Petronia

Pop & Policy was the industry conference and workshop component of the Pop Montreal festival, hosted by McGill's Schulich School of Music. My sister dragged me to the Friday afternoon panels as her law professor had suggested they attend. This cost 15$, worthwhile as I acquired three CDs (one festival sampler, two handed out by one of the panelists making good on his music-should-be-free ideology), plus coffee, snacks, and drinks/appetizers at the ensuing cocktail. XD Also the talks were interesting. The first pitted DJs and academics against industry lawpersons in a discussion of copyright and sampling, and the second was about legal challenges/ramifications to the DMCA and alternative models of online music distribution (other than "sue the pants off downloaders"). There were some fair bigshots, like Terry Fisher. This was followed by a round table with Patti Smith being interviewed by a journalist.

The hilarious thing about the copyright/sampling panel was that it was, in its essence, the exact same argument that comes up re: the legal viability of fanfiction. Just substitute hiphop/DJ culture for fanwork culture, keeping constant the catalytic influence of the anonymous internets, the "old-fashioned" artists who actually care about maintaining control over the integrity of their work, and the intellectual-property lawyers. Putting representatives of the several groups on the same panel was like metafandom essayists versus - say - Robin Hobb's agent; it was that testy. The former group ranted rather idealistically about corporations but it's a red herring really; once the labels are out of the picture (and they will be soon) one runs up against other artists, as often as not those who - like Prince or Patti Smith herself - fought their own labels to retain artistic control. Having acquired said control they're unlikely ever to grok the necessity of relinquishing it to the next poxy-faced sixteen-year-old comer who wants to take a two-second snippet of their recording and Do Stuff to it. I've said somewhere that if I published a novel I'd consider it a failure on at least one front if people didn't write fic for it that completely twisted my artistic directive to suit their own ends, but then I came up through the fanwork culture too. XD;

Anyway. Less with the meta, more with the gig review.

( The tenets of Flickr popularity: delicious food, hipster girls, and Patrick Wolf smeared in glitter )

Seriously, it normally takes me two weeks to get 15 hits on a Flickr entry. XD; I tend to feel a bit useless about posting gig pics, because it's not like I have great equipment, and a cursory search will usually turn up dozens of better shots. But so far mine are the only ones up of the Montreal show. What happened to the other ten people schlepping cameras in the front row? Who knows.

I should, uh, probably pay for Flickr before my Italy pictures start dropping from the photostream. People seem to like those - I've even had a request for one to be published in a Spanish magazine, as part of a feature on Turin cafes. (In general Flickr stats confirm what one would suspect, namely that given the choice, people would rather look at pictures of pretty girls and food than anything else. XD In History of Western Painting 101 these are known as "mythological scenes" and "still lifes".)

( Forro in the Dark. Sorry for the quality, btw - wasn't using my own camera, forgot to check the image resolution. D: )

( Bebel Gilberto )

In other news, I feel a lot better now that I've let the blind_go deadline lapse. XD;; It was a strategic misstep to sign up for this round, I think - I love to read AUs and crossovers but I'm not very good at writing them. Should repost the poll now that the options have changed.

I have three issues of Italian JoJo, that I bought second-hand from the comics/anime convention within the Turin book fair (...so I attended a con while I was there, WHAT OF IT). Nowadays I think Italy does tankoubon like everyone else but back when JoJo was being serialized - and according to the inside cover the Italian edition started in 1994 - it came out in "issues", where one issue is 6-8 chapters or thereabouts. So the end of part 5 (volume 63) was issue #94. By sheer coincidence the publication date corresponded exactly with the manga's internal timeframe: August 2001. XD Then they detoured for purposes of Araki completism, so Baoh was #95-#97, Gorgeous Irene was #98, Magical B.T. was #99, then #100 was the start of Stone Ocean. Part 4 and previous are flipped left to right, part 5 and onward are right to left. They're basically thinner tankoubon so I find it outrageous that manga serialized this way was collected into "proper" tanks afterward, but 'tis well known TRUFAX that otaku nerds will pay for anything.

It wasn't until last week that I realized this sort of farks up the way I described Pink Dark Boy in my fic? Uh. This level of authenticity is not required amirite.

( Looks like this: )

Where the bottom three shelves are entirely JoJo. The issues I have are #52 (last bit of Josuke + Jotaro vs. rat, Reimi's introduction), #84 (all of Clash/Talking Heads - I got it for the map of Venice ahaha), and #94 (Gold Experience Requiem, Rolling Stone side story, the character profiles). I should probably make some scans or something but for the moment I'm too lazy. XD; Part 5 comes off like... reading Banana Fish in English. Where you sit and think, "Funny this was originally in Japanese when it's all about the US of A," and it's kind of hard to imagine except not.

I also bought volume 5 of Ouran High School Host Club, solely because I wanted to learn to say "reverse harem" in Italian.

Sold-out show, crowd of latecomers trying to score tickets in front of the venue, cloverleaf-pattern bracelets (haha no really, Happy Irish Booze Day), several hundred ravers packed like sardines onto the dancefloor, giant screen, two washroom stalls per gender. Social highlights include running into GHB Girl again - and watching her wrangle her way into the "DJs and their girlfriends" backstage area - and a couple having actual public sex in a cordoned-off corner. GOOD TIMES HAD BY ALL.

Booka played a 70-minute live set from 2AM; suspect it was meant to be longer but there were technical glitches. Laptop in the middle, one Booka manned the mixers behind a glowing blue screen, the other played a synth drum pad kit (!!) and emceed between songs (!!!). BASICALLY THEY WERE ROCK STARS. The crowd was screaming, jumping up and down, singing along at the top of their lungs (note: the songs have no actual lyrics), reaching out to touch the DJ, putting their hands together and praying to the DJ, the works. Then again, most live techno acts can't drop tracks like the following:

Booka Shade - In White Rooms
Booka Shade - Mandarine Girl
Booka Shade - Darko

In a row. Which pretty much says it all.

