Return From Los Angeles, Minus Fone

It was cold in Los Angeles.  And there was cold pouring rain!

Home early this AM to the C'town House from the EMP conference in LA via two different airports and drive then from D.C.  Along the way el V lost his phone.

Unhappily, reflecting the trend noticed in the last years in most arenas of entertainent, media and academia, this year's presenters tended to be more white and more male than at the recent meetings.  Attendence was noticably down from previous years, and a noticable number of panelists canceled at the last moment. Partly this was due to it being Oscar weekend, which no one had thought about when choosing LA and the dates for this year's meeting.  Plane tickets and hotel rooms were difficult to score, and the prices of both tickets and rooms were sky-high, which was partly due to the Oscars and partly to the events in the Middle East and North Africa.  Then -- there is the economy, stupid.  So many people are out of work and have been by now for a very long time.

The theme this year for the Experience Music Project's conference, the first one held outside of Seattle, was "Music and Money."  Among the highlights were Greil Marcus per usual -- the man is a brilliant music composer, though he uses language rather than instruments -- and Robert Christgau.  All in all, it was still a very good conference and a lot of fun for all those who were able to attend.

el V's presentation was titled "Money Musk."  He's built out a fascinating complex of historical and musical research from the sheet music of this so-titled fiddle tune in Thomas Jefferson's library at Monticello.  The tune was evidently a favorite of the Virginian, played for Jefferson by one of his sons by Sally Hemmings.

The points of the presentation included the Chevalier de Saint-George, Charles Dibdon, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera and its sequel, Yankee Doodle and the Macaronis of London who were among Handel's groupies, Liverpool's Penny Lane and the South Sea slave trading company bubble, the Anacreon glee plus the Star Spangled Banner, and oh, so much more about the history of England musical theater and "blacking up."

To put the point of the presentation into a very few words, it described the roots of pop as found in the black face traditions of the English and by extension New World English 18th century.

His presentation was early Sunday afternoon, Oscar Day. This tradition of white people blacking up for theatrical presentation was already present in the court of Henry VIII.  The court ladies loved to be "black moors,' so there were instructions to those creating the court masques that were such an essential part of keeping the courtly boredom at bay to include such roles. Before the right cosmetic paint was devised the ladies blacked up by wearing fine black mesh masks on their faces and arms.  I had mentioned to him that Portman's costume as the Black Queen in The Black Swan included a black veil that covered her face, so he mentioned that factoid appropriate to the day, which was received with happy applause because everyone had seen the movie -- though he hasn't.  Though I refuse to take credit for this particular work, el V insists that I do get loads of co-credit, starting with finding out initially about the sheet music of Money Musk in Jefferson's library.  So he shouted me out for co-credit from the stage in the middle of it all.

Windows 7 crashed fairly early into the presentation so the YouTube embedded Power Point musical examples couldn't be played.  The whole damned computer froze.  el V used colorful bad language and then slammed the laptop shut and continued sans notes or any other memory enhancer. The audience included  Jeff Chang -- any time you get to hang with Chang is a great big plus -- our agent, as well as many of the other Usual Suspects of music writers, who you love to see because they are amigas and amigos, brilliant and so interesting.

Next year's EMP meeting will be in NYC, which makes it a lot easier for us.

Now, to recover or replace the missing phone.