Qualifying Match

dalen vs. sanchez

dalen Garden - 'Burnt By The Sun' "1. Japanese Jpop group famous for sing Pokemon series' themes" I was so hoping that this was the artist that came up but I'm guessing it's probably not. This is just more run of the mill folky rock music. Think Animal Collective on ritalin. 4/10

sanchez Depeche Mode - 'When The Body Speaks' Love Depeche Mode, don't know this song. Exciter was one of their recent albums, right? Yeah, I think so. This isn't as good as their old stuff but it's still far more interesting to me than Garden's track. 5/10

Winner: sanchez with an assist from Team Rocket

YES! You can't go wrong with Lemonheads...

Qualifying Match

e-stone vs. f4df

e-stone James Brown - 'Sometime' This round should be interesting. I've never really sought out any James Brown though I know I should. This song isn't making me want to run out and correct that, though. I remember specific songs by Aretha and Otis that made me go "oh wow, what am I waiting for?" When I saw JB's name come up, that's what I was hoping for, I guess. This isn't that. 6/10

f4df Dr. Dog - 'We All Belong' Hm. I've never heard of these folks. It sounds Beatlesy though. I suppose to most people that would be a good thing. Oh, this is a close one. At first thought, this might actually be a tie. But checking the last.fm page, there's still almost 4 minutes left in this song. Unless a radical change in sound happens in those minutes, it's going to James. Because another four minutes of this is not something I look forward to. I'm sorry, I'm throwing in the towel with a minute left. 4/10

Winner: e-stone and the soul patrol

Qualifying Match

FT vs. billyg

FT Starlight Mints - 'Goldstar' I know the name but not the band. I don't like this. I wish I could say more but I don't know what to say. Don't like. 3/10

billyg Blossom Dearie - 'Hello Love' Another big devastation round. Growing up on Schoolhouse Rock, Blossom Dearie's "Figure Eight" was always one of my favorites. It wasn't until a year or two ago that I actually sought out her other material, though. And, like Julie London and Sarah Vaughan, I fell easily and hard. 8/10

Winner: billyg skates circles around the starlight mints

Qualifying Match

rparis74 vs. radcliffe

rparis74 Jeff Buckley - 'Opened Once' There's some Jeff Buckley songs I love. 'Lover, You Should Have Come Over' and 'So Real' for instance. Others just bore me. A large part of this thread is just the luck of the draw and you got hit, Rodney. 4/10

radcliffe John Cooper Clarke - 'Sperm Test' Spoken word. Less than a minute long. Live. I can barely hear what he's saying. ?/10

Winner?: It seems unfair to award that to rparis simply because. My ruling: no contest.


rparis74 Ed Harcourt - 'Only Happy When You're High' If these two tracks are indicative of Mr. Paris, he is one hell of a mellow guy. Unfortunately mellow is often labeled as boring in my books. And this has some weird reverb/echo thing on the vocals. 3/10

radcliffe Ian Hunter - 'One Of The Boys [live]' Another live track. 7:43 long. This just sounds like typical classic rock radio to me. My father's favorite radio station basically plays stuff like this 24/7. As much as I want this round to end, I've got to say... 3/10

Winner?: Unfortunately not yet.


rparis74 Grant-Lee Phillips - 'See America' Hey, it's the official town troubadour for Stars Hollow. I don't know if I've actually heard any of his music outside of Gilmore Girls. This really isn't breaking the mould from the previous two rparis tracks. 4/10

radcliffe Steve Earler - 'Way Down In The Hole' This is a Tom Waits track, right? M.I.A. just covered this recently. I don't love this but I like it. 5/10

Winner: radcliffe by a hair

Qualifying Match

MiceElf vs. petecockroach

MiceElf William Fitzsimmons - 'Funeral Dress' I'm going to have to quit soon because this quiet male singer/songwriter stuff is starting to drive me 'round the bend. It all sounds the same to me and it all puts me to sleep. 3/10

petecockroach Howlin Rain - 'Dancers At The End Of Time' On the other hand... Boring singer/songwriter music might actually be more appealing to me than wankery guitar solos and prog-rock stoner music. Hell, there's no "might" about it. 2/10

Winner: MiceElf slides by

Qualifying Match

harry vs. Idiotjed

harry Squeeze - 'I Want You' New wave, eh? This could go either way. Oh no. It went the hair metal ballad way. 2/10

