accesible through the newyorker dvd/hard drive thingy. roommate has a copy, i think i might transcribe some of the better essays and post them, they are so good.
also heard a bunch of new to me songs during people's talks... i'm still tracking some down, but here's two of my favs, one from a boogaloo talk, and one from a techno talk. see if you can figure out which is which!
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