Very cool link, Mike, and potentially hours of good reading and listening. For someone lacking in musical education such as myself, it's a great overview of concepts and terminology as well. I have added this as a link on the right navigation side of the page (moving the reading links up and the 2000s lists down) for those who may want to come back to it later, as I surely will. My father in-law, who is a Beatles fanatic, has always been adamant about the fact that, although their early stuff is now dismissed as simple or cute, when compared to their later work, the arrangements were far more complex than most if not all the pop music that preceded it. The Angels, "My Boyfriend's Back", released in 1963, mere months before the Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan, seems eras away from a song like "Love Me Do".

Hard to comment further on Pollack's work, given that I haven't even begun to get through it, but I do have to commend him for undertaking the task.

For those of you who like to be really analytical with your music:

A friend of mine sent me this link to a site that provides in-depth analysis of virtually every Beatles song. It is written by American musicologist Alan Pollack. He makes only passing reference to lyrical content, as it is primarily a musical analysis. I've only read a few of them, but what becomes clear very quickly is that even the simple Beatles songs are full of little twists and changes that make them interesting. I've often wondered whether they wrote that way intentionally, or whether they just wrote what felt right to them, unaware of the underlying musical complexity that they were creating.

stuart, i was being facetious, which is pretty much my default mode. please feel free to bring any newbie along to the next meeting. but for the love of god, get some twenty-something in your office to take a look at that computer of yours.

The emusic song samples are m3u files. My system is set up to associate m3u files with the MS Media Player. However, when I click on an emusic song sample, the music plays directly from the web page - Media Player is not invoked, and there is no visible proprietary media player that pops up either. The song simply plays "in place". My settings on the emusic site include "Embedded Song Samples: ENABLED" under "Streaming Sample Settings".

It sounds as though you've somehow gotten into a state in which your samples are playing locally with their Flash 9 player, and are also downloading to Windows Media player for some reason. My only recommendation would be to contact emusic customer support and hope that they have a technical team that can reset your account.

last shot here at my emusic woes, before i pull its plug... I still seem to have the emusic media player going at the same time as windows media.... but slightly out of sync, rendering the listening unintelligible.....
my computer at the office plays emusic via windows media only... ( not via a emusic propriatorial media player...
are you lot sure that emusic has its own media player...?
s

I had a lot of fun meeting all of you in Toronto last week - thanks for welcoming me into the event. For the record, the songs that I played were:

Jimi Hendrix: All Along the Watchtower
Buffalo Springfield: On the Way Home
Van Morrison: Into the Mystic
Tom Waits: Telephone Call from Istanbul
James: Seven
Elliott Smith: Bled White
Stars: Your Ex-Lover is Dead

I considered publishing the entire list of songs that I brought with me (to justify all of the hours that I spent compiling it, I suppose), but I've decided that I prefer to remain somewhat mysterious. Each of you should feel free to assume that the discs were jam-packed with your favorites from each decade.

I'm easy going on this one. Which probably means I get trumped. Maybe invite the Vendulander into the blog? We can subtly check him out that way :)

Derek? Brian? Marc? might I bring a newbie to the next cd club? Or do you agree w our newblood phobic colleague?
s

Stuart, while I would welcome any visitors to upcoming meetings, I believe our charter specifically forbids venezualans from attending, rock star or no. If he were Brazilian, it would be a different story. Alas....

Yeah that was a fun night. Marc, thanks for letting us invade your space and draw you (randomly) with what I believe was the toughest decade.

I had a great time and enjoyed the upsets I managed to pull off, though ultimately getting slammed in the finals was humbling. In looking at my lists the enxt day (I built eight play lists for the night to draw from, plus a list of 50 "five star" songs and fifty "four star" numbers) I did wonder if I should have pushed the boundaries of familiarity a little more to draw from some stronger material in the second half of the night. But then I remember playing "Driver 8" and "Girl Called Johnny" and getting feedback ranging from sideways glances (the nice guys) to comments like "poor choice" (the frank guys) to " who is this?" (the ..... guys).

Still, with all of that prep I thought I may as well throw out a few of my other play lists for posterity's sake. As the evening progressed I chopped up the lists and used some songs as youi'll see, though when I look at them now they might have been better as a whole. By and large this is music that I think is really strong or at the very least the best within its genre, of the time.

