Barack Obama’s victory in this year’s presidential election inspired unprecedented euphoria and optimism among many Americans young and old. The celebration in Seattle Tuesday night was like a mixture of Dems winning the lottery, the World Series, and an unlimited bar tab for life. All this mad joy for a… politician? Unfuckingbelievable. Those who were reveling in the streets Nov. 4, 2008 will be telling their grandchildren about it, should we be fortunate enough to have a livable climate that long into the future.

By contrast, the new CD Yes We Can: Voices of a Grassroots Movement (released by Hidden Beach Recordings and sanctioned by Obama for America and the Democratic National Committee) will mostly inspire yawns. It’s like 17 helpings of warm milk, with only Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours” igniting the sort of excitement Senator Obama managed to generate during his excellently run campaign. Stevie’s song—one of the greatest ever to bear the Motown imprint and one that could make even John McCain sashay saucily—stands out, well, like Obama amid a conference room full of Palins.

The bulk of Yes We Can consists of defanged, soft-focused R&B, mildly “uplifting” pop that brings me way down, and (to be undiplomatic) nutless rock that puts me in the mood to veto more than to vote. Jebus, these are some stultifying, stilted songs, unworthy of buttressing the Obama and MLK speech snippets that sporadically accompany the music. There’s something seriously awry when Jackson effin' Browne has one of the most rockin’ tracks (“Looking East”) on a CD in 2008.

I realize that it’s predictable for a political machine at Obama’s level to err on the, um, conservative side with regard to cultural matters, but one would think he’d want something a little more adventurous to represent his administration. John Mayer, Lionel Richie, Dave Stewart, John Legend (covering U2’s “Pride [In the Name of Love]”), Jill Scott. Sheryl Crow, Keb’ Mo’, and some other blandness merchants do not signify a bold step into the future, but rather tepid backtracking to the past.

If I were curating the compilation, I would’ve asked these American artists to contribute:

Flying Lotus
Madlib
Public Enemy
Andre 3000
Terry Riley
RZA
Lightning Bolt
George Clinton (or just grab Funkadelic’s “One Nation Under a Groove”)
Black Dice
Animal Collective
LCD Soundsystem
MF Doom
Beans
El-P
David Byrne
Girl Talk
Brightblack Morning Light
Steinski
Matmos
NOMO
Themselves/Doseone

These are the sorts of musicians who symbolize change to me—or who simply have the potential to catalyze large blocks of people to face the future and solve problems or to provoke innovative thought.

The other day, I saw a sticker affixed to a poster for tomorrow night's 2 Live Crew show at Nectar (featuring local crews Mad Rad and Champagne Champagne) that read: "This insults women." Well, no duh, right? Is there really anyone on Capitol Hill in 2008 who doesn't know that 2 Live Crew insults women? Who exactly is this sticker mobilizing? Me so confused. I almost want to make a smaller sticker to put on that sticker that reads: "This insults the media literate."

Or, as this week's New Column, "Me So Corny: Jokes 4 U by 2 Live Crew," puts it:

What up, Seattle? 2 Live Crew here, and when we’re not busy fucking bitches, or talking about fucking bitches, or making records about fucking bitches, or draggin’ our asses to court to defend our right to make records about fucking bitches, we’re cracking each other’s shit up with motherfucking buckets of yuks! FOR EXAMPLE!

Two silk worms were in a race. What was the result? A tie, motherfucker!

Do you know why anteaters never get sick? They're full of anty-bodies, you skank-ass ho!

What do you get when you cross a rooster and a duck? A bird that gets up at the quack of dawn, silly bitch!

Now we’re out of this raggedy motherfucker like last year.

So powerful were the good vibes last night at the Broadway and Pike street party that I even exchanged some pleasant IRL words with motherfucking "bobcat," who, in this forum, usually speaks to me like this:

eric you're still a piece of shit

King Hipster Grandy has his nose so far up Chop Suey (and Nuemos) ass he's blowing corn-covered shit boogers!

rad! once again Eric is writing out his ass!