Idiotjed Black Sheep - 'Pass The 40' There is a very, very selective amount of hip-hop I like. It's the stuff that's actually intelligent and about interesting stuff and doesn't use the n-word every other verse. Shad, Cadence Weapon, k-os, Dream Warriors... This starts off with "nigger, nigger" talking and then singing about whorish girls and drinking alcohol. 2/10

Winner: Equally awful for very different ways.


harry Montréal Baroque Classical music. You're not making this easy. I have no idea how to rate or compare operatic music. This will all depend on what we're up against. ?/10

Idiotjed Annuals - 'Talking' Generic indie pop/rock. This round is leaving me at a loss for words. 3/10

Winner: I guess not.


harry Murcof - 'Rios' 8 minutes long. Tags like 'ambient' and 'minimal'. Why do you two hate me so much?

Idiotjed The Sonics - 'Night Time Is The Right Time' This is bearable.

Winner: Idiotjed by default

Qualifying Match

drinky vs. red

My internet crashed right as I hit submit.

drinky Bobby Hutcherson I think was his name. It was jazz. 5/10

red Brendan Benson - 'Metarie' was enjoyable enough. 6/10

Winner: red

please give bort his thread back.

I concur.

"It was jazz."

Qualifying Match

promethium vs. jagged

promethium Coldplay - 'Clocks' Ten seconds in and I've heard enough. This is jagged's round to lose. 2/10

jagged Gomez - 'All Too Much' I remember they had a song I liked once. Either the song was about chickens or the music video was. It was a long time ago. This started out promising then went into generic British rock music mode. I mean that other kind of generic British rock music. 3/10

Winner: jagged coldcocks promethium

I wrote a really long thing and then it was all erased when the connection dropped. Didn't seem fair to take two new songs when I had already finished that round and I couldn't remember the name of the song or what I had already written.

Qualifying Match

duckyboy vs. mugwump67

duckyboy John Fahey - 'Poor Boy' I love old folk music, especially the kind recorded at home with dogs barking in the background. This would have been scored so much higher if it weren't instrumental. 6/10

mugwump67 Speedy J - 'Symmetry' Instrumental vs. instrumental. I prefer folk over electronic music, though. Especially when the electronic song in question is over 8 minutes long. There's just no way it can hold my attention that entire time. It's fine background music or for the score of a motion picture, but it's not the kind of music you sit down and listen to and that's what's being asked here. 3/10

Winner: duckyboy and John Fahey's dogs

Qualifying Match

bort vs. puma

bort Heavenly - 'C Is The Heavenly Option' I knew I could rely on bort to come through. This is one of my favorite indiepop songs and maybe my favorite Calvin Johnson track post-Beat Happening. Near perfection. 9/10

puma Boards Of Canada - 'An Eagle In Your Mind' More electronic ambient music from the obners. I really wasn't expecting so much of this. There's not much more I can say here that I haven't already said about this genre. It's just not my thing. I find the songs overly long and boring. I don't slight people for liking it but it's not for me. 3/10

Winner: bort hands down

Those first few rounds started out nicely but things got really unbearable near the end there. Boarders whose tastes I often converge with wound up with stuff on their stations that I couldn't even tolerate. When a song leaves me that indifferent toward it, I don't even know what to say.


The next round of match-ups will be:

a northern soul vs. billyg
thisotherkingdom vs. radcliffe
paladisiac vs. jagged
legonads vs. red
patrick vs. bort
andyfest vs. Idiotjed
sanchez vs. MiceElf
duckyboy vs. e-stone

i love me some Speedy J... good ass techno

a 4 for Dr. Dog? blasphemous... this is a band that will grow on you tho, one of my fav current bands

let the man finish

shit i want in!

Something tells me I'm never gettin' outa first round in this thing.

