EMP Pop Conference 2015

A little late in starting this so here we go...

With thanks to curmudgeon for the initial copy/paste:

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Theme

Get Ur Freak On: Music, Weirdness, and Transgressions

Exploding conventions has long put the bomp in pop: the uncontainable desire of those deemed sexually unnatural, racial impostors, gender outlaws, obsessed fans, willful bohemians, or just plain weird. “We feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle,” Edgar Allan Poe wrote in “The Imp of the Perverse.” Music often sanctions transgression, challenges or corrupts the status quo depending on your perspective, gives us Prince in one era (called Imp of the Perverse by a biographer), Miley Cyrus in another, an Iggy Pop then and an Iggy Azalea now.

For this year’s Pop Conference, we seek presentations that connect music of any style or period to notions of transgression, perversion, and the weird, such as:
histories of the strange from minstrelsy to cabaret, rock and roll to black metal, “Tutti Frutti” to “Super Freak”
twistings of form—of the song, the voice, the genre, language; versioning and remixes; sonic markers of the polymorphous
queer pop, gender subversion and the perverse diva
transgression, social movements, and culture wars; the role of the state; drugs
racialized notions of otherness, margins/difference as center, carnival
exploitation–marketing “Blurred Lines,” the limits of dissolute star/fan behavior
technology and the estrangement of the human in pop
comparative cultural ethnographies of outrageousness
fetishization of records, the past, the disease of collecting

Submissions

Deadline

November 17, 2014.

Email Eric . Weisbard @ gmail.com

http://www.empmuseum.org/programs-plus-education/programs/pop-conference/pop-conference.aspx?t=call-for-proposals#Tabs

And this will be April 16–19, 2015 in Seattle once more. Why yes I've already booked a hotel room.

Proposals due Monday1

I'm annoyed that someone tweeted in October that the deadline already passed and I believed them

btw if someone has figured out how to look at last year's accepted proposals, let me know. When I click on panelists' names, it takes me back to 2015's theme.

it's weird, this one is all about weirdness and i couldn't think of anything i wanted to write about.

if EMP ever goes back to NYC in the future i will totally be there though.

man, these EMP threads ain't like they used to be, huh?

hey, scott -- can the Eagles count as transgression?

The Eagles are perversity without transgression, that's the problem.

I submitted a metal-related proposal.

i'm so glad you are into the EMP, glenn. i knew you would like them. and you have so much to add in a way that is unique to you.

Yeah, I had a really good time last year. Gotta get accepted again, though.

I like imagining the people reviewing proposals this year, trying to decide whether each idea is perverse enough.

I'm still thinking about submitting a proposal where I just stand at the podium shouting "THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS TRANSGRESSION UNDER 21st CENTURY CAPITALISM" for 20 minutes.

If you don't get that proposal in by tomorrow's deadline, it'll fit great with 2016's theme of 21st Century Capitalism.

submitted mine today. i've had a fabulous experience every time i've gone, whether i've presented or not, and i have no doubt this one will be great too.

that said, i do hope the amazon construction near seattle center is a little more under control this time.

sent!

that said, i do hope the amazon construction near seattle center is a little more under control this time.

hahaha good one, it will literally never end.

pfeh, didn't think so

sent mine!

i do hope the amazon construction near seattle center is a little more under control this time.

lololololololololololololololol

This city is a crane forest right now

Last time I made a wrong right turn and ended up in Idaho.

so....who was accepted? I'm in.

I'll be doing a solo thing and a panel.

i'm in, doing a lou reed panel.

dudes!!! have fun. would love to hang with you guys. sadly, life intervenes. just too hard to get away these days. i will totally be at an nyc one like swimwear if that happens again.

not accepted, sigh. i'm not counting out the possibility of making the trip to Seattle anyway, just for the fun of it, though.

Don't! It's great fun, despite our company.

Schedule up:

http://www.empmuseum.org/programs-plus-education/programs/pop-conference/pop-conference.aspx

Hope to see or meet some of you!

