So, let’s play a game. It’s called “Who’s More Dickhurt?” It will be a game of both skill and chance, in which there are no real winners. But oh, the fun we will have. That’s how the ol’ Inner Monologue was running when we noticed City Paper’s liveblog, now in full swing, of the Popped! fest, which kicked off last night. The liveblog is affectionately entitled Pricked! (look at you, cleverpants!) and because you probably do not care enough to do it yourself, let’s read between the lines for you, and maybe at the end of it, we really will be able to figure out who’s more dickhurt. Ostensibly, CP is dickhurt because Philadelphia Weekly nabbed the top sponsorship title for Popped!, thereby getting their logo plastered all over this thing, and by extension, all over town this week. This means that for this week, the Weekly is in some impossible-to-measure way, cooler than the City Paper. Or something. So out of the staff meeting comes the Pricked! liveblog idea, and who better to write it than ex-Plain Parade-er Maria Tessa Sciarrino, because really, hell hath no fury like an Oxford Collapse fan scorned, and right there in the first post, she lays it all out:
… after the jump.

As one half of the deceased Plain Parade, I know a thing or two about the travails of the concert promotion world, so I can certainly attest to what a massive undertaking a festival like POPPED! is.

Right. So Maria’s dickhurt, too. How come Plain Parade never did a weeklong festival? (And no, “because Dragon City do not have six side projects” is not an acceptable answer.) And away we go, where even a casual reading-between-the-lines reveals: Maria thinks this whole thing is bunk. City Paper thinks this whole thing is bunk. YOU probably think this whole thing is bunk.
But here’s where the game of “Who’s More Dickhurt?” gets really interesting: Philadelphia Weekly is probably dickhurt, too. It’s an open secret in the scene at this point that Popped! has been a mess, with shows flip-flopping, misinformation/too much information abound, and so on. Never mind the question asked by everyone who encounters this thing: Why is it a WEEK LONG? Do all these gasface West Philly bands really need a week where they play with decent bands as some kind of sponsored-out-the-wazoo pity fuck? It’s not for us to say. Full disclosure: We’re doing a Popped! show, too, but it only started working for us once we started pretending it had no involvement with Popped! anyway. So WE’RE dickhurt about Popped!, too. But wait, there’s more! Popped! is even dickhurt about Popped! We have it on good authority that once it’s all over, one of the organizers is skipping town entirely! So the question then becomes, “Who is not dickhurt about Popped!”
The only answer we can come up with is YOU, the consumer. The shows are cheap, the opening party at least was fun, and our show is free and has great bands. So to City Paper and Maria, we say: Listen, guys, you don’t know how good you have it. Just go to the shows and have a good time. If you need an extra press pass, hit up Kelly White. I gave her mine.
TheClog: Kicking Against The Pricked

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 12:44 pm.