While last year’s graduating class might disagree, Northwestern has a knack for bringing commencement speakers with some clout. At least, it did in 2005 and 2006: In back-to-back years, the two men who would go on to run in this year’s epic, overlong and wildly entertaining presidential campaign came to impart some advice on departing Northwestern seniors.

It’s interesting to look back at those two speeches, even if it doesn’t shed a whole ton of light on the kinds of presidents John McCain or Barack Obama could be. If anything, it confirms our impressions of the sorts of campaigns they’ve run. Maybe it’s my bias speaking, but it’s pretty clear which words could be used to sum up the talks. Obama’s speech: inspiring, inclusive, Obama-centric. McCain’s: kill-joy.

Even though Obama wouldn’t announce his candidacy for another eight months, the themes that have characterized his campaign ran through his 2006 commencement speech. It’s easy to imagine that Obama was, effectively, running in secret at that point, especially given evidence that he’s been targeting the presidency since 2004. Obama’s critics could read the 2006 speech now and contend that even back then he had a “healthy ego” (as he recently told USA Today), as a good portion of his talk held his own life up as a model to be followed by Northwestern grads.

His message was about empathy and the way it can not only transform personal lives but also inform political action. Drawing from his oft-repeated life narrative about the way he morphed from a selfish, partying kid to an idealistic, problem-solving “community organizer” (the job description gets defined slightly more clearly in the speech), he asserted that the highest form of maturity isn’t knowledge or achievement, but rather the ability “to see the world through those who are different from us — the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.” He got a bit preachy as he yanked the idea of day-to-day morality up into the realm of policy platforms, but you get the sense that the connection in Obama’s mind is genuine: His politics are literally about restoring the idea of the “common good.”

And, most impressively, Obama clearly wrote his speech for a class of graduating college seniors. He opened and closed by directly referencing a column he read in The Daily Northwestern. He fused the political message with the personal one, speaking about his own experiences right after college. In essence, he recognized his audience and put his argument in terms they would care about — a tactic not that far off from the one he used in last week’s nationally televised infomercial.

Senator McCain, too, made some well-intended attempts to connect with the group he was addressing. He opened with a bit of self-deprecating humor that referenced his delinquent days in the Naval Academy. And he brought the speech into the classroom with this line: “I suppose that if your political science professor were assigning you a paper, he’d suggest that you define your terms up front.” But he may have gone too far with the poli-sci metaphor: The speech was just as dry and tone-deaf as an A-grade Intro to International Relations paper.

Out of the galaxy of potential topics to speak about in a commencement address, McCain chose, somewhat inexplicably, to respond to critics of the Iraq War and assert his own vision of U.S. foreign policy as a force for spreading democracy and human rights. As a policy statement, it was eloquent enough. McCain admirably called for swift action to prevent genocide in Darfur (though he hasn’t been the most forceful advocate for that cause in the two-and-a-half years since). Like Obama, he called for graduates to embrace a “cause that is greater than your self interest.”

But something tells me the speech was written backwards: McCain wanted to state, publicly, his current thoughts about America’s role in the world, and the commencement address was just the most convenient place to do so. It was a speech that could have been delivered anywhere, at any time, tweaked slightly for the audience he had before him. McCain’s critics (myself included) would say that’s a bit like his case for becoming President: He’s taken fairly traditional conservative agenda — one that’s been discredited in many ways over the last eight years — and attempted to dress it up as change. It’s a stretch, but the awkward pitch of the speech could be seen as a symptom of McCain’s mediocre talents for forging a message and speaking to voter’s current concerns.

Besides, it’s hard to imagine the class of 2005 walking away from commencement feeling much inspired when McCain ended his speech with the solemn, if worthy, quote about “for whom the bell tolls.” But perhaps that was just some straight-talk, and Obama’s closing line about America’s “magnificent journey towards that distant horizon, and a better day” might be empty hope-mongering. The argument about which is more appealing isn’t that different from the argument that will finally end on Tuesday.

To read the text of the two speeches, click on the graphics below. Word clouds created with Wordle, licensed under Creative Commons.