...you're the drinks guy, yeah...

Lies!

trying to think of my three "worst songs ever"! i might go with three bad company songs, or maybe mix it up with a little solo eric clapton. and there's gotta be a terrible white-guy indie thing.

a certain massive 2014 is looking me straight in the eye

voted. one is a classic rock workhorse, one is a nineties corporate-alternative cover version of a hip-hop song, and one is an eighties comeback by a dinosaur band.

Surprised Christgau's not on the poptimism panel.

the real worst song of all time is probably some deep cut hiding on a Candlebox album or some shit

Well here you go, then?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6XPtWZRLQ8

See, not far off

My real answer someone else will have to ID, it had a big chorus about "America, America, home of the freeeee" and appeared exclusively on a greatest hits album by a major 70s/80s rock band - thought it was Steppenwolf, but apparently not? It became a bit of a meme at a video store I worked at when my co-worker was trying to convince me of this band's greatness and found...this thing, instead.

one is a classic rock workhorse, one is a nineties corporate-alternative cover version of a hip-hop song, and one is an eighties comeback by a dinosaur band.
America - Horse with No Name
Dynamite Hack - Boyz in the Hood
Starship - We Built This City ?

one of those is right.

http://www.thestranger.com/music/feature/2015/04/15/22047264/a-lot-of-smart-people-will-be-at-the-emp-pop-conference-this-weekend-will-you-be-one

List of presenters with books recently out

Hope to see you people therer!

w00t, plane leaves thurs at 7 am!

Bags packed! Presentations written and rehearsed and timed! Well, bags packed anyway!

See you all in Seattle.

Already checked in at the hotel and relaxed. See everyone tomorrow!

how's the hotel?

i got my presentation down to 19 minutes with music cues and slides, so i am keeping my fingers crossed i don't have any a/v fuckups on the day.

I stayed there last year and liked it just fine. Of course it's nowhere near as nice as the one they haven't built yet.

A. and I are staying at the Best Western near EMP. The reviews are mixed but I'm sure it's fine.

Hey if any of you are still going to be in town on Monday 4/20 and want to hang out, I'm meeting up with some of the Seattle ILXors at Nine Lb Hammer at 7 p.m. I'm in town for work from Friday through Tuesday, but can't make any of the EMP stuff unfortunately.

I'm over some part of Montana right now. Maura is over whatever part of Montana is 14 rows further west of my part.

after many false starts I am on a plane hopefully arriving in Seattle sometime before the apocalypse

Booked a room at Seattle's Best Karaoke for tomorrow night. 9 to ??
$5.50 per person, per hour.
BYOB

!!

Great running into NA briefly! Sorry we couldn't chat more!

I'm gonna eventually make my way to Kremwerk across the street from Seattle's best karaoke for the queer hiphop night there, so that's a thing going on tonight too.

Huh I have a work dinner not too far from the karaoke place, maybe I'll swing by if I'm not too exhausted.

I knew I would somehow run into Ned and it happened.

that is the definition of ned in the dictionary

True. Even before the parts about pi and the purple tie.

Sounds about right.

see just like that

that karaoke was the absolute best

Gahhhh, so much fun!!

That Memphis rap and more panel description on twitter sounds like it was fun

@TyinaSteptoe with "'Big Mama’s Shuffle’: Willie Mae Thornton and Female Masculinity”

the lavender scare of the 50s. "Homophobia literally changes blues music in the 50s" #EMPPopCon

maura, cmolanphy & useful_noise discuss Beatles-related weirdness

"[Alberta Hunter] was a liar. A beautiful liar. And this makes tracking down her story all the more fun

talk on Dirty South hip-hop's preoccupation with violence visited upon black bodies & grotesque aftermath

discussing Kendrick/D'Angelo records w/r/t how gender plays into their polyvocality

So Will Hermes is writing a book on Lou Reed

Lester Bangs panel. Of course

I bet DJ Soul Sister from N'awlins talking about Teena Marie was great

David Byrne, Divine, Suicide,

So Will Hermes is writing a book on Lou Reed
― curmudgeon, Sunday, April 19, 2015 3:28 PM (25 minutes ago)

Meant to say: this is news to you?