Sweet Sixteen

a northern soul vs. billyg

a northern soul Death Cab For Cutie - 'Brothers On A Hotel Bed' Interesting start. I'm mostly indifferent towards DCFC. Most of their songs I think aren't bad but they never demand my attention and, though I did own two of their albums for a while there, I always found myself overlooking them when going to the shelves for something to listen to. This is one of the typical quiet Death Cab songs. Piano, soft vocals, etc. Nothing bad about it, per se, but nothing that stands out either. 6/10

billyg Ron Sexsmith - 'The Impossible World' Hm. Sexsmith's someone I've been meaning to check out but haven't got around to, if only because he's from around here. 'Secret Heart' is the only track of his I know, following Feist's cover. This wasn't bad and I'll still be sure to check out more of his stuff but this song didn't do a lot for me. 6/10

Winner: Too close to call


a northern soul Nine Inch Nails - 'My Violent Heart' I think Billy might have this one. I haven't liked Nine Inch Nails since I was fifteen. Once I got past the young, angry teenager phase of my life I found nothing in Reznor's work or anything of a similar sound worth spending time on. This isn't making me reconsider that. 3/10

billyg Kursaal Flyers - 'Drinking Socially' Easygoing poppy rock music. Very even-tempered. There's a million songs like this. 4/10

Winner: billyg and the pub-rockers

Sweet Sixteen

thisotherkingdom vs. radcliffe

thisotherkingdom The Long Winters - 'Clouds' I really like their song 'Delicate Hands' but I think that's all I've heard. The guy's vocals are interesting enough to save the song from mediocrity. It's the kind of song that makes me think they might have some other really great songs. But it could also turn out that this is one of their best and the rest of their stuff is dull. Tough to call on its own. 6/10

radcliffe Ian Hunter - 'Once Bitten Twice Shy [live]' This is the third live track radcliffe's radio's offered up and the second from Ian Hunter. Strange. I don't like this Ian Hunter guy, though. There's nothing bad about it, it's just really not my kind of music at all. It's got that classic rock sound down that I was raised on but never warmed to and it doesn't step outside of the boundaries at all. 4/10

Winner: thisotherkingdom and his stormy skies

Sweet Sixteen

paladisiac vs. jagged

paladisiac Dave Matthews Band - 'Satellite' I like when people make it easy for me. I've never liked any Dave Matthews songs. The only thing he's really had going for him is that he barely gets any radio play up here. I suspect, if I had grown up in the US, I would totally loathe him. But I can only really remember a couple of facts about him: Hacky-sack playing frosh boys like him. He had a song called 'Crash Into Me' and another about not drinking water. His tour bus poured a bunch of urine and feces on people. 2/10

jagged The Theater Fire - 'Land Of Nod' This might be the first alt-country song to show up. Going into this project I was really expecting a lot more indie rock and alt-country than the huge surplus of classic rock and electronic ambient I actually wound up getting. This is another one of those ehhh songs. The singer's voice isn't bad. The standard instruments are there. He sings his verses, but the lyrics are completely forgettable. And things never pick up from the basic tempo established in the first ten seconds. 5/10

Winner: jagged crashes into the quarterfinals

Sweet Sixteen

legonads vs. red

legonads High Places - 'Vision's The First...' Finally something that promises not to bore. I'd almost rather you make me hate you than leave me feeling bored and indifferent. Tags of 'experimental' and 'psychedelic' are like garlic to a vampire for me. I see those and I run in the opposite direction normally. Thankfully this is exactly the kind of experimental music I like. The music is allowed to do its own thing while catchy, nice vocals tie the song together and keep it from becoming masturbatory. The girl can sing too. This reminds me of a more low-key Go! Team or Architecture In Helsinki. Hints of Mirah and The Blow too. I will definitely check out more by them. 7/10

red Snowman - 'You Are A Casino' Rockabilly-tinged garage rock with more singsongy vocals than the normal shouting songs. It's got one of those bad things where the normal male vocals suddenly turn into screeching falsettos during the chorus, though. That's always a turn-off. And, up against some stiff some competition from banjobacon, it's pretty much enough to seal the deal. 4/10

Winner: legonads climbs higher than the casinos

Sweet Sixteen

patrick vs. bort

patrick Duvall - 'I'll Be Around' I'm a fan of the Smoking Popes and I'm a fan of Duvall. This is one of the few songs to come up where I already have the mp3 downloaded myself. Going up against my known taste-compliances with bort, this should be an interesting round. Patrick would've had a better chance with the Popes, though. I enjoy this song but it's not great. It's just alright. 6/10

bort Born Ruffians - 'Hummingbird' Oh, bort tries to sway me with the regional card. I only know one song from the Ruffians but I've been meaning to check out more. They run in the same circles as my label's bands. They've got an interesting sound going too. This is no 'I Need A Life' but it's different enough to stand out. 7/10

Winner: bort'll be around, but barely