So I'm going to stay in tournament mode.
On a recent commute, I started thinking about what would happen if I were to come up with 64 musicians and seeded them. How would it play out? What would be the criteria? Would it be a pointless waste of time to decide that Bob Dylan was my favorite artist of all time? Yeah, it might be. Then it dawned on me, hell, there's nothing I enjoy more than a good old fashioned waste of time, so who gives a Bush's ass? It was decided that yes indeed, it was time to study the iPod and form a one man selection committee and come up with what I would consider to be my 64 favorite acts of all time (though I limited it to post-WWII genres).
Actually it became 68. I figure the NCAA has a play-in game for the 16th seed, I'll have 4 of them for each sixteener. I seeded the teams - loosely to a degree - based off what I perceive to be my personal preferences, then randomly assigned them to a region. For good measure, the region was named after the 1 seed's actual or adoptive hometown.
The Number One Seeds:
Liverpool Region: The Beatles
The Village Region: Bob Dylan
Charlottesville Region: Dave Matthews Band
San Francisco Region: The Grateful Dead
The next step was to determine a list of criteria. I didn't want to go "Well, I like Public Enemy more than Smashing Pumpkins, so they move on". Afterall, if that was the case the whole thing would have been done the minute I finished seeding them all. I wanted something comprehensive and tangible to have an artist defeat an artist. I like tangible explanations, not a fan of "just because" as you probably know by now.
I came up with a scoreboard with 5 Criteria, worth a total of 9 points to ensure no ties:
- Entire Collection (3 Points): Lined up against each other, who has a better collection overall.
- Defining Album (2 Points): If you take each artists' best work, which is better. I'm going to try and make it a blend of personal choice and conventional wisdom. They don't always agree. But once an album is settled on for each artist, that will be the album that they have for the entire tournament.
- Personal Connection and Memories (2 Points): The most subjective criteria of them all and the most random. I'm curious to see how this plays out during this colosal waste of time. It's also the reason I didn't include Meat Loaf.
- Defining Song (1 Point): Same as album, on a smaller scale.
- Historical Impact (1 Point): Which artist has made a bigger impact on music history and our culture as a whole? It's probably the most objective of them all. Regardless of the other criteria, you can't argue that Billy Joel has had a bigger impact than Sublime. However, it's only 1 point and that shouldn't dramatically alter anything.
Let the Games Begin:
The Village Regional Play In Game: Skid Row vs Barenaked Ladies.
A true nailbiter between two vastly different acts with very similar qualities. Both fit the popular mold of a late decade genre, BNL with 90s fluff-rock and Skid Row with 80s hair-metal. The Ladies won for their Entire Collection, primarily because after Skid Row's self-titled debut, their follow-up album, Slave to the Grind rivaled child abuse on the Despicable Chart. BNL also captured Defining Song with "One Week" over "Youth Gone Wild". Yes, I'm ashamed to admit that. However that was all the Canadians could muster, as Skid Row took home Defining Album (Skid Row over Stunt), Personal Connection (I had a 6 foot long poster of them on my closet, as entertaining as the 1999 BNL concert on Long Island was), and Historical Impact, cause well, hair metal rules.
FINAL SCORE: SKID ROW 5 ~ BARENAKED LADIES 4.
Congrats Sebastian, you get to get your ass whooped by Dylan.
Liverpool Regional Play In Game: Kings of Leon vs Warrant
The Committeerespected glam rock in terms of their right to be in the dance, but Warrant makes it two members of the hairband conference that had to play an extra round just to be a 16 seed. KoL took down Entire Collection (easily - a big weakness for the hair bands), Defining Album, and Historical Impact (cause we don't count Jani Lane's appearance on Celebrity Fat Farm). Giving Warrant points for Song (Heaven) and Personal Connection (Mad respect for 1989) wasn't enough.
FINAL SCORE: KINGS OF LEON 6 ~ WARRANT 3
Charlottesville Regional Play In Game: Incubus v Queen
Incubus won the Album category by virtue of "Light Grenades" beating anything Queen had to offer (outside of their Greatest, there's nothing that jumps out at me) but the jolly flamboyant men of Queen ran the table everywhere else. I expected this to be closer.
FINAL SCORE: QUEEN 7 ~ INCUBUS 2
San Francisco Regional Play In Game: Modest Mouse vs Smashing Pumpkins
Proving to me that the criteria will make things interesting. If you stopped me on the street and asked me to pick between these two, I'd probably say "God that Billy Corgan is a stupid self-serving prick, and I enjoy me some MM". But the box score says something different. Mouse's Good News... won the Defining Album, but the Pumpkins have the collection, the connection (fun, not so innocent times driving around when I was 17), the song ("Disarm") and unfortunately, the impact. A shocking personal upset and a bloodbath:
FINAL SCORE: SMASHING PUMPKINS 7 ~ MODEST MOUSE 2
Now that we have our 64, here's the Full Bracket
I look forward to wasting many, many more hours on this.
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