Round Three
Love My Way - Psy Furs
Prisoners - Rain Parade
Beds are Burning - M/Oil (used that one)
Levi Stubbs' Tears - Bragg (used it)
Major Tom - Peter Schilling

Round Four
Pair of Brown Eyes - the Pogues
Elephant Stone - Stone Roses
Wet Weekend - Big Dipper
Pale Shelter - Tears for Fears
Pink Turns to Blue - Husker Du

Round Five
Only Life - The Feelies
The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death - Housemartins
Games Without Frontiers - Gabriel
A Wave Crashed on Rocks - The Felt
The Dreg - Fleshtones

Round Six
Ceremony- New Order
Borderline - Camper Van Beethoven
Message of Love - Pretenders
Killing Jar - Siouxsie and the Banshees
Perfect Day - The The

Round Seven
Fields of Fire - Big Country
Christine - House of Love
Everything Counts - Depeche Mode
Might as Well Be on Mars - Pukka Orchestra

So great night. My one less-than-glowing comment is that iit ended up being a process of (almost) smug familiarity with music, rather than opening our ears to new (or less familiar) music. Of course that was all to do with the format. For me that familiarity was what propelled me through two rounds...so not sour grapes. And I kick myself for not punishing Mr 60's with my (lack of) votes for his choice of two Beatles and two Stones. Bastard! And thereby skipping lots of great bands. And two from the same record (Let it Bleed).

Stu has subsequently suggested we get together in the future for in depth listens oif a decade. Stu, over to you to outline your suggestion.

A good friend of mine has landed herself a venzuland rock star boyfriend who I think would make an interesting invitee to the next cd club..
He was very commercially sucessfull during the 90's and had a sound sort of like REM meets sigour ros....its interesting how he knows all the american and british bands of the 60's to 00's including obscure figures like al kooper... seems they had access to all the stuff we had up here...
anyway I am hoping you lot are more open to this since its not a special event like the decade battle but let me know...
s

Big kudos to Marc for his amazing hosting duties on Friday night for the big Decades of Music Smackdown. The food, drink, and company were, as always, excellent and very much appreciated.

Kudos too to Mike, for making the trek down to the meeting, spinning some great music during the elimination rounds, and generally tolerating the drunken self-absorption of the rest of us. I hope your son doesn't hold your decision to skip his hockey game against you for the rest of your life; if so, I hope it was worth it.

Final Tally was, for those too drunk to remember:

1st Place: 1960s
2nd Place: 1970s
3rd Place: 1980s
4th Place: 1990s
5th Place: 2000s

Believe the rounds went as follows:

1. 1960s defeated 2000s
2. 1980s defeated 1990s
3. 1990s defeated 2000s (eliminated)
4. 1980s defeated 1970s
5. 1970s defeated 1960s
6. 1960s defeated 1990s (eliminated)
7. 1970s defeated 1980s
8. final round - mike's 3 choices, 4 choices from 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, votes after each round
total vote final round: 1960s: 34, 1970s: 32, 1980s: 6

Please correct if I have this wrong. More importantly, what does this tell us, beyond the fact that Stuart wins and should get some sort of prize, beyond blog-based technical support for web browser media plugins? Beyond the bitterness of say, not finishing where you would have liked your randomly assigned decade to have finished, do you ultimate agree with the final ranking?

Are we sentimental and overly nostalgic? Do we idealize the past or just require time to put the music in its proper perspective? Or, is it just that Stuart is a god?

Derek, that is...

internet explorer, windows xp , adobe flashplayer 10
thanks much Derak...
s

Let me know Stuart if you are using Firefox or Internet Explorer and which version of Windows you're running. Is it XP, Vista or 7? You shouldn't have to remove Windows Media Player.

I have the streaming samples setting correct (embedded sound samples enabled).. I also have the syn option in the emusic download manager set to default....but i have had some sucsess..
the problem is that the emusic streaming is working fine but my windows media player has for some reason started playing symultaneously, ( but 5 seconds delayed)...
I have gone into the windows media player and turned off all the file types that are automatically prompting it to be engaged...this has solved the problem sort of.."
but now when I try to stream a song I get a dialogue box each time that says "file download,"
"do you want to open or save this file" and I have to close the dialogue box each and every time I click on a track top stream....
maybe I shoiuld just remove windows media player from my computer, but I am worried that will affect other things I have or that my kids have on the computer....
seems drastic to do that,
any thoughts?????
s

Hey Stuart you should be able to simply stream tracks within e-music without the use of an external player. It may be that you have the internal streaming option disabled. Give this a try and see how yours is set up.

Go to "Your Account" and look at the Account Options on the left hand side and scroll down to the "Downloading and Streaming" option and click on "Streaming Sample Settings".