More music (I'm making up for the relative scarcity of mp3 blogging in the past few weeks):

Booka Shade vs. Corona - White Night (Kornel Mix): "In White Rooms"... now with diva vocals for anthemic prog house effect! Some of you may like this better. XD (Also, rainbow-coloured Lego reenactment.)

Azzido da Bass feat. Johnny Blake - Lonely By Your Side (Booka Shade Dub Remix): I really like the original song, it's on my Nana II FST (which is nearly formalized, except I have to um, buy several CDs so I can rip specific tracks). This mix doesn't sound much like said original, and isn't ace for the same reasons, but is ace nonetheless.

I have more tracks but I think I'll leave them until later this week. *g*

In other news, I updated my website with everything I wrote since the beginning of 2007. Notify me if you get the kiriban. ♥

Something dumb I came up with over the weekend.

( the GioGio vs Ladios Sopp comparison chart )

( On Monday there was Rogers Cup tennis. )

( Maria Kirilenko's butt-flounce. Apologies for crappy quality of all photos that follow. )

( Friday I was ninety minutes' bus ride up north in L'Esterel for quote company fun day unquote. )

We had a potluck brunch before this and there was a mountain of leftover pastries so I and the Russian engineers etc. divided the spoils. Then I lugged it all over to Maclane's to meet Lorraine and Tania because she said she'd drive me home they wanted to borrow some anime. Lo, I offer a blanket apology for lack of enthusiasm and generally not being fun, I was nigh-catatonic at that point. ^^;

Other than that I've been writing. I do like the current setup because it means one whole fic gets posted at a time to the general public as opposed to dribblets of ill-revised drafts, but the downside is that if I'm very preoccupied with a WIP I don't blog at all.

( setlist )

More in Flickr set, detailed comments to follow on demand and/or tomorrow. XD

Time to hit up Toys R Us! Actually, this is a beautiful article that restores one's faith in mankind. XD

With that out of the way:

One of the more ghetto setlists I've begged off a band
Always Too Late | The Wedding | The Greatest Hit | Chewing Gum | Crush | Come Together | Heartbeat ||| Kiss Me | Me Plus One

Several songs I haven't heard, which is nice. Jae, I guess she's playing "Me Plus One" now after all. XD The next single is supposedly "Crush", which is actually the most indie rock-sounding - though it's hard to say as her backing band consisted of 1 x guitar/drums and 1 x twiddlyknobs, so arrangements were fairly different from on record. "Crush" had a storm of guitar fuzz, and because Annie's voice is on the wispy side I immediately felt like I was listening to shoegaze although it wasn't really.

"Always Too Late" / "The Wedding" <-- never occurred to me but these songs are quite ominous really
"Come Together" <-- total house-is-a-feeling vibe
"Heartbeat" <-- like what they did to it, lovely plangent pentatonic synth bell cascade
"Kiss Me" <-- I wish this were going to be released next!
"Me Plus One" <-- "This song is about a beautiful girl with long red hair who was in a band during the nineties" <-- ???

More of Ced's photos: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

If it looks like the stage was six inches high and we were standing three feet away, that's because it was and we were. It was like the sort of stage where skits are performed at elementary schoolkids' birthday parties. ^^; There were 100 people in the audience at best (did the rest of Montreal really turn out for the Arctic Monkeys instead? That sifts the sheep from the goats), but at least most of them acted like they wanted to be there. Amusingly Ced and I were standing between two groups of boys: 3 x somewhat amused Francophone hipsters who talked to each other a lot and danced indieishly, and 2 x possibly gay Latino(?) boys who obviously LOVED ANNIE ZOMG A+++ and got down like they just did not care. There were other oddities. It wasn't a date night, boys came in groups of boys and girls came in groups of girls and stayed in same-gender clumps, and for several hours no one lit up a cigarette.

The opening act only started at 10PM despite the ticket saying 9PM (we finished our paellas and crème brûlées hurriedly at the Spanish Club down the block), but both sets were so short we were out of there by a quarter past midnight. ^^; I thought some of their songs were sort of boring, in a "...Or I could be home listening to Bis right now" way, but there were an equal number that I quite liked. That is, I guess they reminded me a bit of Bis-but-more-twee (lots of melodica and cowbell and tambourine and handclaps and such), and the rest stands or falls according to the merit of the songs themselves. XD

Multimedia from Sunday afternoon - I have to make a separate post for Saturday and Monday. It's been busy. ♥

( Cut for picspam. )

One Self - Bluebird
The Herbaliser with Jean Grae - The Generals Take London
Diplo - Diplo Rhythm (feat. Sandra Melody, Vybz Cartel & Pantera Os Dandinhos)
TTC - Dans le club

Some tracks from said 2CD sampler (Ninja Tune/Big Dada, summer 2005), fairly representative of the sort of thing that was being played. Did I mention they were selling off vinyl? *g* Now have Amon Tobin's Out From Out Where and DJ Vadim's USSR: Art of Listening for 5$ each. Would've bought more except I only had 20$ on me and it would've been impossible to lug around anyhow.

Much love albeit tragically short set somewhat marred by assholes in audience (redeemed by adorable genki fankids met post-concert although was witness to said genki kids' enthused dancing all through). New songs better live. Shirley awesome. Shirley's accent love. Scotland in general wins at life.

Photos uncommonly excellent. Will upload at length once I find my USB data key.

( reeeeally large pictures )