Announcement: The Great Music Tournament of 2016

[Tommy]

I have entire bands I want to nominate.

[divemaster]

I have 5 songs I want to nominate.

[mae]

Since we've recently reached our goals in several of the long-ongoing threads (and Thread #2 is close to being finalized as well, while we're well past halfway in Thread #9), Thread #10 for the early to mid '90s will be going up tomorrow morning.

I have entire albums I want to nominate.

What would those be? Offhand I can only think of Nirvana's Nevermind (not every song, but most need to be nominated).

[T-Dogz_AK47]

Since we've recently reached our goals in several of the long-ongoing threads (and Thread #2 is close to being finalized as well, while we're well past halfway in Thread #9), Thread #10 for the early to mid '90s will be going up tomorrow morning.

I have entire albums I want to nominate.

What would those be? Offhand I can only think of Nirvana's Nevermind (not every song, but most need to be nominated).

Interesting, I seem to recall being criticised by another member for trying to push through more than four U2 songs in thread 9.... Something to do with variety?

Yet I notice that thread 7 has a total of 8 songs by Pink Floyd and now people are discussing nominating entire albums in thread 10.

Not cool.

[mae]

From the start I stated there would be no restrictions on the number of nominations by a single artist. We had 11 Beatles songs make it through in one of the threads and no one seemed unhappy

[Tommy]

Since we've recently reached our goals in several of the long-ongoing threads (and Thread #2 is close to being finalized as well, while we're well past halfway in Thread #9), Thread #10 for the early to mid '90s will be going up tomorrow morning.

I have entire albums I want to nominate.

What would those be? Offhand I can only think of Nirvana's Nevermind (not every song, but most need to be nominated).

The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails, Siamese Dream by The Smashing Pumpkins, Metallica Black Album, just thinking out loud.

[Tommy]

Since we've recently reached our goals in several of the long-ongoing threads (and Thread #2 is close to being finalized as well, while we're well past halfway in Thread #9), Thread #10 for the early to mid '90s will be going up tomorrow morning.

I have entire albums I want to nominate.

What would those be? Offhand I can only think of Nirvana's Nevermind (not every song, but most need to be nominated).

Interesting, I seem to recall being criticised by another member for trying to push through more than four U2 songs in thread 9.... Something to do with variety?

Yet I notice that thread 7 has a total of 8 songs by Pink Floyd and now people are discussing nominating entire albums in thread 10.

Not cool.

Don't let that bother you too much Tim, just nominate what you want and it will either get seconded or it won't. I personally have loved many of your picks. I've nominated a lot of Fats Domino myself so I don't mind people nominating multiple tracks of their favorites at all. I'm a little disappointed more NIN hasn't gone through but I get that they are not too everyone's liking. That's not going to stop me from nominating a whole buttload more of their songs though.

[mae]

I am firmly for variety myself, as well, but if a nomination is good enough for myself to be considered as one of the 112 best on the given time period, I'll second it, whoever the artist. It's not U2's fault they wrote a bunch of good songs

[Iwritecode]

Since we've recently reached our goals in several of the long-ongoing threads (and Thread #2 is close to being finalized as well, while we're well past halfway in Thread #9), Thread #10 for the early to mid '90s will be going up tomorrow morning.

I have entire albums I want to nominate.

What would those be? Offhand I can only think of Nirvana's Nevermind (not every song, but most need to be nominated).

The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails, Siamese Dream by The Smashing Pumpkins, Metallica Black Album, just thinking out loud.

Those are some good ones. GnR's Use Your Illusion I & II are both in this time period. Meatloaf's Bat Outta Hell 2 is pretty good as well.

Maybe "entire albums" is stretching it but I like a good chunk of them.

[mae]

I have 5 songs I want to nominate.

I just counted and my rough list which is missing lots of stuff is at 295 titles for 1990-1994

[divemaster]

Yeah, it makes it easy for me!

[mae]

I have also been working on scheduling the polls and decided to cap 1950-1954 at 56 titles (I'm surprised it's moving slower than 1945-1949). Therefore, there will be 1,456 tracks overall (the first two time periods with 56 and the other 12 with 112). When all the nominees are locked in, the voting process will be pretty intense, so get ready, because we need to get through a lot of polls, 560 polls in the first three preliminary rounds to be exact. Each round should take about a month to get through. The first two rounds will have 208 polls and the third round will have 144 polls (because the first two time period won't have a third round). The breakdown looks to be like this:

Rounds 1 and 2: 16 polls posted each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (13 times) in chronological order
Round 3: 12 polls posted each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (12 times), one from each time period

What this means is that the first day the polls go live for Round 1, I'll post polls for all 8 groups of 7 for the 1945-1949 period and all 8 groups of 7 for the 1950-1954 period. Each poll, as usual, will go on for seven days. There will also be an overview thread for each round so that it will be easy for everyone to keep track of things. I understand this may appear overwhelming at first, but I've played around with various numbers, and if we want The Great Music Tournament of 2016 to actually finish in 2016, we need to be ready to do more polls than we're used to doing.

