EMP 2008 Pop Conference

Let me answer this when I have coherence. Yay home rah.

Went to a brilliant reading tonight by Molly Priesmeyer and other friends at the Loft in Minneapolis so that I could continue the EMP fantasy of life as this ongoing salon.

I'll eventually have more to say than this, but for now, just THANK YOU to everyone who shared their papers, their questions, their opinions, their food and booze, their homes, their smiles, their rides, their music. It was an amazing several days.

PS: Interested in more reactions to the Jesse Fuchs performance that I missed.

What do you attendees think of the mixture of critical and positive commentary at this site(found via googling)--

http://seattlest.com/2008/04/13/emp_pop_confere.php

The most important thing we brought away from the EMP Pop Conference was the name Labi Siffre, along with a link to the English musician's blog, Into The Light. This was the fruit of a moving, well-researched presentation from Charles Aaron, music editor at Spin, and we can't wait to dive deeper into Siffre's poetry and musical catalog from the 70s and 80s. Aside from that presentation and a few from the "Liminal Soul" panel, we were underwhelmed by the Conference.

For the most part, the presenters were reading directly from their papers on topics they're currently researching and clicking along on a Powerpoint presentation (usually out of sync and with some difficulty). The technology generally hindered rather than enhanced, though we did see some cool Youtube videos

In brief, I'd say that's a luck-of-the-draw assessment -- it's no secret that some presenters are real performers on-stage while others are fairly dry, while PowerPoint is its own cross to bear depending. If there was just one set of panels after another that'd be one thing but since anybody can only see a quarter of the conference at most, two people could come away with very different perceptions based on what they saw. (Heck, this was the first I'd heard about Aaron's presentation in particular, and sounds like it was a winner.)

Am still reviewing my posts and editing them to provide links to the presenters and to their subjects.

Aaron was excellent and a marked contrast to a few of the, shall we say, drier presentations.

OK, now that I've time to unreel from this past weekend, I'm now just starting to unpack it all.

EMP Pop Conf 2008 was just as fun, intense, galvanizing as the previous ones. I was hoping that, with the more serious theme, that there would be a "next level" thing happening. That didn't happen. I can't FULLY explain why I didn't feel that happening just yet, but I know it didn't. Par for the course is better than a bogey, I guess. I'll try to explain anyway.

I noticed a couple of things though: one that was an improvement on previous conferences and one that was a dearth. The improvement was the overall quality of the presentations. Yes, people should hopefully now know not to depend on the internet working to get their youtube links fired up (PSSST www.downloadyoutubevideos.com + AVS Movie Converter.) OTHERWISE, I think people have wised up a little more than before as far as knowing how and when to skip forward and make their points when time is up. Moreso, I think the moderators were better than they have been in the past -- especially given that many moderators were chosen at the last minute this year due to American Airlines complications.

The ironic dearth: less engagement, less discource, less conflict. I think people were more AFRAID to say anything during the q&a's this year than before. Then again, it's safe to say most of the conference attendees this year were pretty much on the same side of the political spectrum, so there was less to argue against.

BUT I noticed this during one of the more benign panels. Some guy in a Social Distortion T-shirt said at the end of a Clash presentation "Who cares about The Clash?" That's when about two dozen people raised their hands to ask the *presenters* questions. That Social D guy successfully did what was needed. He actually POKED people. Before that, no one wanted to ask questions. People were more afraid to "poke" this year than before. Why?

Has the Pop Conference hit the threshold of truely fatiguing everybody too early? I realize why there has to be parallel panels, and there's always so many good papers that they're hard to turn down. But maybe making people run around even more than before has just taken the inquisitive nature out of the attendees? Maybe? Still trying to figure this one out, or maybe I'm still unpacking it.

So while I think it was absolutely necessary to try a more serious theme for the Pop Conference this year, and I do mean THIS year, it just didn't pan out as I dreamed it would. I'm not saying we shouldn't try again, but I was hoping for a birdie or eagle this year and ended up with par -- which is great, I had just as much fun as the ones before, but nonetheless I'm slightly disillusioned.