My own account is set up as follows:

• Status

  Embedded Sound Samples: ENABLED

eMusic's 30-second audio samples are set to play automatically within your browser, without launching a media player. Nice! Note that you must have Flash 9 installed in order to utilize this feature. To install Flash 9 click here.

But, if you prefer to listen to audio samples using your Media Player just click the button below. The change will not affect downloading or playback of downloaded tracks.

Let me know if you are still having trouble after checking this out.

Thanks again Marc for being a gracious host on Friday night.

When I stream tunes on emusic the song will start playing and then 5 seconds later a second version of the same song will start playing symultaneously overtop the first version making the listening indecipherable. I have tried emusic help but they are about as techincally savvy as me...any thoughts from you lot on how to correct this. Whic music player do you guys run for emusic. Is that music player what you have as a default for all streaming? help would be greatly appreciated as currently I cannot use the system at all due to this...
s

As I'm looking at my final prep for this afternoon's/evening's battle royale, my question to you is:

Are we doing 7 rounds or 9 rounds total?

Reviewing the blog postings, Derek nicely sketched out examples of each but I noticed that we hadn't made a decision on the exact number. I'm fine with either scenario, but may I make a suggestion: If we do 9 rounds, we should probably limit each round to 3 songs per decade. If we stick with 7 rounds, we can keep it at the 15 minutes.

Thoughts? Mostly wanted to clarify ahead of time as this may impact your song selection/strategy.

Would love to offer my thoughts and comments but I am completely immersed right now in the amazing musical ride that is the 1970s. I need to stay focused in order to resolve the greatest question of that era: David or Shaun?

Ok I will not bring them... No worries...
s

Yeah, normally I'm a the-more-the-merrier type but I must admit I was thinking of this event as just me and the boys ("and our 50"?, no likely not).

I do believe that invitation was extended Stuart. Having said that let me just quote one of my favourite tunes from the 70s (is this on your list Kyle?):

"Got to - keep it in the family
Learn to - keep it in the family
Have to - keep it in the family
Want to - keep it in the family"

Of course I'm just a dour Scotsman who likes the status quo.

Hey Marc, do we have a definitive start time on this for Friday?

AT a music and wine filled new years eve dinner at my place with my neighbours and Derek and May, apparently an invitation was extended for my neighbour John and his musically knowledgable friend to come to the event friday. Derek , I have little recollection of this , you may recall more detail, but the copious quantity of wine drunk that night have dulled my memory. I have told him that I will check with you lot to see if you are ok with 2 more rogue voters. I realise this involves more food marc so I am quite happy to say I will get together with them at another time. At any rate none of you should feel obligated , but perhaps you all can tell me wether you think this is ok with you or not...
s

Let's see: 7-9 rounds at 30 minutes per minimum times # of beers you can consume within each half hour = you're screwed for your course, Bri. Marc, you may want to restrict turntable selections to the start of the evening, in order to prevent damage to equipment and rare vinyl that could easily occur several beers into the proceedings. I plan to 'lay a base' by consuming a large plate of pasta every hour on the hour, along with a big glass of milk. Should get me to 9pm at least.

I should be good for a 5 o'clock start boys. Food is taken care of? Don;t go to any effort Marc if you were thinkignof it, we can just order something. I have an 8:30 start the next morning at an all day Accountign course so, while I can stay up late-ish, I better not be too hammered.

i agree w Kyle, forget the year thing...it makes things too inflexible.... plus way more work...
I am fine with a 5 or 6pm start , just let me know...
Marc I asume your turntable is working? Please confirm
s

As Marc's place is a mere two subway stops from my office, a 4:00 pm arrival is indeed doable from my perspective, though that many consecutive hours of drinking portends a bit of a ghastly hangover for Saturday morning. Given that Brian won't be available until after 4:00 pm, did we want to push the start time to 5 or 6?

As for the exact years or ranges, I vote on skipping, mostly because I think it could take away from the strategizing and decision-making that will go into what songs are played each round. Do I play a song from the beginning, middle, end of a decade in each round? Do I try to group the songs I'm going to play by genre? If so, which genre to start with? Do I lead with what I feel are the strongest songs first or do I keep some powder in the keg with the hopes of making it to the end? Going with one year or set of years will mean I'll have to come up with 3 goodies or so per year but the structure imposed kind of makes it easier for participants and really, we can't have that. Just my two cents. Certainly don't want to antagonize anyone going into a voting period.

6pm should just be about the time Brian is drawing his last competitive breath of the evening. Especially since he has nothing from 1981. That's outrageous. No less iconic 80s songs than Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough", Human League's "Don't You Want Me Baby", Soft Cell's "Tainted Love", Duran Duran's "Girls on Film", OMD's "Joan of Arc" and Pigbag's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (better known as the New Music theme) all spring from 1981.

