wednesday, the junior boys - this show was everything i was hoping it would be. the encore, under the sun, was especially the bomb. definitely one of my favorite all around acts over the last few years.

friday, the evening episode - mostly new line-up for this local sacto band... the emphasis on vocal effects is a good direction because the new singers aren't as amazing as teresa (2nd from left)... not that they're bad, but...

saturday, digitalism - this show was unexpectedly amazing. having only heard a few digitalism songs ever, i didn't really know what to expect, but the set was killer. i had so much fun, i don't even know how long they played. i know we kept dancing when the house djs came on after the show, and they had to tell us when it was time to leave. seriously, i will be happy if the daft punk show is even close to this good. i would love it if someone could point me to a good recording of one of their live shows. also, i rather enjoyed the opener, joakim: loud, tall electro-rockings.

up next: mayer in may, daft punk in july.

lately i've been reading a bunch of samuel johnson's collected essays culled from the rambler and the idler. they are a joy to read, and it's been fun to page through the idler compendium from 1790 that i checked out from UW and compare it to other earlier london publications like the spectator and see johnson's genius shine through the bougie-handbook style of writing that was the seemingly requisite style of the times.

the rolling richness of his prose just kills me. nabokov, when he's on, is the only other writer who's ever lit up the page for me like this. last night, i was reading the rambler no. 137 [the need for general knowledge], wherein johnson chides academics for failing to get out of the ivory tower and interact competently/constructively with the rest of the world. he ends the essay with this beautiful paragraph:

By this descent from the pinnacles of art no honour will be lost; for the condescensions of learning are always overpaid by gratitude. An elevated genius employed in little things appears, to use the simile of Longinus, like the sun in his evening declination; he remits his splendor but retains his magnitude, and pleases more, though he dazzles less.

doesn't that last sentence make your heart sing? i haven't been able to get it out of my head all day.

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!

or at least it was, back in the day. this idea has been making me very happy today. also making me happy is the very wonderful partial arts (ewan pearson and al usher) track trauermusik.

jeff's basement 'cast, joakim and dixon resident advisor podcasts, ronan fitzgelarld's radio show, goldie's '96 essential mix, international pony mit dir sind wir vier, märz wir sind hier, the field from here we go sublime, the studio 1 12"s.

looking forward to checking out the panda bear album, the pantha du prince album, and probably lots of other stuff i've forgotten about.