The most-used words in Barack Obama’s 2006 NU commencement speech	The most-used words in John McCain’s 2005 NU commencement speech

A lot of crazy shit happened at Of Montreal’s show at the Riviera on Monday, but the craziest thing may have been that it all wasn’t, you know, insane. Sure, some may look at 2008 as the year when front man Kevin Barnes finally lost it, releasing divisive schizo-pop opus Skeletal Lampings and then going on tour that’s one-third rock show and two-thirds nightmare ballet. In Chicago — as he has been doing elsewhere on this tour — he brought a performance troupe, bizarre costumes, stripped down to a bikini-bottom, rubbed himself down with red ink, put on a bath robe, walked himself up a mock-gallows, was hanged, stripped down again, emerged from a coffin-thingy filled with shaving cream and brought his own daughter Alabee on stage to watch the madness.

So yeah, the concert was weird. But it wasn’t psycho pointlessness. Walking away, I felt I had a better sense for what Barnes was trying to do on Skeletal Lamping and, to a lesser extent, its two most recent predecessors (The Sunlandic Twins and Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?). To put it simply, Barnes is ashamed of being a man. He wants to be a sensitive dude who loves his wife and can control his own actions, but his gawdamn libido keeps getting in the way. Barnes has a Freudian view of life, with the id containing all of his manly tendencies and the ego his desire just to be human. That explains why, no matter what costume the performers on stage were wearing — they changed from golden Buddahs to wild west card-sharks to fatigued soldiers to zoo animals — there was always some domineering outcast, taller and brawnier than the other actors, wearing some sort of terrifying mask (tiger, skeleton, football player). And in each skit, the “man” stomped around, either hitting on or just hitting his feminine counterparts until they ganged up and beat him to the ground. There were variations on the basic plot, but the idea was the same: The man is the menace.

And that’s the idea behind Barnes’ recent musical output. He acknowledges he’s a “Woman Studies Victim” with one song title, and a good portion of Skeletal Lamping and Hissing Fauna is narrated from the point of view of the fictional Georgie Fruit — a middle-aged black transsexual who was born a man, had an operation to become a woman, and then switched back to being a man. Fruit stands in for Barnes’ own anxiety about his masculinity, as he constantly veers back and forth between sweetness and lustfulness. This all leaves him with guilt, depression and an ear for fabulous pop hooks.

Monday’s show, though, also showed the weakness in Barnes’ recent artistic direction. It was just too much. Just as on Skeletal Lamping, the music jerked from electro/disco/twee awesomeness into formless noise making and tiresome melody-free passages. As the show went on, things felt more and more muddled, and eventually it seemed that Barnes was less singing than shouting his lyrics. But Of Montreal must have a high-school street team or something: The hordes or teenagers who showed up to the show were absolutely enraptured, dancing and screaming and dolled up in glam outfits no matter what the band was playing. Still, there were plenty of musically amazing moments from Barnes and co. — they brought the house down by closing with “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Plus, the spectacle of it all gave amusement to anyone who wasn’t thrilled by, say, the way that “Plastis Wafers” goes from bubbly Sade-on-steroids to echo-chamber mess in its second half. It’s never a good sign when music needs an entire theater production to make it palatable, but luckily, most of Of Montreal’s output isn’t that way: To be a fan, it’s not that hard to take all the good parts you can get and then sit back and appreciate Barnes’ glammy daddy issues the rest of the time.

For some reason, one of the most memorable details from that sad day in 2004 when John Kerry lost was a simple piece of trivia: The winner had already been decided a few days early. Apparently, history has shown that whichever candidate’s face sells more Halloween marks will go on to win the election. It was true for both of George W.’s victories, and it was true for Clinton.

And now, *fingers crossed*, it’ll be true for Obama. The freakish rubber face of the senator from Illinois outsold the crinkly John McCain mask by a ratio of 2:1, according to The Age. Stupid, right? But stupider things have affected this election.

The details: The band will be playing in the evening at the Kellogg Centennial Global Arts Festival Fountain Square (supposedly on Sherman Avenue between Grove and Davis). The event is the start of Kellogg’s year-long centennial celebration.