So I have been tinkering with the schedule and the above does not seem very doable, so instead I think we'll be going with 8 daily polls, Monday through Friday. Since we have 208 polls to vote on in Rounds 1 and 2, that means at 8 polls per day it will take 26 weekdays (excluding Saturday and Sunday). Basically a month and a half or so. I do not want to stretch a round any longer than that, so I hope everyone's ready and willing to cast lots of votes. Nevertheless, my hope and preference is that everyone gives each nominee a listen, at least a cursory one, prior to voting, and not simply vote on name recognition alone, since each poll will run for seven days and there will be a lot of time to listen to all the nominees in order to make an informed decision.

[mae]

And here are the updated overall stats thus far:

1945-1949: 56 noms out of 56 - 100%
1950-1954: 56 noms out of 56 - 100%
1955-1959: 112 noms out of 112 - 100%
1960-1964: 112 noms out of 112 - 100%
1965-1969: 112 noms out of 112 - 100%
1970-1974: 112 noms out of 112 - 100%
1975-1979: 112 noms out of 112 - 100%
1980-1984: 112 noms out of 112 - 100%
1985-1989: 112 noms out of 112 - 100%
1990-1994 - 55 noms out of 112 - 49.11% (65 not yet seconded)

951 noms altogether, which is 65.32% of the total of 1,456.

[mae]

Since it's now February 1, I just wanted to post a quick thanks to everyone working hard in the nomination threads. We started on December 5, 2015, so it has been quite a while, and I really appreciate everyone and their time. We are getting closer to finishing the '90s, and then it's just three more time periods. So my hope is to finish by the end of February (it's a leap year so we get an extra day!) and then start in early March. Again, thanks to everybody for participating in the boring part of the tournament. It will be much more fun when the voting begins!

[Iwritecode]

As the newer decades come up, I'm finding it more and more difficult to narrow the songs down. As of right now, for the 2000 - 2009 time periods, I have a master list of almost 1700 songs. I'm sure there are 1000s more that aren't even on my list.

[divemaster]

As the newer decades come up, I'm finding it more and more difficult to narrow the songs down. As of right now, for the 2000 - 2009 time periods, I have a master list of almost 1700 songs. I'm sure there are 1000s more that aren't even on my list.

I have 1 !

So, more spots for you!

[mae]

As the newer decades come up, I'm finding it more and more difficult to narrow the songs down. As of right now, for the 2000 - 2009 time periods, I have a master list of almost 1700 songs. I'm sure there are 1000s more that aren't even on my list.

I have 1 !

Well, I don't have that many or that few, I do have a nice handful, but not as much as for the older time periods. Mostly, because I kinda stopped following popular music in the 2000s. With the advent of the Internet and the demise of MTV there wasn't as much exposure to it, plus having a job meant not spending as much time listening to radio like in the good old days. So once we hit the new millennium, most of my picks will be the more obscure (but awesome nonetheless) electronic acts, with some mainstream stuff sprinkled in.

[Iwritecode]

With the advent of the Internet and the demise of MTV there wasn't as much exposure to it, plus having a job meant not spending as much time listening to radio like in the good old days.

I feel the exact opposite. With the internet I've discovered much more music than I ever did when I was younger. There is so much software out there that suggests new music based on your current preferences. Now instead of waiting all day long for a song to play on the radio or TV, I can pull it up on my computer or phone in seconds and then get a list of dozens of other similar songs that I may like as well.

[mae]

With the advent of the Internet and the demise of MTV there wasn't as much exposure to it, plus having a job meant not spending as much time listening to radio like in the good old days.

I feel the exact opposite. With the internet I've discovered much more music than I ever did when I was younger. There is so much software out there that suggests new music based on your current preferences. Now instead of waiting all day long for a song to play on the radio or TV, I can pull it up on my computer or phone in seconds and then get a list of dozens of other similar songs that I may like as well.

You misunderstood what I meant about the Internet. It did introduce me to a whole buttload of new and different music, but at the expense of mainstream pop and rock music.

[Iwritecode]

With the advent of the Internet and the demise of MTV there wasn't as much exposure to it, plus having a job meant not spending as much time listening to radio like in the good old days.

