Music Madness 2010: Intro,. Preview, and Play-Ins

Ignoring the fact that I'm too old to stay up till midnight on a work night, the NCAA Men's tournament that just concluded was by far the most invigorating and entertaining of my lifetime. Of all the years I've dove into March Madness, be it cutting high school, skipping college classes or taking sick days and vacations in my professional life, I've never seen anything like it. The right balance of underdogs and juggernauts. The buzzer-beaters and new heroes. The rise of Butler and the fall of Callipari. These last three weeks were a sports fan's prime rib buffet with all-you-can-drink Guinness. I don't want it to end.

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.

As with any tournament, honorable mention must be given to the bubble teams that didn't quite make the field, so pour yourself a pint and toast to Madonna, Garth Brooks, James Taylor, Meat Loaf, and Def Leppard. While we're at it, some fan favorites that The Committee is thoroughly unimpressed with include Coldplay, Sting/The Police, The Eagles, and Michael Jackson.

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.

My 30 Best Albums of the Decade: 30 - 26

Disclaimers:
1. These are my personal favorites, not a definitive list. I'm not a music critic, personally I think music critics, and people who think they are, should shampoo my scrotum.
2. Live Albums are not elligible. O.A.R. is the biggest loser here cause 33rd & 8th would be top 10. As would DMB @ Fenway. But it's an unfair advantage
3. No compilation soundtracks, comprised of pre-decade already recorded songs. All apologies to Almost Famous, which would rank very high. However, if a soundtrack was created and recorded specifically for a movie or play, that would qualify. But Chicago still didn't make it.
4. There is no Coldplay on my list cause I refuse to take part in a world that treats Bon Jovi as campy fluff rock while considering Chris Martin the British answer to Bob Dylan. I don't care how many trees he's planted.
5. Only albums which I own are elligible, so if I don't have it, I cant rank it.

Without any further delay, let me get this started:

#30: In Rainbows-Radiohead: I'm not as into Radiohead as I should be but this album did me solid. It's a rare unshuffleable (new word) album, reminiscent of pretty much everythin Pink Floyd's ever done - you kinda gotta let this album play out from start to finish, which you don't find happening too often. But I'm not kidding myself, I own this album because it was free to download. It could have sucked and it would have made the list because frankly, the recording industry owes me. I've sunk a lot of money into buying music over the last 25 years or so. I don't think that 99 cents for a song is insane, nor is 10 bucks for an album - but what about when I was dropping $16 for a Slippery When Wet cassette? You raped me Mercury Records! It was nice to finally win.

#29: Us Against the Crown-State Radio: Thank goodness for these guys. With Sublime and Bob Marley dead, I was prepared to spend the rest of my life without ever hearing another album that made me want a J, an IPA, a 70 degree afternoon and a hammock. State Radio provided and I am eternally grateful. The funny thing is, I never spend such afternoons with the aforementioned provisions, even though I have a hammock and can easily attain at least the IPA. Yet every winter I convince myself that I'll be spending a glorious afternoon doing just that when May rolls around. But the reality is, I'm pulling weeds and spreading mulch and hanging screen windows. FML.

#28: Dear Catastrophe Waitress-Belle & Sebastian: In the middle of the 00's I found myself DVR'ing reruns of "Dharma and Greg" on WE. Partly because I missed any and all TV that debuted in the late 90s, but mainly because, hell, I enjoyed it. It was hard to describe. As I would watch it, I would say to myself: I really should just put my testicles in a box and throw them in the Hackensack River cause it's hard to reconcile the production of testosterone with the viewing of D&G, but F it, I love this show and I'm not gonna apologize for it. Well, that's pretty much how I feel about this album.

#27: Late Registration-Kanye West: Much like the Cheesy Potato Burritos from Taco Bell, I can't make up my mind if Kanye West impresses or repulses me. Probably a little of both. He tied Joe Namath for the greatest unscripted moment on live television of the decade when, during the Katrina fundraiser, he said "George Bush doesn't care about black people". Heck, it was worth the Red Cross donation to see Mike Myers' face when it all went down (and you know, helping people out too). But on the flip side, this dude just absolutely loves himself to the point where you think he should have been an NFL Wide Receiver instead. But this album for the most part is quite entertaining, some good driving music (which I've come to appreciate more and more since buying a house 35 miles from work during the worst possible time so I aint gettin a shorter commute anytime soon), and plus, what kind of graduate of NJ's Public Liberal Arts college if the only rap album on my countdown was by a white dude?

#26: Good News for People Who Love Bad News-Modest Mouse: This album is raw, in a very good way, especially for the diversity of sounds on it. But thats sounding too much like a critic. In reality, this is just a great album to put on when you gotta get shit done, another practice I've grown to appreciate. Let it fade into the background and get to work. Preferably not on cheap earbuds though. Like I said, this album's raw. More fun useless countin down to come as the decade hits the home-stretch.