Videos of their big hits:

“Sink to the Bottom”

“Stacy’s Mom”

“Radiation Vibe” (I’ve never heard this song, but Wikipedia tells me if was popular…)

The philosophy of this year’s Dillo Day lineup, which smushes ’90s prom-pop up again against ’00s political punk and two forms of Chicago rap, isn’t that far from the philosophy guiding the two DJs in Flosstradamus: For them, it doesn’t matter what kind of music comes out of the speakers so long as it gets people moving. In their remixes, bootleg mash-ups and original tracks, Curt Cameruci and Josh Young seem to always be searching for a common group between pop, rock, hip-hop and electronic music — and usually, that common ground comes in the form of an awesome beat and shout-along chorus.

The Chicago act brings their club-tested DJing skills to Northwestern tomorrow, when they’re scheduled to play sets before and after Broken Social Scene (so that means they’ll likely play from 5 to 5:30 and from 6:30 to 7). In a phone interview with North by Northwestern, Cameruci and Young talked about their expectations, their “have fun” philosophy and the difference between them and a certain other DJ who came to campus this year.

NBN: You’re playing on Dillo Day, which for a lot of Northwestern students is the day where they wake up at 9 a.m. and get drunk or high and then they go see a bunch of concerts. So how do you feel about playing for a bunch of drunken college kids?

Curt Cameruci: That’s pretty much what we do all the time (laughs). I mean, depending on if they’re college kids or if they’re just normal kids, we usually just play for drunkies anyway. We play in clubs all the time, so it’s either they’re drunk or on something.

You’ll be playing outside, does that change your act much as opposed to when you’re in a club?

Cameruci: A little bit. Lollapalooza last year was the best. When we play outside, kids just let loose a little more. I think the whole festival environment is just a gateway to letting loose and having a good time. We love to play outside, we love to play at festivals.

You’re playing before and after Broken Social Scene, and you’re playing on a day where the other big acts are Common, Cool Kids, Third Eye Blind and Ted Leo. Would you ever think of mashing up any of their songs?

Cameruci: Yeah, maybe. When we make our bootleg songs, we kind of use whatever, anything that sounds good. So, yeah, that’s the thing: There’s no boundaries to what we do. If there’s good music we’ll just use it. It’s going be an interesting thing tomorrow cuz of all of the different bands, all the different types of music. We’re more party music. I think the Cool Kids are probably the closest to us, they’ve got the same party vibe. Common is more thought-provoking. Broken Social Scene will be a little more crazy. It’ll be weird in a good way.

How would you describe your act for someone who’s never heard you?

Cameruci: It’s fun. There’s no boundaries. You shouldn’t take yourself seriously if you come see us. You should be ready to wild-out and have a good time. Because a lot of time, people think that since we’re DJs that it’s all pretentious, but our whole stance on the DJ thing is having fun. We play a bunch of anthems and stuff like that, and we don’t really look at ourselves as DJs, we look at ourselves as an act.

The last big-name DJ to come to campus was Girl Talk. Who would win in a battle between Girl Talk and Flosstradamus?

Cameruci: It depends on what the grounds are in the battle. Because we could do what he does, but could he do what we do? He uses a computer to make a lot of his stuff, and when he performs it’s all computer stuff that mixes it all together. Josh and I, we could do the same thing, we could cut up a bunch of loops and do the same thing. He’s a talented dude, he’s awesome, we like Greg. But it depends. I don’t know what the analogy is. If you ask a BMX biker to battle a road-bike racer, like, who would win? It’s like, we kind of do the same thing, but we also do different things.

Any advice for an aspiring DJ? How do you get a crowd dancing?

Josh Young: Straight up, just try and be you. That’s the key to being a good DJ in this day in age, cuz everyone has access to everyone’s music on the Internet. So, honestly, just play what you actually feel. Play music that you really love to hear. And, you know, be nice to people. Because there’s a lot of people out there that kind of get in their heads and get kind of crazy. You just gotta go out there and have fun. If you’re enjoying it, everyone out there out there is watching you and will know that you’re really feeling it.