Wow mr Fucking in the streets sounds like he's talking about indy rock pussies like yourself.

stick to your rave shit, douche

This one's for you, "bobcat":

Find Curtis/Live and take in it. "I Plan to Stay a Believer"? "We've Only Just Begun"? "People Get Ready"? All those cool philosophical raps Curtis does between the songs? That's right, brothers and sisters, we've only just begun.

Support comes from local DJs Travis Baron (Knightriders), Kadeejah Streets (Innerflight/Black Neon), Grindle (Necodo), Ctrl_Alt_Dlt (Sweatbox/Live N Love), Righteous Trash (Mercir), and Miniature Airlines (live set).

Nectar, 412 N 36th St, Seattle WA 98103

Jeans Team's "Keine Melodien"

Who do you think should be president of the USA?
EYE: I think Barack Obama would make the better leader. It seems that his opponent wants to scare the people of your country and not lead them. I do not understand the Republicans, they do not seem to know the planet has limited resources. They spent all your money on this war for oil and now they wonder where the money went. Yet in the face of it all the oil companies make record profits. And your president is an oil man. I do not hear or read about anyone talking about that.

What do people in Japan think about McCain?
I am mostly in Osaka. Bush is not a liked person. We think McCain would be another Bush.

Did you enjoy the The Kweeks Of Kookatumdee book that I sent you?
Yes very much. I have since found The Wump World. Creatures of simple grass eating and grazing. Then Pollutions from the planet of Pollutus come to the Wump's calm planet. The Pollutions have destroyed and ruined their own world. Pollutions want to start a new life in this new planet of Wumps. Resources are plentiful on Wump and Pollutions want them. Pullutions will destroy Wump. Pollutions are like Republicans.

Below are the songs I want to hear after the votes are tallied and the election is decided.

If McCain wins, I will be too distraught to play music and will be busy rioting until further notice. But, just for kicks, let’s say I can bear to listen to organized sound under such depressing conditions. These are the tunes I will force into my headspace:

“Impeach the President” by the Honeydrippers [Obvious, innit?]
“Atmosphere” by Joy Division [Strikes the perfect somber tone for an unfathomable tragedy.]
“Tears of a Clown” by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles [Also known as the greatest song ever, this never fails to raise my spirits, even under the most trying circumstances.]
“The Coldest Days of My Life” by the Chi-Lites [See “Atmosphere” above, but with added soul for solace.]
“Beat Connection” by LCD Soundsystem [Mainly for the line, “It’s the saddest night out in the USA”—plus it boasts a damned uplifting rhythm.]
(Note: The playing of the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” should be verboten. Thank you.)

If Obama wins, I will kick out these righteous jams:

“Move on Up” by Curtis Mayfield [Should’ve been Barack’s theme song all campaign; perfectly captures the elation of a just cause being realized.]
“Revolution Generation” by Public Enemy [It’s gonna take a revolution to undo Rove/Cheney/Bush’s reign of error. PE’s 20-year-old anthem is the potent motivator to help us get the job done. The Beatles’ “Revolution #1” could also aid us lefties, but its power’s been diminished by radio overplay and annoying Baby Boomer residue.]
“Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey” by Sly & the Family Stone [Message to the two-digit-IQ racists, who will be hella angry if the “Arab Muslim homosexual terrorist” wins.]
“One Nation Under a Groove” by Funkadelic [It is imperative that Americans unite and get on the good foot from the get-go. This is the song to provoke said unified movement.]
“Vision Creation Newsun” by Boredoms [From our allies in Japan, this piece signifies an awesome rebirth through rhythm and sound. It’s an irrepressible positive force.]

What tracks will you be spinning, my fellow Americans?

Anti-McCain: The Honeydrippers’ “Impeach the President”

Boredoms’ “Vision Creation Newsun”

Ok, i'll start with Arcadia - Election Day.

What's on your Election Day playlist?

One of the great little anecdotes in the story? The fight over what would be Hillary Clinton's campaign song.

On at least one occasion during the Clinton campaign, his musical and political interests merged. When Hillary Clinton needed a campaign song, "I took it incredibly seriously," Wolfson says. "We had this elaborate committee set up." Wolfson lobbied hard to use KT Tunstall's "Suddenly I See." But the song ultimately got blackballed because it had the word hell in it. The campaign defaulted, over Wolfson's strenuous objections, to what he calls "the lowest common denominator" of Celine Dion. "I said then, 'We're going to lose because of this.'" He is, and was, joking, but then the conversation takes a more earnest turn. "'Suddenly I See' would have been perfect," he murmurs. “It's about a young woman realizing what she can be. It's about possibility." He takes a long pause. "Oh, what could have been."