I guess I'm in the minority in being a bit disappointed this year.

I'll eventually have more to say than this, but for now, just THANK YOU to everyone who shared their papers, their questions, their opinions, their food and booze, their homes, their smiles, their rides, their music. It was an amazing several days.

OTM. This was my first year. I had a total blast. Thanks to everyone.

Wait, remind me, did we ever introduce ourselves?

Never got the chance -- I think I saw you down the hall at one point before getting whisked away for another fine meal. I'd just say, "I was the guy with the glasses," but that would eliminate almost no one. Anyway, next time!

who was Mackro?

B. Mackrodonald, if that helps.

oh for god's sake do I feel silly

That's all right. Who were you again?

First wrap-up post -- these are linked back to the overall notes, which have now been cleaned up some and contain as many relevant links as possible to the subjects as well as the authors of the presentations.

i'll try and go next year. i missed you guys. this thread is a constant reminder of how much fun we had last year. and how long ago that seems now.

You were very much missed! But since Yeti 5 came out that meant we could all read your piece from last year in it.

i had fun and i didn't even go to the conference
it was great to meet you ned. it was great to meet you alfred

Likewise!

I raise my glass!

good times had by all

wait what you weren't even there

oh sorry i thought this was the ancient disaster thread

Give it time.

ok, now for some good old fashioned Pop Conf gossip..

so, apparently, Leonard's piece on Muslimgauze was "apologist"? Someone said that to him in the Q&A? I missed the Q&A, wandering over to the Latino Queer/Morrissey panel after the Muslimgauze piece. But Leonard's piece seemed to be objective, dare I say, the most not-so-endearing-to-Bryn paper/piece/thing I've ever encountered to date. Boggled.

Completely agreed. If it was apologist, it was in Leonard feeling as if he had to apologize for his liking of the music given his own uneasy feelings about Jones.

http://offbeatpoplife.blogspot.com/2008/04/emp-conference-notebook-dump-pt-2.html Alex Rawls from New Orleans' Offbeat magazine

Way way xpost: Good to meet you, Joseph!

Yeah, what Rickey said. And it was lovely to see everyone, and meet new folks also.

A final thoughts post. Time to start thinking about other things!

My google blog alert showed that a few others blogged about this further. Will post later if I see something especially interesting. Years back, the NY Times wrote about the event, but the novelty seems to have worn off. I did not see any follow-up from Maura and company at Idolator, who had mentioned it when proposals were first being sought. Some year I too will finally make it out there.

Chris M. from Idolator made it out -- great guy!

Def. great meeting you, Joe! Also quite nice seeing Ned, Alfred, whoever else from out of town I'm forgetting.

I get very excited by EMP each year -- I've been to 6 of the 7 -- and this was no exception.

I missed the wrap-up session, wish I'd had more time for hanging out and stuff, but I saw some exceptional presentations and from the sounds of it I missed a lot of great stuff too.

Nabbed at least one amazing piece for the Fall issue of YETI, so that was swell too (since we can't pay $$ the EMP's been a consistent source of cool stuff for us since the second issue with Luc S's brilliant "Birth of the Blues" piece).

Chris M. from Idolator made it out -- great guy!

I heard him on the Sound Opinions podcast talking about CD quality being superior to vinyl quality.

Mike! Mono record player through a mic and out a PA at the Yeti party = genius. Nice clean copy of Physical Graffiti, too.

Chris M wears great blazers.

It was great meeting all of you. Not the greatest slate of panels this year.. but I did think Amy Philips' "Not a Rape Patient, Looking Good Fly Colored Asian: The Semiotics of Sexual Identity and The Occident Vis-à-vis the Wu-Tang Clan" was a major standout. Kudos.

Wau.

I would go to this more often if I could tolerate human company

Ha.

Christgau's been doing some post-EMP blogging. He liked Regina (formerly Gina) Arnold's presentation on less well-known festivals around the time of Woodstock, and he liked his sister's talk.

That post in particular.

someone differs a bit with Alfred re: academics-speak

April 24 posting

http://www.michaeljkramer.net/cr/

I don't know him.