You guys are working on an album, right? What’s it gonna be like?

Young: It’s our first record, outside of just doing remixes. It’s all our original production. We’re gonna have some guest rappers on it and different people and different friends and family members and all that. It’s gonna be cool. It’s kind of interesting, because it’s our first time. We’re just gonna play it by ear, collaborate with our friends and get a lot of good people to get the vibe strong.

Reason 1:

Reason 2:

Reason 3:

In other words, they’ve got the tunes to turn the Lakefill into a part-rave, part-mosh-pit, part-juke-hall dance party. Sure, the “indie rock meets ultra-thumping dance/hip hop track” formula isn’t exactly fresh anymore, and Northwestern got to experience its most innovative form when Girl Talk came to campus. But the two DJs in Flosstradamus are among the best mash-up artists because of their pop instincts: Your first reaction to most of their tracks will be to grin, your next will be to dance, and then you might get a little flustered that you can’t get what you just heard out of your head. Ask anyone who’s seen the them at their countless number of shows in Chicago over the past few years — it’s gonna be fun out there.

Then: “Hmm, wow, this is a really awesome lineup. I haven’t been this excited for the bands playing Dillo Day in my three years here.”

Then: “Who the hell is going to stick around for these concerts with me?”

This year’s concert slate is an interesting one. In past years, you got the feeling Mayfest had a “we’ll take what we can get” mentality when booking artists for Dillo Day, each year’s iteration feeling like a more and more random collection of B-list and C-list mainstream rock and hip-hop acts. There have been a few exceptions, but bands like Cake (2007) and Robert Randolph and the Family Band (2006) were the kind of solid picks Mayfest made that drew wide crowds with few rabid fans. This year, though, four out of five of the artists coming are bona fide “critics’ darlings” — which, in this age of online taste-making, means they’ve got “hipster cred” and might inspire a certain geeky demographic to put down their PBRs and spend the entire day on the Lakefill. The fifth band, Third Eye Blind, is a pretty inspired choice — ultra-well-known, likely to draw a big crowd looking to experience some of the songs that defined their middle-school years.

On Dillo Day, the day we “party like a state school,” there’s always a battle between enjoying Mayfests’ outdoors offerings and the threat of creeping sobriety the longer one stays on the Lakefill. This year’s (and many other’s) problem: With the most well-known act, Third Eye Blind, playing first, there’s little incentive for many people to stick around for the concerts later in the day.

It’s not that the other bands won’t put on a good show for people who don’t know their music. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists’ peppy pop-punk is certainly easy to like, Broken Social Scene’s epic rock anthems should engage all but the most cynical watchers, and Cool Kids’ breezy rapping might inspire a dance party. Common is a no-brainer for the nighttime headliner, with plenty of name recognition and awesome songs.

But the lure of good music isn’t necessarily enough to prevent lots of people from leaving the concert scene and restarting that progressive kegger they kicked off the day with. The only surefire way to get people to stay around is for them to be excited about the upcoming acts. This year, they definitely should be excited — but I’ve seen quite a few people give blank stares at the mentions of Ted Leo, Cool Kids and Common. So, in the spirit of getting people pumped, we’ve come up with fan-boy guides to all the non-Northwestern, non-Third Eye Blind acts. Enjoy!

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

Broken Social Scene

The Cool Kids

Common

Broken Social Scene is a big band. No, they’re not all that famous, even in their homeland of Canada. But they’re big: They’ve got 16 members and counting, and the volume of instruments, movements and melodies on each track threatens to blow out speakers while the sheer enormity of their ambition aspires to blow minds. The simplest thing you could say about them is that they’re a rock band, and the most commonly said things about them involve words like “orchestral” “epic” “shambling” and “awesome” (and, of course, “hipster,” “indie,” “Canadian” and “Pitchfork“).

The thing, though, is that all those adjectives make them sound like your typical over-the-top emo-ish indie rock outfit, but Broken Social Scene definitely don’t sound like the Arcade Fire or Stars (though their roster includes members of Stars, as well as other household hipster names like Feist and Metric). The best Broken Social Scene tracks sound like rock n’ roll, folk, movie-score strings and beautiful but meaningless lyrics thrown into a blender set to “chop.”

