EMP Pop Conference 2011

Can only go on Sunday, but going nonetheless. Thank goodness I live near UCLA so it would be easy for me to get there. Looking forward to it.

would love to go but i have a friend in town this weekend :(

I know what it means to party like a rockstar, but what does it mean to party like a music critic?

The drink level is about the same from what I can tell.

Presumably there are less groupies.

But critics have Twitter!

I assume it's a lot like this:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/15/18909607_ee51edc31d.jpg?v=0

Speaking from experience:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/2007_Pop_Conf_afterparty_03.jpg/800px-2007_Pop_Conf_afterparty_03.jpg

Rock critics live blog their encounters with groupies.

so gonna happen

oh yeah, and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6bARIaMhCM

just look over your shoulder

Hey, that's my beret between Ned and the Dean!

Guess that makes you Lucky... ah never mind.

My most vivid memory from last year's final-night party was the weird yet adorable painting of a chubby Hispanic boy hanging over the bar. The guy there said it has its own Facebook group.

i am sitting just behind alfred's beret in that picture, i think.

^ Thanks Ned for the Itunes link! Cool pic with the Dean.

Holy crap, there's a ton of these talks! Any highlights?

writing my thing! it's fun! now if i can just remember how long these things are supposed to be... how many words do humans speak in a minute?

you don't want to go over 17 minutes/20 minutes at the absolute outer edge. So practice reading your writing aloud SLOWLY and see how many pages-per-minute you're at. It varies. One conference "pro tip" (jk): it can help to write a conference talk with a 'detachable tail', i.e. a possible ending that is three pages before your "real"/ideal ending- if things are running late, you can have this option as a way to get your primary point in but not go rudely past your time. Etiquette about overspill at conferences is crucial.

What the tune just said. Lord knows I rehearsed and refined mine quite a few times to make sure I got within the limit.

when i did the emp thing in 2007 i had to skip a section toward the end cuzza time but it worked out pretty good! it was totally skippable.

the thing i'm writing now, man, i could go forever. so i'll have to be good and prune stuff.

drew, have you done one of these? the emp conference thing? too bad you are on the other side of the country now. would be cool if you could come.

The best piece of advice I received last year (my first one) was "FINISH YOUR PAPER BEFORE YOU GET THERE." A couple of people I hung out with had been frantically completing theirs in a hotel room at first and feeling frazzled/miserable until they did so.

xpost to scott, yeah I've done it many times, it's totally fun

1st time: talked about Germs burns and Darby Crash
2nd time: talked about Lynyrd Skynyrd and slavery
3rd time: talked about queer minstrelsy (The Meatmen, The Frogs, etc.)

plus I was on some panels (including the infamous one with Stephin Merritt about which you can websearch if you wanna know more)

it's such a great conference, people are sweet and you get good questions during Q+A

the only sucky part is that there are too many good things at the same time so it's kinda torture to choose what you do

wish that I was going, would love to hang

but now that I'm a renaissance lit professor I can't do too many music conferences per year and I already spoke at the black metal theory symposium so that was my music talk for 2011

This weekend's weather looks terrible. At least I won't feel guilty for spending so much time indoors.

i was really worried that i wouldn't have enough material for 20 minutes, and then i finally wrote it up over the weekend and read it out loud and lol it was 35. so i'm frantically hacking away.

Not sure what the food situation will be like around Royce Hall for the weekend, or at least for lunch. Guess we'll all find out together.

the andy zax thing on itunes U is amazing -- bizarre reprise/warners radio ad spots.

Utterly stellar, one of last year's highlights, even more amazing live.

would love to get the CDR he mentions at the end! hint hint.

You never know. (Are you attending?)

nah, i seriously considered it, but couldn't make it work. someday!

YA BETTER.

It is really great fun. I am going to be exhausted as all hell by Sunday evening though.

well, the move to LA is a step in the right direction in re: to me actually coming to an EMP. is that a permanent-type thing?

Not at present. This is the first year of a planned three-year rotation schedule where EMP itself, UCLA and (I believe) NYU trade off hosting the conference. (I'm all for four year rotations and having the fourth be held in Miami in that Alfred can then show us to the best Cuban restaurants anywhere.)

ah -- well, NYC 2012 isn't out of the question for me, either.

god i am going to cling to this lengthy paragraph relating a remark of a ska-punk band frontman to the history of censorship in russia UNTIL I DIE. or at least until saturday night when things are really down to the wire.

I'm counting on you to include it.

Oh god, I really need to figure out my plan of attack this year. I'm going to be running all over the place.

DLH, this morning I mentioned your presentation to a coworker, who proceeded to tell me about how he traded a pair of blue jeans for an Aquarium cassette while in St. Petersburg in the 1980s.

they really do love blue jeans. still, even.

aquarium gets mentioned a lot! although i don't have time to show the mean youtube video of a guy dressed up as the band's frontman having goofy adventures in clueless political manipulation. i need a For Further Reading section.

This sounds intimidating.

Hardly! It's a way to learn a lot of things all at once and be able to talk about it immediately as well. That and a lot of the presenters are entertaining as hell.

Food advice: there are tons of restaurants around UCLA, most of which are fine if not mind-blowing. Maybe someone who's spent more time in Westwood than I can get more specific. The ice cream sandwiches at Diddy Reese are genius and iirc are only $1.50. yes I just recommended ice cream sandwiches.

Father's Office in Culver City has the best burger in a town that excels at burgers. They also have an excellent beer selection. If one of your LA friends says "let's go to Umami Burger!" your requisite answer should be "fuck no let's go to Father's Office."

You need to eat Mexican food while you are here. Loteria at the Farmers market is delicious and has great vegetarian options (zucchini and corn burritos, potato tacos); there's also a Loteria on Hollywood Blvd. Montealban on Santa Monica and Brockton (just west of the 405) is a sleepy restaurant with cheesy decor but brilliant food--a variety of mole sauces and things on the menu that aren't just standard burritos and tacos. El Carmen on 3rd Street in West Hollywood has great food in a more bar-like atmosphere.

There are a ton of other places all around LA. If anyone is staying in a particular neighborhood and wants suggestions, I'm happy to offer. Sorry I don't know more specifically the best stuff right at UCLA. They have a little of everything in that neighborhood though.

Also if anyone is arriving to town early and is looking for something to do, I work at the LA County Museum of Art and can set you running around the galleries. If your so inclined. Just email me - sjtennent at gmail.

I won't be at EMP itself -- I've a good friend's wedding on Saturday -- but I'm hanging out with several of the panelists and other good friends tomorrow and Thursday. I'd love to see some of you again, or meet new faces.

scott, do you know bernardo?

Yes!

yesssss! old friend of mine, we went to college together.

He's great. I knew him for a while and then happened to see his byline on a Dusted review - neither of us had any idea that the other wrote about music. We bonded over burritos and krautrock.

Sounds like when I discovered that a longtime library coworker had cowritten and performed a song on a Six Organs of Admittance album.