You'll get to hobnob with the Geniuses, enjoy free food and drinks, and feel pretty damn fancy.

Good luck!

This Friday the Stranger is hosting its annual Genius Awards Party at the historic Moore Theatre. There's no award for musical genius, but every year we get some outstanding acts to entertain the official brainiacs, runners-up, and hangers-on. This year the line-up includes indie-pop smarty-pantses Throw Me the Statue, hiphop cut-ups They Live!, chillwave up&comers USF, and soulful collectors/selectors Emerald City Soul Club.

USF (formerly Universal Studios Florida) are opening the Genius Awards Party this year, and you can read all about them, their unexpected buzz, and the already much-maligned micro-genre "chillwave" in this week's music lead, Triumph of the Chill:

U.S.F. began in earnest only after the two moved apart and began collaborating by sending tracks back and forth to each other. In December of last year, while snowed in at their parents' houses in Edmonds and Magnolia, they recorded many of the tracks for their debut full-length, Ocean Sunbirds, in this manner. U.S.F. released their debut EP and played their first show in January of this year, and released Sunbirds in late June. By October 26, they had been featured on Pitchfork four separate times, twice for tracks from Sunbird, once for a remix of like-minded Florida act Blind Man's Colour, and once for an interview in the site's "Rising" column.

"Pitchfork approaching us was really cool," says Hargus. "I think it started with getting friended on MySpace by Ryan—what's his name?—Schreiber, the site's founder, then he Twittered about us, and they asked us for the record. It was definitely really cool and very unexpected."

The Stranger Genius Awards Party happens Friday, November 13th at the Moore Theatre, w/ Throw Me the Statue, They Live!, USF (Universal Studios Florida), and Emerald City Soul Club, $5, 8pm, 21+. Win free VIP tickets here.

Friday's party is open to the public and there will be drinks and well-dressed people and music from Throw Me the Statue, They Live!, U.S.F. (Universal Studios Florida), and Emerald City Soul Club. It starts at 9 pm and costs only $5 at the door—it'll be a classy, classy evening.

But what will be even more amazing is the pre-Genius VIP party! And the only way to get into that party is to a) be a Genius, b) be invited, c) win tickets this week on Line Out. Today through Thursday we'll be giving away VIP passes, where you'll enjoy free food and drinks and hob nob with local rockstars and artists.

Fantastic!

To enter to win, just e-mail your first and last name to freetickets@thestranger.com with VIP Genius in the subject line.

Good luck! And start picking out your outfit now.

This Friday the Stranger is hosting its annual Genius Awards Party at the historic Moore Theatre. There's no award for musical genius, but every year we get some outstanding acts to entertain the official brainiacs, runners-up, and hangers-on. This year the line-up includes indie-pop smarty-pantses Throw Me the Statue, hiphop cut-ups They Live!, chillwave up&comers USF, and soulful collectors/selectors Emerald City Soul Club.

About ECSC, if you haven't been to their long-running, critically-acclaimed monthly soul night at Lo_Fi or its wandering sister night, Talcum—well, just what the hell have you been doing? ECSC consistently brings crates and crates of rad and rare soul 45s to their nights, making for that rarest of situation in which every song sounds warmly familiar (the soul sound is just in our musical DNA at this point in history) even if you've never heard many of the records before. Their nights fill up fast, their crowd is ever expanding, so the Genius Awards party, where they'll be DJing in the spacious Moore Theatre lobby (and maybe in the basement bar?), might be a nice chance to see them with a little more breathing room. Or, more than likely, it'll just as packed with swanky revelers as anything. (This weekend is also their annual Rare Soul Weekender, as per the flyer above.)

The Stranger Genius Awards Party happens Friday, November 13th at the Moore Theatre, w/ Throw Me the Statue, They Live!, USF (Universal Studios Florida), and Emerald City Soul Club, $5, 8pm, 21+

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Withchgers.

On July 31, Kanye stopped by Why Won't You Let Me Be Be Great!!! at PS 122, a performance-art tribute to 808s & Heartbreak by Neal Medlyn and Brendan Kennedy. But superfreak Ann Liv Young apparently stole the show.

Kanye is sitting third row center, wearing a purple jacket and a barfy expression.

(NSFW.)

Originally posted to Slog, but needed to be shared with Line Out in its entirety. Thanks to Slog tipper Lane.

The most unwanted music is over 25 minutes long, veers wildly between loud and quiet sections, between fast and slow tempos, and features timbres of extremely high and low pitch, with each dichotomy presented in abrupt transition. The most unwanted orchestra was determined to be large, and features the accordion and bagpipe (which tie at 13% as the most unwanted instrument), banjo, flute, tuba, harp, organ, synthesizer (the only instrument that appears in both the most wanted and most unwanted ensembles). An operatic soprano raps and sings atonal music, advertising jingles, political slogans, and “elevator” music, and a children's choir sings jingles and holiday songs. The most unwanted subjects for lyrics are cowboys and holidays, and the most unwanted listening circumstances are involuntary exposure to commercials and elevator music. Therefore, it can be shown that if there is no covariance—someone who dislikes bagpipes is as likely to hate elevator music as someone who despises the organ, for example—fewer than 200 individuals of the world's total population would enjoy this piece.

If you just want a taste, skip to around 5:40. I'm not sure I've ever heard a combination of sounds that has made me laugh as hard.

"The Most Unwanted Song"

The amount of money that went into this blonde lady's vanity project is INCREDIBLE. Helicopters! Dragons! Swordsmanship classes! Also, this is the best thing I've ever seen. Also, can someone explain the storyline to me? Also, sleighride!!

Every time you watch it you will find a new favorite part.

Thanks to Soren for bringing this into my life.

Love Has Enemies.

You may have missed the Lee "Scratch" Perry documentary playing at Harvard Exit last night but all of that will be ok once you hear this hilarious recording of Scratch laying waste to George Bush. Somehow the beauty and frailty of Perry comes through in this short take on his classic tune for Max Romeo, Chase the Devil.

Kaliss put in a lot of legwork for this bio, interviewing record-biz figures, band members from the Family Stone and the Viscaynes (Sly’s pre-Family Stone outfit), and documenting the early years of Sylvester Stewart’s life and his family lineage.

Rich Freedman of the Bay Area-based Times-Herald interviewed Kaliss, and the following passage surprised, with its J.D. Salinger-like sense of a genius working in seclusion, generating great quantities of work that nobody’s seen or heard for decades.

Sly continues to write and, eventually, produce and perform, Kaliss said, adding that the Grammy winner has "loads" of music left in him.

"He keeps doing it. He stays up to 3, 4 in the morning just writing," Kaliss said. "He's been doing that all along. But we haven't gotten to hear much of it yet. Even when he's stayed hidden, he's kept going."

One has to wonder: Wouldn’t a label kill to release some new Sly Stone material? Or why doesn’t Sly release it himself? Or have Prince do the honors? Could it be that… this new music isn’t very good? Hmmm…

Now please enjoy one of the greatest pieces of music ever conceived. “Stand” possesses one of the most satisfying, gradual builds in pop-music history and the final minute of it represents the most electrifying, despair-obliterating coda ever.