Yep. Though does not surprise me

This sounded interesting too

Gayle Wald comparing the white license of The Who destroying instruments versus the politics of Kirk & Hendrix burning

I had a great time!

That was a long too-short intense non-stop blast of awesomeness. Massive thanks to everybody who made it possible, organized it, spoke, listened, lurked or whatever.

Enjoyed being a fly on the wall of this thread about as much as on the London ILB FAP thread.

Wait so was karaoke last night? I thought it was tonight.

Seems like I missed it. Oh well.

Here's the talk-script from my Sunday morning talk-plus-clip-blasting about searching for a philosophical agenda in nominally Satanic heavy metal:

http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log&id=437

I bet DJ Soul Sister from N'awlins talking about Teena Marie was great

Can confirm.

will hermes is a really good dude and a great writer (loved "buildings on fire," loved his lou panel, really looking fwd to the lou book). i was initially nervous about stepping on his toes by pitching a paper about lou, but it turned out he invited me to be on his panel and was very encouraging.

That K-pop influenced by Missy Elliot presentation sounded impressive based on tweets, and the various Aretha ones including from author David Ritz did too

My twitter feed about this made me extremely envious of anyone in attendence. Next year, I'll have to make it out. It's been years since I left academia and attended conferences but this seemed really cool.

my paper, if you'd like:

http://jodybethrosen.com/2015/04/14/and-then-the-colored-girls-they-walk-over-lou-reed-works-blue-on-live-take-no-prisoners/

for anyone who was there: i am so so so sorry and mortified by the tech problems i had. i had gotten this strong sense beforehand that i was going to experience some glitches but i didn't anticipate how glitchy it would actually be. i was just trying to run powerpoint from a bog-standard hp pavilion laptop and a couple of sound clips from an iphone 6. no reason why that shouldn't have worked. next year if i'm accepted again i'll just read the paper with no accompaniments.

it was almost funny: the audio cable kept popping out of my phone's headphone jack while i was trying to play music on it! the projector screen kept going blank. lou must have been watching, trying to will this thing into nonexistence.

I wanna talk to the shade of Lou Reed, man, he through a cup at his Jody.

I guess someone should start a 2016 thread

http://www.empmuseum.org/programs-plus-education/programs/pop-conference.aspx?from=pe

EMP POP CONFERENCE 2016
APRIL 14-17, 2016 AT EMP MUSEUM

From a Whisper to a Scream: The Voice in Music

The EMP Pop Conference returns with its biggest roster of presentations yet, looking at the ways music lets us hear voices: singers, to be sure, whether virtuosos or idiosyncratic originals, but also other types of vocalizing. How do instrumentalists insert their selves into their music? When the dominant voices in our songs change, what changes with that, from personal identity to collective messages? A switch in voice—from croon to rasp to rap to Auto-Tune—alters everything it reaches.

In dozens of panels, all free to the public (though we strongly recommend advance registration), we’ll explore musical voices across genre and time period: soul singers and rock singers, singers of exotica and Mexi-Cajun blues. Panels on goth-punk wailer Siouxsie Sioux, warbling rapper Future, and pop-rock duo Hall & Oates. Synthetic “vocaloids” and challenges to female decorum. Singing across lines of color. Good bad singing and bad good singing. Vocal coaching. Southern accents.

Follow the links on this page for more information about each session, including the biographies of presenters, summaries of talks and roundtables, and details on how to pre-register and have an entrance badge waiting for you when you arrive. We look forward to seeing you at the Pop Conference!

Eric Weisbard
Pop Conference organizer
University of Alabama

see y'all there. Come say hi and buy me a drink after my presentation.

Hall and Oates...nice

I already have trips planned for the beginning and end of May, otherwise I would try to go to this.

New thread? Done and done.

EMP Pop Conference 2016