Barbi Crash

A lively crew of electro acts are taking over Santos Party House tonight for a sexy dance party that feels like your wildest dream. Cherie Lily has been recording with good friend Andrew W.K. and using her high energy dance mixes to teach her popular Houserobics classes. Tayisha Busay and Menya are a couple groups of crazy kids with fun lyrics who like to play on stage. Meanwhile, Black Barbie brings some soul to the mix and Punk Bunny jumps around on stage with his posse of dancers who are bound to cause a stir. These are radical NY and LA based ensembles who are truly living the dream-making success happen while flying by the seat of their pants and laughing their asses off at the squares. This is where the fun is. - NYC Resident Advisor

"...For those who didn't grow up with the Internet, it might seem strange to think of a mere website as an actual place. But for people like Edstrom and Michael Edwards, a high school senior from San Diego who can't remember when there was no Internet, cyberspace is a real place, even if the entry gates come in the form of a PC.

And at least these days, one's MySpace page is not just a home in that place, it's actually who they are online. "Your page is like your personality," Edwards, 17, says.

Judging from his, Edwards is a hip guy who is as much into music as he is into his family. (Two of his 10 pictures are family shots.) He likes open-minded and cool people but not nerds and liars. And he really likes Hilary Duff: He plays a song Ode to Hilary Duff on his page.

What do people do on MySpace?

They redecorate their pages, adding new pictures (often sexy). They spruce up their surroundings with new colors, backgrounds and images. Serious MySpace users brag about knowing a thing or two about HTML coding. They write poetry and put up their own art. They write about themselves.

They play music for friends and post music videos. Some are from well-known artists. Many are from virtual unknowns.

MySpace is fast becoming an avenue for musicians to reach out directly to fans and become stars.

Wired magazine recently featured the band Hawthorne Heights, which became a success after signing up with MySpace. And MySpace recently started its own record label with Hollywood Undead, a rap band that launched on MySpace in June and now has developed a MySpace following of 111,000 "friends" — people who have joined their network.

Edwards is so into MySpace that he and fellow high school senior Joyce Pace, 18, recorded an ode to MySpace — rewritten lyrics to the Black Eyed Peas' song My Humps— and posted it on the site. "Whatchu gonna do with all them friends, all them friends that's on your page," the song begins. "I'm m-m-m-m-make them comment, make them comment on MySpace, MySpace ... OMG (Oh My God) its MySpace, MySpace." - USA Today

(Branx, 320 SE 2nd) With influences such as Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Paula Abdul, Black Barbie from Beverly Hills, California, would make an excellent house DJ for Perez Hilton's inevitable dance club. Barbie's straightforward electro-club bangers like "This Is Trash" and "I Wanna Have Sex" get as sleazy as Peaches and will be very suitable for the warehouse parties Branx is known to host. One must wonder, though, that with his absurdly over-the-top, celebrity-sized stage persona, shameless online promotion (which has somehow garnered him media interest without having a proper album out), and laptop music, is this young man for real or some kind of elaborate, living performance art that takes on celebrity culture, hype, and modern music of the late '00s? Intended or not, Black Barbie has at least one feature in common with one of his main influences, David Bowie: he's certainly mind boggling. KP - The Portland Mercury