For a quick look at the band’s two main modes, listen to “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl” and “Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)“: The former shows the group’s capacity for slow-building tear-jerking grace, and the latter shows their capacity for ridiculously huge tear-jerking rock. To get better-acquainted before Dillo Day, check out these three albums…

You Forgot It In People (2002)

Their debut , Feel Good Lost, was a pleasing, if boring, collection of well-made ambient instrumentals. You Forgot It In People, though, stands as an almost-unbelievable leap forward into a world of glimmering, pummeling pop-rock. As if to diffuse criticism that all indie rock bands’ songs sound the same, each track on You Forgot It In People bears little resemblance to the last. In the span of three songs, the band swings from crashing post-rock bombast (”KC Accidental“) to hand-clappin’ psychedelic pop (”Stars and Sons“) to a punk track that has always reminded me of The Stooges in space (”Almost Crimes“). I’m hoping the band busts out the schmaltzy, strolling instrumental “Pacific Theme” on the Lakefill: There are few better songs that conjure the feel of a cool breeze on a sunny day by the water.

Key tracks: “Stars and Sons,” “Almost Crimes,” “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl,” “Cause=Time”

Broken Social Scene (2005)

I suspect the band self-titled this album because it represents the purest distillation of Broken Social Scene’s spirit: It’s 14 tracks of raw, simmering sound, with the songs collapsing and whirling and thrumming with the energy of, well, an entire social scene. That’s not to say there aren’t real songs here (”7/4 Shoreline” is one of the catchiest things they’ve done), just that they’re often encrusted with ADD drumming, intertwining fuzzed-out guitar lines, strange filters and coats of noise from unidentifiable sources. If you ask me, it’s the band’s best album. From the gravity-free apocalypse of “Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)” to the schizophrenic twitch-rock of “Windsurfing Nation,” it’s the kind of record that inspires you to put it on in your room and spend the next hour kicking around your pillows and imagining you’re in a war movie.

Key tracks: “Swimmers,” “7/4 Shoreline,” “Fire Eye’d Boy,” “Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day),” “Windsurfing Nation”

Spirit If… (2007)

This technically isn’t an album by Broken Social Scene but rather by Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew. That’s what the band is doing nowadays: “presenting” albums by their own band members (Brendan Canning is up next with a release on July 22). The music on here sounds as you’d expect it to sound — like a slimmed-down Broken Social Scene. The songs are still overstuffed, but not quite as overstuffed as their other material, and Drew’s vocals aren’t as compelling as they are when supported by the band’s other singers (which often include Leslie Feist, Drew’s girlfriend). Still, Broken Social Scene will likely bust out a few of these tracks on Dillo Day. My money’s on “Tbtf,” a perky ballad featuring the best pickup line of the decade: “You’re too beautiful to fuck.”

Key tracks: “Lucky Ones,” “Gang Bang Suicide,” “Backed Out On The…,” “Tbtf”

Fun fact: Stars‘ Amy Millan will play on the Lakefill for the second time this quarter when Broken Social Scene plays Dillo Day. The band’s MySpace lists her in their current touring lineup, along with six others. While the seven-person band might pale in comparison to Broken Social Scene’s former 21-person glory, have some faith: Whatever this band does, it’s gonna be big.

As a mid-level indie rock group, Headlights have played their share of sparsely attended shows — club gigs where no one shows up, opening spots where the dozen or so people in the audience make small talk over Old Styles while waiting for the headliner to show up. But still, I felt a little embarrassed when Headlights walked on stage in the Louis Room on Friday to play for a crowd of about 35, especially when they have a history of selling out their Chicago shows. Sure, Niteskool’s publicity push for the event seemed a little low-key and most NU students haven’t heard of Headlights, but still — they had a song on Grey’s Anatomy! That counts for something, right?

