Wes Pentz is Diplo (short for Diplodocus), the baile funk DJ and Floridian “expat” turned Philadelphia-based great white-boy hope. With a debut CD called Florida (Big Dada), it was clear from the get-go that while you can take the kid out of the Sunshine State, you can’t take the sunshine—or the state—out of the kid. On the subject of his upbringing, he’s said, “In Florida, you gotta decide if you wanna be a hippie, a football player, in a metal band, or a gold-chain DJ type with a lowered Honda. Those are the only four options, and I just mashed it all up.” As proud now to be from Philadelphia as any true native (he and the Roots, a group he lists as an inspiration, now share Philly-based roots), he may still be expatriating—for real this time. Though his previous career as half of Hollertronix probably cemented his place in the annals of new music history, Diplo solo has gone international. Having founded his own record label (Mad Decent), Diplo now embraces more of a world beat aspect, as the Mad Decent Label Tour lineup shows. Brazilian tour mates Bonde do Role and Cansei de Ser Sexy are staples of the baile funk sound that their label chief has been busy popularizing in the US. Bonde do Role was the first band signed to Mad Decent (Diplo says they’re like a “baile funk beastie boys”), and their album, Salta Frango/James Bonde, is out this month. CSS sounds kind of like a cross between Yoko Ono and the Spice Girls, or as they put it, they’re “taking the fact of not knowing how to play the instruments as a challenge to creativity.” With song titles like “Art Bitch,” “Paris Hilton,” and “Music is My Hot, Hot, Sex,” that’s probably enough said.

It was 8pm on a Wednesday evening in New York City—March 9, 1938—when 12 men united by a singular passion convened behind closed doors to discuss a weighty matter. Their last names looked like a sepia-toned snapshot of the Great American melting pot: Frosini, Goldman, Dawson, Galla-Rini, Magnante, Deiro, Nunzio, Von Hallberg, Biviano, Gart, Roland and Streep. Roland spoke first. He read a lengthy report covering the topic of the meeting. In just under two hours the American Accordionists’ Association (AAA) was born—with Pietro Deiro (pictured), the “Daddy of the Accordion,” elected as the organization’s first President. The rest is history. This year, Buffalo hosts the 2006 American Accordionists’ Association Festival and Competition at Adam’s Mark Hotel, transforming our city into the “Accordion Capital of the World” for five consecutive days. An instrument whose popularity has gone in and out over the years, it is nonetheless a staple sound in many musical settings. Buffalo will be finely represented by Tony Lovell, the “Liberace of the Accordion,” performing everything from jazz to pop to polka to rock and more. At 11am on Friday, July 14, an over-the-top massed accordion band will simultaneously bellow the “Beer Barrel Polka” at the brink of Niagara Falls. There will also be workshops, performances, and the three day long Vivian Stolaruk International Entertainment Competition for Accordionists featuring top contenders from the US, Norway, Poland and Canada, all vying for a $10,000 grand prize.

Comedian David Cross calls George W. Bush the Teflon president. No matter how badly he screws the American people, the blame always seems to fall squarely on…somebody else’s shoulders, for God’s sake, anybody else’s shoulders. By way of contrast, recall that only eight years ago the House of Representatives impeached our smoothest-talking president in 40 years for lying under oath about a blowjob. Since then, our Teflon president has conducted warrantless surveillance of his own people, misled Congress on the reasons for the Iraq war, violated laws against torture and subverted the Constitution’s separation of powers. These four articles of impeachment are the subject of a new book—Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush—by four experts from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a nonprofit think-tank dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed to all citizens by the US Constitution. In Articles of Impeachment, the four CCR lawyers—Michael Ratner, Bill Goodman, Shane Kandidal and Maria LaHood—lay out the valid legal arguments for impeaching Bush in a clear, informative way. In an effort to spark a national dialogue on impeachment, CCR is conducting a nationwide series of impeachment “teach-ins”, whereby citizens can learn about impeaching the president and what they can do to bring it about. This Wednesday, Hallwalls will host such a teach-in, consisting of a documentary short about the book and a discussion about impeachment moderated by Bruce Jackson. Get there and learn what you can do to can Bush’s ass.

As a kid, signer/guitarist Dax Riggs became obsessed with David Lynch’s masterpiece of Victorian-era dignity and pain, The Elephant Man, via its frequent HBO airtime in the 1980s. This obsession has followed him through life. Not only did he derive the name of his band, Deadboy and the Elephantmen, from the film but his music also bears a thematic kinship to John Merrick’s disfigured beauty lost in an incompassionate world. Following a youth spent singing in the cult favorite swamp-metal crew Acid Bath, Riggs hooked up with drummer Tessie Burnet in 2004 to put the music he’d been creating into action, and Deadboy and the Elephantmen was begun. 2006 has seen the guitar and drums duo issue the outstanding We Are Night Sky (Fat Possum), which mixes stripped-down, serene blues and riff-heavy, lysergic hard rock and earned some of the biggest buzz at this year’s SXSW music conference. Riggs’ deep, perfectly rough voice is sort of a cross between Mark Lanagan and Peter Murphy, and is the ideal vehicle for these songs, as they are both dark and confessional and bombastically punk-blues.