Hope it's not all Marine Girls and Minutemen there Bri.

My plan is to pick up my son at school at lunchtime, and drive to Toronto then. So I will not be ready to go by 4pm, I'm afraid. It'll probably be after 6 before I can be there. But I'm not essential for the early round matches anyway, so you can get things rolling without me. I'll try to time a dramatic entrance just as the first decade is on the ropes.

Hey Derek, there's that knack again. We're in good hands. Funny to think what a drunken slur of an idea this on Grey Cup night.

Re the "year" idea, I'm easy going. I think it might have to be multiple years from each decade to work - perhaps four years, to accommodate the max number of rounds that each decade cn go. And how to choose the four in that case? We could go random, but in the case of the sixties that raises the specter of multiple pre-Beatle years. And I really don't think we want to sit around listening to Frankie Valli all night. And might the new format make it tougher for The Gaine-sayer to perform his crucial role?

Anyway, I've narrowed the eighties down to 75 songs - from the outstanding to the soporific, the transcendent to the sophomoric, I've got it all. Nothing from 1981 though.

Looking forward to it all. FYI I may not be available until after 4 - not 100% sure but it's scheduled to be a busy week with a bunch of things due Friday.

Dude, yuall seem to got it ALL figured out.

Ok here goes Marc I'll try and answer some of your questions. The decades will be drawn randomly but as I mentioned in an earlier post the winning decade in any particular round will not go back in to the hat but will skip being selected for one round thus avoiding the scenario you mention.

As for the minimum of 7 rounds maximum of 9 that I posted earlier take the following as an example.

7 Round Contest

#1: 60's v 70's - winner 60's
#2: 80's v 90's - winner 80's
#3: 60's v 00's - winner 60's
#4: 80's v 70's - winner 80's (70's eliminated)
#5: 60's v 90's - winner 60's (90's eliminated)
#6: 80's v 00's - winner 80's (00's eliminated)
#7: 60's v 80's for all the marbles

9 Round Contest

#1: 60's v 70's - winner 60's
#2: 80's v 90's - winner 80's
#3: 60's v 00's - winner 00's
#4: 80's v 70's - winner 70's
#5: 60's v 80's - winner 60's (80's eliminated)
#6: 90's v 00's - winner 90's
#7: 70's v 00's - winner 70's (00's eliminated)
#8: 60's v 90's - winner 90's (60's eliminated)
#9: 70's v 90's for the big prize

As for the 4pm start time I believe that we are deadly serious. You don't after all think this thing will run like clockwork do you. A couple of those 5 litre mini kegs should see us right.

Getting back to the other scenario re specific years. I was thinking that if we were to go that route we should be assigned specific years prior to the night in question. i.e. I show up on the 15th knowing that all the songs I play have to come from 1997 and Brian's from 1983 etc. Would be rather difficult the night of to bring along a deep list of songs for each year of your assigned decade. I still like the idea but would like to hear from the rest of the group.

The list of shameful songs is also a nice touch.

Gentlemen, Happy New Year tu yuall. (that's Texas speak i picked up last week)

I'm trying to get a handle on all the convoluted rules to the smackdown. If we are drawing the five decades out of a hat randomly is it not possible that one of the decades gets picked every time if it has not yet been eliminated and therefore might be subject to up to nine rounds? ...or are we arbitrarily saying that it can only participate in four rounds ...but if it wins those first four rounds would it not then automatically become the winner because it is undefeated and then the smackdown ends after four rounds? ...Is there something i am not understanding about the rules (as per usual!)?

Secondly, in order to declare a winner out of five decades, would we not have a minimum of EIGHT rounds with a maximum of nine? ...or again, is there something i am not understanding about the rules (as per usual!)?

Re start time and a little simple math. Stuart mentioned a 4:00pm start time in an earlier e-mail ...is this for real? Limit of 15 min per round per person times 2 plus x minutes for The Gainezer for the the save, gives us 37:30 a round, times 9 is 5:37, makes us done by 9:30? ...oh ya and then there's 2 1/2 hours of voting and arguing about the rules! ...so that's how many ml. of alcohol? I'm willing to start at 4:00 if everyone else is serious about it.

apologies, I see I may have opened a pandoras box...lets go with the original plan and we can always do a different take on it next year...ie maybe once a year in janyuary we pit 2 decades against each other so it can be more in depth... I like Kyles idea of banashing a person from marcs house ( survivor style) if they pick a song everyone hates but since I will likely through in a few Bacherach or neil diamond tunes (being the smaltz lover I am ), I would have to say a no to this..." the mornings' just another day, happy people pass my way..."
s

I like the suggestion, D. So would this mean that we'd have different years down on paper, say a 1970s hat vs. a 1990s hat and I might pull '1993' out of your hat and you'd pull '1977' so then it would be a fierce battle between songs from these two years? For example, you would play 'Two Princes' by the Spin Doctors and I would counter with 'I Just Want to Be Your Everything' by Andy Gibb? Wait, would those be good examples?

