Top 25 Power Ballads: #20 - 16

It's a nice and balmy 8 degrees in Northern New Jersey on this lovely Friday morning. Just one of those beautiful days that makes you want to forget about politics for a while and focus on the lighter side of life. Since there's still about 8 hours before it's acceptable to get into my flip-flops, pop a Corona and chill on my deck, I figure there's no better time than now to resume the celebration of 1986's Silver Anniversary with the Top 25 Power Ballads of All Time...

#20: WITHOUT YOU, Motley Crue (1989). For some reason, SONY Records has removed every single Motley Crue video on YouTube. If you own stock in Sony, and the Crue is their bread and butter, the asset they must protect at all costs, I highly recommend you bail immediately. It was a little presumptuous of Nikki Sixx to craft a love letter from Tommy Lee to Heather Locklear though, don't ya think? Maybe there was a little Clapton/Harrison/Layla action going on in Crueland.

#19: LIVING IN SIN, Bon Jovi (1988).  The suspense is over. The Boys from Sayreville make their debut on the rundown with their first of four entries. I can't get enough of "Sin". I remember the Catholic Church getting their dresses in a knot over the fact that the band used imagery of the Blessed Sacrament in the video - for a song that advocated the most heinous of crimes...Cohabitation. Don't ya think that effort woulda been spent more wisely worrying about all their priests that were Living In Sin in the late 80s?

#18: WHAT IT TAKES, Aerosmith(1989). The one and only appearance for Aerosmith - who doesn't neccessarily fit the definition of a "Hair Band" based on their work both before and after this glorious era we speak of, but if the high heeled boot fits, wear it.

#17: SOMETIMES SHE CRIES, Warrant (1989). Man, in 7th Grade, I would have bet big money on Warrant being the next Rolling Stones.I also would have bet heavily that Ronald Reagan would go down as one of the best Presidents ever. I was much closer with Warrant.

#16: LOVE BITES, Def Leppard (1987). Much like Aerosmith, Def Leppard had a storied career before the Aqua-Net Age, but unlike them, they didn't quite survive the rise of grunge. I was shocked to find out that "Love Bites" was their only song to ever hit #1 on Billboard. I guess the Billboard guys don't frequent strip clubs because "Pour Some Sugar On Me" easily has to be considered the defining Def Leppard song. It's just a shame that 24 years later, we still don't have an answer to the age-old question: When you make love, do you look in the mirror? 

I'm also reminded of the most F'ed up question I ever heard on the old "Remote Control" game show (AKA: MTV's last original and quality program): "How many mittens would it take to cover the hands of all five members of Def Leppard"

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.