​Indie rock has long had a place on Comedy Central's satirical right wing broadcast the Colbert Report--from Stephen Colbert's challenging the Decemberists to a green-screen guitar shred-off to having Vampire Weekend battle the Black Keys for Grammy and commercial licensing supremacy (always with the fighting, Stephen). But last night, on a show whose guest was indie violinist Andrew Bird, Colbert gave a shout out to the folks who really make rock'n'roll happen--not the rock stars, but the critics, the academics, and the down and out NERDS of the EMP Pop Conference. As the man says, the Pop Conference is "a weekend-long music festival in the tradition of Woodstock and Coachella, but instead of jammin' to your favorite band, you're jammin' to a series of panel discussions and presentations of scholarly papers! You know their motto: less rock, more talk!"

This year is also the second that the Conference has taken place not in Seattle at its namesake Experience Music Project but rotated between here and other cities. Last year, it went down at UCLA, and this time it's at NYU. Clearly, the move out of our provincial backwater has raised the conference's profile, but it's a little bittersweet. (The Conference is set rotate back to Seattle for its 2013 edition.) Being a huge music nerd, I highly recommend the EMP Pop Conference, but it is undeniably funny to hear Colbert deadpan the ungainly names of a few of those academic abstracts. Also, as has been pointed out, Colbert's "rejected" paper--"Self Love in an Elevator: Apollonian Images of Hedonism, Eroticism, and the Mechanized Urban Landscape in Post-Comeback Aerosmith"--actually sounds pretty killer. You can watch the whole episode here.

You can't tell, but tie-dyed dude is playing a mandolin.

​1. Let's just get this out of the way now: In 2012, you can't not see Portland through the lens of Portlandia. This moment to them--and it's funny how long this has been coming; slightly lower profile media like Burn Collector were musing about Portland's irrevocable hipsterization as far back as like 2000--well, it must be what grunge felt like for Seattle: a distortion, a caricature based on truths that nonetheless comes to replace those truths in people's perceptions. The city has become like the "Most Photographed Barn in America" from Don Delilo's White Noise: it's become impossible to see it for itself, unmediated. (Oh, you *haven't read* White Noise?)

So, when you're out on a brewery tour and every stop sounds like the Bard's College from Skyrim, whether via live band or piped in madrigals on the PA, it's "The Dream of the 1890s." When one of your buddies almost ditches home for the weekend because his allergies are flaring up, it's the "Allergy Pride Parade." Probably the self-parody-parodying "time becomes a loop" moment of this was driving around actually listening to Washed Out on our host's car stereo (his car, his tunes)--it was, sadly, not as quirky as I thought it'd be.

So anyway, if everything else on this list reads like pitches for new sketches it's because our mental environments are totally corrupted by media. (Oh, you *don't read* Adbusters?) And because of course, I'm available to write for the show, or even just run for coffee or whatever. Okay, here we go. Sorry in advance.

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​The Pitfalls of Grammy Fame
On Bon Iver and the perils of Alternative/Best New Artist adoration
By Kluck Chosterman

Bon Iver was just named Best New Artist and Bon Iver, Bon Iver Best Alternative Music Album of the year by National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences voters in the 2011 Grammy Awards.

I'm guessing this doesn't mean much to more than (maybe) 10,000 people in the entire country. In fact, if you effortlessly understood 100 percent of this article's opening sentence, you can probably skip the rest of the piece. But there's something about this situation that I find pretty fascinating, even though it's speculative and only partially related to music. When (and if) you listen to Bon Iver, Bon Iver by Bon Iver, you are listening to two things: a record that's very good, and/or a record that will someday seem way worse than it actually is. And logic suggests the latter is more likely than the former, even though that's no reflection on the value of the artist.

I'm not really in a position to argue for (or against) the merits of Bon Iver, simply because I've barely listened to Bon Iver, Bon Iver. Had it not won the Grammy Awards, I might not have listened to it at all. It's been on my iTunes since whenever it came out, I know my wife loved it, and I had no problem with it ideologically. I just never got around to playing it. Somehow, the single story I'd read about Bon Iver was about a cabin, so I wasn't even sure what genre of music it was supposed to exist alongside. The only thing I knew was that the words Bon Iver were pronounced "Bone Eevair," which seemed like reason enough to ignore it (not a good reason, but a reason nonetheless). But then it was voted Best New Artist and Best Alternative Music Album in this awards show, which made me think, I should at least know what it is. So I started playing it, totally uninformed and with no motive beside sincere curiosity. This being the Internet, you can listen to it yourself. If you don't feel like listening to it, here's enough information to pretend like you did:

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​I was a couple hours into a pretty serious pot cookie by the time the Superbowl XFCVGFLI halftime show started. To the point where I couldn't make sense of things fast enough to tweet about them--it was just one increasingly crazy thing after another, the whole room here pretty much going nuts--and so resorted to just retweeting my smarter, more together friends. (On that note, you should also read Maura's post over at the Village Voice.) The pot cookie wore off (after the usual Sunday night sinkhole of dread), but one might reasonably still be trying to make sense of the whole spectacle this morning. The whole gladiators+cheerleaders+religion=football thing makes sense (hat tip to Paul Pearson for pointing that one out), but other questions remain:

Is vogueing at the Superbowl a most righteous queering of macho sports or just part of a rich history of cultural appropriation that runs from Madonna's snap queens on down to, well, M.I.A?