I'm not sure how bemoaning the use of academic jargon adduces my anti-intellectualism.

Yep. Nor am I sure how bemoaning some dense music-critic speak addresses unclear academic jargon.

"'You Say Tomato': An Attempt to Decontextualize the Retrofitting of Academese Into Weblogging Communication Via Message Board Interaction, or, GOT BLOG?!?"

Here's a list of words from (A) Soto's post, (B) Roberta Smith's New York Times article, (C) the Culture Rover post, and (D) various Christgau pieces, since Culture Rover brought him up:

A.

"praxis"
"teleological"
"heteronormative" as in "heteronormative valences"
"valences" as in "heteronormative valences"

B.

"reference" as a verb, rather than "referring to," as in "referencing late capitalism"
"privilege" as a verb, rather than "favor," as in "privileging the male gaze"
"imbricate" as in "Artists 'imbricate' ideological subtexts into their images," rather than "weave"
"practice" as in "Duchamp's practice" or "Picasso's studio practice" rather than "work"

C.

"deploy" as in "deploy words poorly," rather than "use"
"probe" as in "probe the concepts," rather than "make sense of"
"discourses" as in "these same discourses are at work in criticism," rather than "word choices and perspectives" or "conversations" or "the way we think about things"
"embedded" as in "the opinions of arts journalists are embedded in specialized trivia," rather than "grounded"

D.

"meliorist" as in saying "I have a meliorist streak"
"jiving" as in Otis Blue contains "live tracks that preserve for history Redding's country-goes-uptown style of fun--even emoting 'I've Been Loving You Too Long' like his whole future depends on it, he jives a little."
"bumptious" as in "bumptious takeover of Sam Cooke's 'Shake'"
"trancey" as in "Trancey desert guitar patterns are cut by a sour two-sax horn section"
"pungently" as in "On his first major-label album, Carll rocks as needed across a rowdy life-scape he describes pungently ('Pills in the tip jar, blood on the strings')..."

My opinion:

Most of these would probably be unfamiliar to people on the street, at least in the way they are used. But that can't be the standard for rejection--we learn good new words all the time.

For me, the only compelling reason to use a widely unfamiliar word is that it is simply the best, most exact, or descriptive word for something, and that anyone looking it up would feel they've learned something about what you're describing.

Along these lines, Culture Rover (C) shoots himself in the foot somewhat with those examples, because in each case the academic word is vaguer, more pointlessly loaded, or burdened with a meaning that's entirely different ("probe" does not mean "makes sense of").

Same with each one of the words Roberta Smith rightly attacks (B). In each case, the new word is more broadly evocative, and thus in more need of unpacking (there's a good academic word). If you "privilege" something, are you giving it a place of privilege in your own thinking, or granting it something akin to the social privileges of class and race? And in either case, what does that mean exactly?

Of the words Soto dismisses (A), I think the case could be made for "teleological" as good shorthand for anything that smacks of the pursuit of purpose or design in world. As for the rest, I can't find a compelling reason to use "praxis" in place of "practice." "Valence" is poetic only if you're a chemistry major--it's a kind of chemical bond. "Heteronormative" seems useful, but actually muffles the impact of the words you'd use to describe its concept. (You could say the same for "heterosexism," which is even broader, but most people at least know what that word means.) Isn't it more pointed to say that someone endorses a homophobic view of what's normal and what isn't, rather than say that person is being "heteronormative"?

Christgau (D) regularly sends me to the dictionary, but always for good words: "Meliorism" basically means faith in social progress as something real. I knew "jiving" is black English for joking or teasing, and can vaguely infer what this might mean musically without hearing it. "Bumptious" means "presumptuously, obtusely, and often noisily self-assertive." I recognize "trancey" as rock-critic slang shorthand for that which is designed to induce a trance, or anything resembling something so designed, but I imagine I could guess what he meant if IO didn't. I usually hear "pungent" as "strong" before the word "smell," so I take "pungently" as an appropriately poetic variation on "vividly."