I kinda think maybe the Celine Dion song had more to do with HRC going down in flames than even Wolfson realizes. Remember how its announcement came after much speculation and build-up and buzz? And everyone took the news, even the HRC diehards here in the office, as a punch to the gut--yet one more sign that the campaign was tone deaf and out of touch? And then, of course, Celine Dion is Canadian...

According to an accompanying press release, “The song and video idea was the result of a literal dream by Def Jux co-founder Ameachi Uzigowe, who called Dres from Black Sheep after he woke up, and within 2 days the song was re-recorded and the video came about.”

As Delmore Schwartz said, in dreams begin responsibilities.

-The theme of the night was to "grow" Seattle as a city of music, according to Nickels, who took the stage with a mic for what I guess was the formal part of the presentation. He said Seattle is a "great place to make music" and he wants to make it a "great place to make a living making music." He then rattled off a list of non-music-related Seattle based business, and told the story about his mom dropping him off for a date at a Rolling Stones concert. He claimed, dubiously, that "Austin has nothing on Seattle."

-The 12-year plan has three fronts: music education, music venues, and music businesses. The idea is to foster all three of those things, although the specifics of how to do that were still pretty vague.

-James Keblas argued that Seattle's strength was that it's "not LA or NY," to say nothing of Austin.

-Growing the music business in Seattle seemed to hinge on growing the wider economy, a rising tide and ships and all that, which is bad news given how the actual economy is going, although the guy from the chamber of commerce lost me when he started talking about "specialty beverages." He was one of three guys in suits, including Nickels, to invoke the word "soul" (not one of them accompanied the invocation with a black power fist, sadly).

-Tom Mara from KEXP told us that the station's CD collection could more than fill two accordion-style metro busses, and that he hopes to see it fill three someday.

-Megan Jasper from Sub Pop and Josh Rosenfeld from Barsuk were the first people to acknowledge that times are actually kind of grim for the music business right now, to say nothing of the wider economic meltdown. Returning to the theme of Seattle's exceptionalism, Rosenfeld said that there isn't another city where everything comes together as it does in Seattle.

-It really is bizarre to hear that voice come out of Vince Mira's body.

-The New Faces look like the Jonas Brothers and sound like Interpol. They'll probably be huge.

-Somewhat depressingly, the goal for music education is primarily just to restore all the programs and funding to historic levels. One speakers called music education a "race and social justice issue." The Seattle Rotary wants you to donate musical instruments to them to give to schools.

-The VERA Project's Dustin Fujikawa was probably the most engaging and animated speaker of the night, and he brought up some serious issues—gentrification, health care, a living wage—that I'm not entirely sure this plan can really address.

-Things were dragging on, so we skipped the last round of speeches, about music venues.

-The goals of the plan are great, of course, and, as a parasite on the music industry, I absolutely hope that Seattle remains and improves as a City of Music. But there was not much in the way of specifics last night, and it really seems like fostering music education and music businesses is going to be challenging in a time of economic downturn. There are some cost-effective things that could be done to make Seattle more hospitable to music venues, but most of them involve reversing the clampdowns—noise ordinances, nightclub stings—that this very administration has initiated, or else things that are out of the Mayor and the City's jurisdiction, such as the WSLCB's puritanical regulations (in Austin, LA, and NY, I'm pretty sure you can drink a beer onstage). Still, there are some really good people behind this thing; I remain tentatively hopeful that some concrete good will come out of this.

-Oh, also, the official "Seattle City of Music" website that I couldn't get to load yesterday is up and running now, and while it's, again, long on goals and short on specifics, it has a more detailed list of, really, pretty inspiring goals than I was able to jot down from last night's speeches. Check it out.

For more of Diddy's political thoughts/hopes/prayers/delusions, hop on the express train to the Diddy Blog and wave goodbye to your sanity at the station.