If you don't know the deal, every year CMJ (that's the College Music Journal) has a huge festival with thousands of acts at dozens of clubs and lots of industry shmoozing during the day. You can pick up a badge at the Javits Center on convention days, and it gets you in to all of the shows for free. (Is it me, or is this thing getting expensive? I remember when a ticket could easily justify the price of admission to all the clubs I wanted to go to for all the bands I wanted to see.) During the day if you're not hung over or at work, you can attend the conference and learn how to create your own independant film with a digital camera or talk about "The State of Punk," (why is punk so mainstream now?) and Al Franken is giving the keynote speech.

The cool thing this year is that you also get in to the consumer tech and entertainment event DigitalLife. Or if you just want to go to DigitalLife, it costs just a wee bit more than a movie. Think of it as the Sharper Image on steriods, plus they'll have a video game room where you get to play all of the latest games.

CMJ is October 13 - 16 (Wednesday to Saturday) and DigitalLife is October 14 - 17 (Thursday to Sunday) at the Javits center & at clubs all over town.

http://www.cmj.com/marathon/

http://www.digitallife.com/

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