WELCOME, POINDEXTERS

This weekend marks my first jaunt to the Experience Music Project's Pop Conference, a four-day bacchanale of music-oriented lectures, essays and ... well, I don't know if there's really anything else that happens, but I guess I'll find out. The Stranger was looking for some writers to take these eggheads to task, and I gleefully accepted, but the eventual product I turned in must not have struck the right chord, because it was rejected. Well, all except the final paragraph -- my editor loved the "musique concrete" conceit and wanted me to refashion it as a preview of the event, but then rejected my rewrite as being "too dry." Apparently Stranger readers need to be told where the jokes are. Anyhow, it didn't run either. So here's my half-baked, hastily-written attack on/tribute to the people I'll be hanging around with in that monstrous building next to the Space Needle.

WE WHO CAN'T DO
The EMP Pop Music Studies Conference and the Arguable Art of Rock Criticism
by Fred Beldin

There's a lot of self-loathing among rock journalists, mainly because what we do is neither rock nor journalism. Those who write about popular music are knocking out ad copy, not reporting the news, regardless of how insightful or inane their thoughts on the product in question. Let's face it, no matter how clever a critic can be in tweaking the assorted miscreants who bang guitars and punch samplers these days, there's no such thing as bad publicity and we who fill space in alternative weeklies, blogs, self-published zines and glossy newsstand rags are mere shills for those who make the real art. What we do doesn't cure cancer. It doesn't even make or break careers. Every culture needs its popular art to be documented and annotated for future civilizations to study and learn from, but there are far too many jokers trying to get a piece of that job. A lot of us ought to consider volunteering with troubled youth or planting fruit trees in impoverished nations. Music critics can be bristly, combative characters if challenged about their individual core beliefs, because without them we're nothing, and that's why the EMP Pop Music Studies Conference stirs so many emotions for those whose love for sounds inspires prose.

It appears that some thinkers at The Stranger harbor a prejudice against the academic nature of the EMP conference, where the level of discourse can sometimes get pretentious in its navel-gazing intellectualism. Current music boss Jonathan Zwickel recently referred to the presenters as "kooks" in a private inter-staff email exchange, and our late, lamented music editor Jennifer Maerz once wrote publicly about the "critical circle jerks" of the EMP, going on record to declare that she avoids the event like she avoids "making out with boys with gigantic cold sores on their mouths." To each her own, I say -- some fires burn colder than others, that's all. Besides, the poindexters presenting papers at the EMP are the kind who couldn't stop themselves if they tried. There's no money or glory in sacrificing untold hours of precious lifespan re-evaluating the progression of Dylan's poetic voice or contemplating the importance of the souvenir rock t-shirt. These are intelligent people, hyper-self-aware people, and they don't need us telling them what they already know.

Some may call these dedicated souls deluded or damaged in spirit, but not me. They're artists as sure as the musicians they obsess over and write about, and that's the way I'm going to enjoy the seminar. When the pomp and verbosity become too oppressive, I'll just ignore the words and concentrate on the musique concrete symphony that is the EMP Pop Music Studies Conference. After all, the humming drone of academics reading their work can be very beautiful, and the shuffling of papers, muffled coughs, polite applause and whispered commentary provide an unpredictable harmonic counterpoint. The soft flutter of rolled eyes when an unpopular theory is put forth, the sudden dissonance of a rudely ringing cell phone, the chime of flattery for the most popular readers. Each presenter will set a particular tempo, improvise on a variety of classic themes and cop riffs off personal rock-write gurus. It's like when John Sellers, author of Perfect From Now On recently compared Jack White to Billy Squire on his blog -- I don't even care what the hell that means, it just sounds great.