As my readers might remember, one of my absolute favorite discs last year came from Boston MC Moe Pope and Bay Area producer Headnodic. I would further boast about their Megaphone project here (like I often do at the dinner table, in stadium church services, and on the orange line), but I already reviewed it and profiled them for the Phoenix last year.

>>DOWNLOAD: DJ Ms. DD, The Trannysphere #1 [mp3]

About once a week, for as long as we can remember, one of the Phoenix's most senior critics, Michael Freedberg, would come into the office to pick up his check, and then, on his way out, as a way of saying "hello," he'd stop by the arts desk and launch into a monologue, often aimed at no one in particular. It wasn't idle conversation: he was professoring. He has one of those lawyer's voices (he being, in fact, a lawyer): the iron-plated, stentorian tone you'd associate with someone who'd watched old Abe Lincoln biographs from the 1950s. He would talk about Led Zeppelin, about electro, or spend an hour hectoring us to listen to some new Mylene Farmer album, or a Prince b-side, or an Arabic dance band he'd found on some European offshoot of Amazon.com. Michael Freedberg is one of those Rushmore-sized visages of the legendary-rock-crit days: although he spends his fruitful hours doing legal work, and is happy discoursing about the Greek and Latin classics, and has for 25 years or so voted conservative Republican, he has also been one of the most insightful and unique chroniclers of African American dance music of our time. At some crucial point in the '70s he ignored punk, embraced disco with both arms and both lobes of his brain, and ever since his has been a singular, lone voice in the wilderness -- his canon is no one else's canon, and as such he has sometimes found it difficult to communicate with his editors (except for the Phoenix's Matt Ashsare and Jon Garelick, who have given him the most work in recent years, and former Village Voice editor Chuck Eddy, whom Michael adores and who understood him completely). In the '70s Freedberg covered the greats of R&B, and had his Almost Famous moment touring with P-Funk for a week for the long-lost music rag Gig. In 1981, he discovered (then Roxbury-based) electro godfathers the Jonzun Brothers, and even provided the title for that group's most well-remembered song: they'd wanted to name it "Pac Man," but it was Freedberg, who knew what kind of legal trouble would come with that title, who convinced the label to call it "Pac Jam."

When he's not destroying parties as half of the Certified Bananas crew, DJ P. Nice mans the decks for the Providence party-funk trio Miss Fairchild, alongside this little dude who sings like Prince and this big dude who plays the flute. Trust us, it's genius. Combining both talents, P. Nice has just dropped the preview Miss Fairchild mixtape, which spins four new tracks into the hot old-school shit by Tony Toni Tone and Morris Day. Grab it now, then get over to Harpers Ferry tonight to catch them with OTD faves UV Protection.

Dance-party holocaust, complete with drops from Spank Rock and Amanda Blank, better than Coachella. Plays like a DJ set instead of some dude's clever mixtape: in case you're wondering, that's a good, good thing. They explain better than we can. From MySpace:

That whole DJ Drama mess spooked the crap out of mixtape DJs, to the extent that hometown hero CLINTON SPARKS done closed up shop on Mixunit, started a blog, took a day job at VH1, and is giving away his entire mixtape library for free.

Bruce v. the Mooninites

Ever since we heard about Hollertronix taking root at the Ukranian Club in Philly, we'd been dreaming about a Boston party scene flowering at grimy, non-club-like venues. The obvious corollary was the Elks Lodge in Central Square: two basement rooms, no attitude (unless you count the gentleman's no-cursing rule enforced by the bartenders), a two-o'clock license, and -- dude -- paneling. When the Certified Bananas crew started heating up Enormous Room, this was the dream: a monthly at the Elks, with every party DJ in town getting drunk, throwing caution and genre out the window, making a sweaty roomful of kids lose their shit.

That dude MISTAKER has cued up AC/DC, Tina Turner, and Justice for your listening pleasure. Call the bomb squad. Special NYC guests TROUBLE & BASS. OTD will be trying to get someone to play the new NIN thunder.  

DOWNLOAD: Mistaker, "Thunderdome Mix" (mp3)
WATCH: Thunderdome, the party trailer

Pre-party film screening featuring Tyrone Tanous's silent documentary Survey [click for trailer at Google video] at an undisclosed location. Party time at Shine with David Day, Mistaker, Baldur, and DJ Die Young.

DOWNLOAD: DJ Die Young, "Electro-Lite Promo Mix" (mp3)

IF YOU GO:

We try to keep abreast of MICL PTVN's adventures in this space, but the dude just keeps on keeping ahead of us. David Day caught up with him in his latest circuits column, and then sent us the following mixtape to pass along:

That dude DJ Mark E. Moon has been awful quiet lately -- too quiet, buried-in-the-lab quiet, building-birfday-mixtapes quiet. We should've known that he wasn't kidding when he told us his Dipset-ized Neutral Milk Hotel "King of Karat Flowers" remix was part of a longer suite. But after that, there was his baile-funk Belle and Sebastian remix and then . . . nothing. Hell, we haven't even heard much from his band Plunge Into Death lately.

Wait's over. Run for cover.

1. Sure, there's lots of people playing Brazilian shit nowadays. You can get it from people like this, or you can get is straight from the tap. Lemon-Red's new mix is by none other than Bonde Do Role's DJ Gorky. This is the guy who thinks up shit like Alice in Chains as a baile funk song. He does stuff like that for breakfast. So you can imagine what the guy does when given, like, 45 minutes to fuck with. Smashing Pumpkins/M.I.A. perhaps? Lots of carioca shit you haven't heard, too.

2. Grindie. Inevitable? Genius? Download and decide for yourself.