The band took the low turnout like the touring champs they are, though. You get a sense that they’ve done this so many times, and the five members know each other so well, that they could play for an empty room and still produce a sound as warm and engaging as they did Friday night. In fact, for the first few songs, you got an impression that that’s what was happening on stage: From Erin Fein’s close-eyed chirping to Tristan Wright looking down and fiddling with his guitar, Headlights focused entirely on playing their flawless pop songs flawlessly, without paying much attention to who was watching. But as the set went on, the band started looking outward more and found that the three dozen people who did show up were actually a pretty good audience, with dance circles breaking out at the sides of the crowd and the rest of the watchers paying hushed, head-nodding attention.

Headlights’s brand of nostalgia-soaked boy/girl twee comes across as surprisingly muscular in concert, as do the band’s members. I spotted tattoos on three out of five of them, and singer Tristan Wright’s trucker hat, big arms and sideburns made him look more suited for a spot in an SoCal punk group than an indie-pop act. That fact, of course, just made the crooning about childhood streets and disputes with landlords more genuine: There’s no affect to Headlights. The only agenda is pretty, well-played music. At a few points in the concert, the members seemed inexplicably happy, throwing beaming glances at each other. It might have just been because they were having a good time or might have been because they had just remembered some joyous, shared experience. While the rest of Northwestern was engaged in whatever the rest of Northwestern does on a Friday night, the 40 or so people in the Louis room — band and audience — got to enjoy the simple, awesome pleasure of some nice songs executed perfectly.

As for Butterfly Assassins, the opener featuring Northwestern’s own Danny Yadron on bass: They played really well. It’s clear the five members of the band take what they do very seriously, tightly recreating the band’s baroque collective-rock (yeah, I’m making up a word to describe bands that sound, act and dress like the Arcade Fire). The histrionic vocals, kinda long songs and all that squalling-guitar, swelling-violin bombast might not appeal to everyone, but Friday night there was no denying that the songs contain some moments that explode with energy, rocking hard enough to make you forget that this isn’t their full-time job — yet.

• We’re egotistical. Somehow, when news of this “glitch” got out, the assumption was that we were getting a glimpse at a “stalker list” — that is, the people who most regularly look at your profile. It’s a lot more likely that those five names were determined by some algorithm that takes into account your searching and clicking and wall-posting. But still, it was thrilling for a moment to believe that all those people you had been scrutinizing had been scrutinizing you back.
• Some people still pretend that their profile info is supposed to be “private.” All those creeped-out reactions — “eww, I don’t want THAT GUY looking at my profile” — just don’t make sense: Your Facebook page is meant to be looked at by everyone on your friends list. Accept it!
• The real privacy danger with Facebook is the one nobody talks about. Those warnings about employers, advertisers and cops looking at your profile seem overcooked: It’s pretty rare for the content of any intelligent person’s profile to be all that damning anyway. No, Facebook’s potential for creepy, life-ruining privacy violations is in the way the website secretly tracks how you use it. It’s a lot more awkward for your ex-girlfriend to know how often you look at her photos than it is for your boss to find out that Showgirls is one of your favorite movies. The search-bar gaff on Tuesday raises the issue that Facebook pays attention to how you spend your time. The fact that Facebook’s programmers so quickly disabled the feature once suggests that they realize they’re treading on dangerous ground by collecting that kind of information.
• Facebook matters to us. A lot. The entire experience of having everyone I encountered on campus talking about this thing was really bizarre: It only took a few hours for word to spread that there was some new feature on Facebook that might mean something. We didn’t even know what it meant. Most of the people I talked to said their list didn’t make complete sense by any measure they could think of: While best-friends and secret crushes showed up on people’s lists, so did totally random semi-friends. Of course, we were interested for all the reasons listed above (egotism, self-consciousness, privacy concerns, plus just good old fashioned gossip-lust). But still, I can’t think of anything other than Facebook that could spark so many people to start talking about their personal lives at the exact same time: All at once, we had a new parlor game, focused on figuring out who we spend our time caring about and why.

That’s probably a lot more than needed to be said about this topic, and yet there’s probably a lot more that could be said. Anyways, check this Gawker post to go deeper down the rabbit-hole and find out how Facebook ranked all your friends.