I feel the exact opposite. With the internet I've discovered much more music than I ever did when I was younger. There is so much software out there that suggests new music based on your current preferences. Now instead of waiting all day long for a song to play on the radio or TV, I can pull it up on my computer or phone in seconds and then get a list of dozens of other similar songs that I may like as well.

You misunderstood what I meant about the Internet. It did introduce me to a whole buttload of new and different music, but at the expense of mainstream pop and rock music.

Gotcha.

I agree. I'm not into mainstream pop and rock music quite as much as I used to be either. Every night when I went to bed I'd listen to the "top 10" countdown on the local radio station. I'm not even sure that's a thing anymore.

My wife still listens to mainstream stuff so I still get a little exposure that way.

[mae]

So I just had my mind blown. I've been working on the scheduling of the tournament and have posted the overall process overview earlier in this thread, but only today did I realize how huge this undertaking will actually be. You should see my Excel spreadsheet

As I posted earlier, we will need to do eight daily polls each weekday, but I just worked out the scheduling including the playoffs, taking March 7 as the start date, and with daily polls each weekday for every round through to the Finals, not allowing for any delays due to tiebreaker polls and such the tournament would finish on January 30, 2017. I shit you not.

Here's how it would break down:

ROUND 1: 8 daily polls each weekday from Monday, March 7 to Friday, April 8, plus additional 8 polls on Saturday, April 9 (26 weekdays and 208 polls)
ROUND 2: 8 daily polls each weekday from Monday, April 18 to Friday, May 20, plus additional 8 polls on Saturday, May 21 (26 weekdays and 208 polls)
ROUND 3: 6 daily polls each weekday from Monday, May 30 to Thursday, June 30 (24 days and 144 polls)
PLAYOFFS - ROUND 1: 4 daily polls each weekday from Monday, July 11 to Wednesday, August 17 (28 weekdays and 112 polls)
PLAYOFFS - ROUND 2: 4 daily polls each weekday from Monday, August 29 to Wednesday, October 5 (28 weekdays and 112 polls)
PLAYOFFS - QUARTERFINALS: 4 daily polls each weekday from Monday, October 17 to Thursday, November 3 (14 weekdays and 56 polls)
PLAYOFFS - SEMIFINALS: 4 daily polls each day from Monday, November 14 to Sunday, November 20 (7 days and 28 polls)
PLAYOFFS - FINALS: 4 daily polls each day from Monday, November 28 to Sunday, December 4 (7 days and 14 polls)
ROUND-ROBIN: 4 polls each on Monday, December 12 and Tuesday, December 13, and 5 polls on Wednesday, December 14 (3 days and 13 polls)
TOURNAMENT FINAL: 2 polls on Monday, December 26; 4 polls on Monday, January 2; 4 polls on Monday, January 9; 2 polls on Monday, January 16; 1 poll on Monday, January 23 (5 days and 13 polls)

That final final round would be a face-off one-and-done round with each of the 14 time period winners squaring off against one another until just two are standing for the ultimate battle on that last day...

[Tommy]

holy shit!

[ladysai]

Wow!
We'll have added another year of new music to our experience while we vote on what we've already experienced. Cool beans.

[mae]

I may need to employ the help of my fellow music nerds taking over the posting of polls for a round here and there. I'm hoping to do it myself, but if I need to be away for any extended period of time, I wouldn't want to disrupt the flow.

[divemaster]

One thing I thought would be fun would be to give all "active participants" one nuke button. Not per thread, but one for the contest. One song you just hate so much you could nuke it from orbit. There are a couple of songs I just hate with a passion. Two I can think of for sure are million-sellers but neither has been nominated so far (thank god). However, I don't know how you could determine who was active enough to get that privilege, as opposed to the person who posted once or twice zapping a song out of the contest. But it's fun to think about!

...
And also, divemaster, what are the two million-sellers you would "nuke" as mentioned above?

I like so much of Elton John's work (with the exception of one song that makes me want to stab out my eardrums with an icepick). Even the songs that make no lyrical sense are still captivating.

Ok, so one of the songs I would use my nuke button for is...Benny and the Jets.

The other would be any song from Peter Frampton. Meaning, anything from Frampton Comes Alive!, which is the only Frampton stuff I'm familiar with from what they play on classic rock stations. From everything I hear, Frampton is truly a nice guy and very personable. But I can't tell you how much I hate those songs. I'll start to hear Do You Feel Like We Do, and immediately switch over to the sports talk station. Then, like a half hour later, I'll switch back over to the classic rock station and that damn song is still playing! (LOL; I exaggerate--but not by much).

I can probably come up with a couple more. Band on the Run would be close. Oh, and from my country music days...Islands in the Stream.