Why did LMFAO have a prop Pioneer CDJ? (Justice tribute? A reference to Redfoo's legendary turntablism skills?)

What was the deal with that slack-lining Grecian Bob Ross weed hallucination dude?

Shouldn't average Americans be used to rich people giving them the finger by now?

Why did Madonna fall through a trap door?

Couldn't they think of anything more banal than "World Peace"?

These are all nitpicks, of course, because the most important thing is that that show BLEW MY FRAGILE LITTLE MIND. So awesome.

This week, Jimmy Fallon's paying homage to Pink Floyd with a series of tribute performances; last night the Shins kicked off the week with a cover of Dark Side's "Breathe." James Mercer does an admirable job with the song's vocals, but watching the video, I'm paying more attention to Reverb's homegirl Jessica Dobson on stage right in the bright red blouse and miniskirt. Hit the 2:30 minute mark to see Dobson wail on "Breathe"'s guitar solo. If Seattle has a more badass guitarist, I haven't met her or him yet.

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​We'll start with the bad:

5. MTV can't find anyone more relevant than Katie Holmes to present their biggest award of the night, Video of the Year.

4. Nicki Minaj wears a patterned surgical face mask on the red carpet. Accessory overkill.

3. Adele's much-hyped debut VMA performance ends up being a boring rendition of "Someone Like You," instead of the smash hit that got her nominated, "Rolling in the Deep."

2. Chris Brown lip-synchs through a performance that includes him dancing and mouthing along to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Really unnecessary.

1. A much talked-about tribute to Britney Spears, which was rumored to include performances by the likes of Janet Jackson, Katy Perry, Rihanna, and Miley Cyrus, ends up being nothing but a brief segment of small children dressed in Britney Spears outfits and dancing along to sped-up versions of Britney's hits, followed by an awkward presentation of MTV's Vanguard Award to Spears. Spears looked genuinely emotional, but instead of allowing her to expand on the moment, MTV somehow made her segue her acceptance speech into a presentation of Beyonce's performance. Talk about thunder-stealing.

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. . . She did get to perform Pat Benatar's "Love Is a Battlefield" with a troupe of child dancers/martial artists and her coach, Cee Lo Green, dressed up like a giant Satanic rooster. It was bizarre, and also really awesome. Martinez and Green's duet closed Tuesday night's show, during which she also sang an original song written for her called "Afraid to Sleep." As all the show's judges noted, Martinez gave the performance everything she had, but on last night's finale show, Javier Colon was announced the winner of Season 1. Regardless of the results, throughout the season Martinez proved to a national audience just what a powerhouse vocalist she is; it was endearing to see how much Cee Lo invested in her career and to hear him speak of how he believed Martinez was a fine example of a motivated and clearly empowered female artist.

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Tacoma's Vicci Martinez has been a front-runner on NBC's The Voice ever since her appearance on the show's premiere back in April, when she sang Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" and was personally chosen by Cee-Lo Green to join his team and benefit from his tutelage. (BTW, you can purchase Martinez's version of "Rolling in the Deep" on iTunes right now). Two months later, The Voice is down to its final four contestants; this week, after a fierce performance of Florence + The Machine's "Dog Days Are Over," Green's support plus an overwhelming percentage of the popular vote pushed Martinez into the final four of the competition. Rightfully so--Martinez was on fire--check out her mohawk, beating drums, teal eyeshadow, energetic moves, and most of all, her powerhouse voice, above.

If you want to cheer on Vicci Martinez, make sure you catch The Voice next Tuesday at 9 p.m.!

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Yesterday I fell down one of those wonderful Internet rabbit holes that ends up eating your entire day, and now I'd like to share the time-suck with the fine readers of Reverb. It started, as these things do, with a blog post, this keen lyrical analysis of Pulp's "Common People" by The Guardian UK's Dorian Lynskey (occasioned by the news of Pulp's reunion for some summer festivals this year, though none thus far in the States). From there, it was on to this hour-long BBC documentary about the making of "Common People" (because I guess in Cool Britannia, the BBC gets to make hour-long documentaries about individual songs--and not even #1s!):

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A mustachioed Benjamin Verdoes--Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band founder and frontman--appeared on KING 5's New Day NW this morning to promote this week's Noise for the Needy kick-off--Verdoes performed a lovely solo acoustic version of "Of Night," found on his band's second LP, last year's Where the Messengers Meet, and later talked to show host Margaret Larson about starting the band with his little brother, Marshall Verdoes, who appeared in the audience looking dapper in a blazer. Larson also speaks with NFTN Artistic Director Jeffrey Henry.

MSHVB has been laying low for the past few months, and this weekend presents two opportunities to see the band play before an extended summer break.

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