The 3 rounds we had — coupled with the itinerant griping about how Talking Heads v Velvet Underground should have been a semi-final matchup — got me thinking...

What if we held an actual Round of 64 (or 128) back catalog tournament to vote and decide the indie/post-punk/alternative/whatever band with the best all-time body of work. It's probably the most-engaging follow up we could do to the Listmania best album poll on the CMJ board.

I'm thinking we start things off in similar geographic regions and base 1st round matchups with similar eras; so for the Michigan/Detroit regional Iggy and The Stooges would battle MC5 in the first round and not The White Stripes. There'd obviously need to be several UK/European at-large regionals as well.

Some guidelines:
1. at least three studio albums released (otherwise Nirvana's out)
2. only bands who formed or came to prominence after the birth of punk (I'm biased being in Michigan, but I go w/ Iggy and MC5's records for this)
3. a solo artist can't face off against their former/future band in the 1st round (no Byrne/Talking Heads or Westerberg/'Mats to start)

So waddaya say? Would people be into it?

We'd need to have a nominating thread to determine the field and I'd need to enlist some help organizing and carrying this montrosity out. But in the end I'd love to see how things play out.

this sounds straight outta the ol' cmj.com/bb! i am down.

this would be cool but hard to organise



this means no Joy Division, MBV, Neutral Milk Hotel, Jeff Buckley, Stone Roses....

We should have hip hop pioneers too.

Agreed, but one thing at a time. :)

That might get more of us into the Rap/Hip-Hop forum. I say that's always a good thing.

I love the idea. My main concern is how the seeding is going to work. A nomination process may take more trouble than its worth, especially for 64 or 128 artists. May I suggest this list (from this site) as an across-genre competition? Some of these may ignore the 3-album rule.

Some cool first round matchups using the top 128:
Bruce Springsteen vs. Can
Prince vs. Curtis Mayfield
Public Enemy vs. De La Soul
The Band vs. Gram Parsons
Joy Division vs. Sex Pistols
The Cure vs. The Stooges

I'd be more than happy to help with this. Midwest, yo!

sounds good. as long as someone else does all the organizing and prep work, and i have to do is choose the Beach Boys over the Beatles, then i'm in.

bort

This must be done. The legwork part by someone else, of course, but the viting by me (and others).

Even if we lose JD, Buckley and the Roses, all of whom I am fond of, I think the 3 albums rule is fine. We're not looking for a moment, we're looking for a body of work.

Sounds like fun, although, this is kinda silly.



Still, I bow down to the overall youth of the board, seeing as that most of you don't even remember 1980.

I remember 1980 very well.... I was able to soil myself and have someone change me, People answering Banannas as if they were phones was hysterical, and, most importantly, I got titty every day. several times.

Boo-Yah.

I like voting and seeing results.

Bump!

Since there's some interest, I'll proceed. Anyone else got other stipulations or guidelines we should implement?

I wasn't intending on including hip-hop (thinking we could do that one later) but it seems like it'd be a travesty to not include Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, De La Soul, Run DMC, etc. So I'm seeking guidance on that issue.

As for selecting the field, I'll start w/ the list Colin linked to earlier and weed out the non-catalog pre-punk artists. I'll post the resultant list and depending on how many spots are left, we can make and debate nominations for the remaining "at large" berths. 64 sounds like a good number now, but that could change.

So kick this around for a while. I'm off to the pub for the night and will check back in the A.M.

d
o
w
n

Very sly, Mr. Walker

I endorse this idea if The Rolling Stones can win.

If not, I'll participate, but not really give creedence to the results

As I undestand the current guidelines, your boys would not be a participant as they started too early. If we blew it wide open, though, they'd get a crazy high seed and probably face Little Feat in the first round.

Chad: thanks for being open to the list. I love that site. IMHO, Hip-hop = yes. If we open it up, though, we should consider including all years because it's not an 'indie rock + direct influences' thing anymore. I think the Beatles, Beach Boys (#1 on Listmania 2), and Rolling Stones alone are enough to open this up for alltime. Besides, a Pavement vs. Grateful Dead matchup would make some good comedy.

You're in charge here, though; let me know if you need any help with it.

Love the idea. I'm a little worried I won't be familiar enough with a lot of the bands to be able to make a judgement on whether or not their back catalogue is better than someone else's though. Does that matter?

The voting won't be all at once, so you can just withhold your vote when you don't know the bands. Not that that will stop everyone.

its just like when you vote in a real election dude, if you dont have a judgement--DONT VOTE.... K?

That's one reason why I proposed limiting the field to post-punk era artists.
No one's gonna deny the might of the Dylan/Beatles/Beach Boys/Stones axis and I think there'd be more intrigue/curiosity in debating the merits of the more modern era of music - including hip-hop.

Plus, if we open up the entire popular canon, narrowing the field down to a manageable number could become a pain. Sketch and I (you've been officially drafted, dood) are glad to do this, but I don't want it to take over our lives.

I too think that things might be more vigorously argued (and the field more easily narrowed) around here if we did limit the field to post-punk era artists.

Me too.

Preemptive props to chad and colin for legwork!

huh

I know there could be a lot of contention as to where to draw the 128 artists from (I say we do a **quick** Listamania Top 100 Artists here), but we should keep the initial pairings as logical and comparable to each other as possible.

like:

Can Vs. Kraftwerk

or

Sprinsteen Vs. Neil Young

or something

Of course I realize we couldn't do a **quick** Listmania, so maybe a better idea is to have everyone nominate 25 (or so) artists, and the 64 with the most nominations make the tourny.

This should be fun. I'm game.

Sounds like a good hobby. Lets do it.