On the topic of irritating music, one additional twist I thought we could add would be to have an 'auto-disqualify' feature, whereby each attendee could write down the name of one song, from any decade, that he considers to be so goddamn awful that, if played, triggers an automatic disqualification for the person who has chosen to play it. We obviously would not disclose our choices, at least until after the end of the evening, and it lend a touch of drama and pressure to the proceedings. So if, say, Brian were feeling overconfident and decided he could get away with playing "We Built this City" by Starship, and this were written down on my sheet of paper, I could then wave it and shout, 'Disqualify' and he would automatically be disqualified from that round and any future round. The only unresolved question, in my mind, would be whether he would get to stay for the rest of the evening or would have to leave Marc's place immediately. If this sounds like I'm picking on Brian then picture one of yourselves yelling it at me, and me having to high tail it out of Marc's place, Barry Manilow's Mandy tucked against the tail between my legs.

Tend to agree with what you're saying Stuart. The only thing I could suggest, and it's only a suggestion, is that we randomly assign each person a specific year within a decade and in that way we might have a greater variety of music to listen to as it won't simply be the 10 greatest songs of a 10 year period which are probably fairly obvious to most. Would require more upfront work for each of us and would make Mike's task more difficult.

I'm easy either way but I thought I'd throw this out there.

further thought, also to Kyles question...
It would be nice if the person presenting the songs loved them to death, and still likes playing it...
the arguments about the importance historically or musically can always be tried out to sway voters......
for me the interesting songs are likely the ones just under the absoute best.... I mean i will likely trott out hey jude, because I love the song to death and still love it, but do you guys really need to hear it? I am wondering if the evening is being compressed too much... for example, I would love a whole evening playing 1960 against 1990..... we could divide up into 2 groups each armed with 100 songs and alternate what you play...ie each team member doesnt have to tell ahead of time their choice to his fellow team members...
I realise this is way to late to change the format, and I wont say any more...I promise...
maybe next year we can do a similar thing but dig deeper into the decades...

damn .....so max 4 rounds x 3 or 4 songs is 12 to 16 selections total... I am cutting from 60 and its not easy....60's are an embaressment of riches....With such a limited number of songs, I am worried we will all pick such famous songs it will be a boring night musically... I will go gamble and say i will pick on each round at least one song that is less well known, if known at all.... or at least from a lesser liked category such as country...I should still easily beat the Latvian....

Well, I've scratched a few surfaces in the 80's in the last ten days (and there are some ugly boils and blisters below that shiny skin...ha), and was planning to bring twenty to thirty songs - ie, maximum 4 rounds, each with 3 or 4 new songs. In terms of my selections, I was thinking I'd "play the room" a little bit, see what worked and what didn't as they evening wore on. I would tend to think a mix of defining and trascending, but given that we're looking for votes, was thinking that anything people had heard say, 5000 times will be difficult to get past any pre-existing biases, so try to find at least a few songs that may sound fresh to everyone's ears.

Mind you, I've got the 80's, so am feeling a bit like the Latvians at an international hockey tournament. I'm counting on Kyle for major votes.

Dreams of better lives/the kind that never hate/Dropped in the state of imaginary grace/I made a pilgrimage to save the human race/Never comprehending a race had long gone by.....

I'm sure I haven't even scratched the surface of the 70s and my list of possible songs and artists has swollen to 20...so I'll have to whittle these down to 3 or 4 songs total? Yowsa!

Beyond coming up with "good" song choices, what should we be aiming for in either evaluating songs to motivate or deciding on how to vote? Songs that define a decade? Transcend it? Posess a timeless quality while simultaneously albeit paradoxically are still very much rooted in a specific time and place? Your guidance will determine whether or not Dr. Hook makes the final cut.

Back to so-cal pretty guitar strumming, vocal harmonies, as per Derek's suggestion...

"Cause the free wind is blowin' through your hair/and the days surround your daylight there/ Seasons cryin', oh despair/Alligator lizards in the air/In the air....doo doo doo..."

Or Kyle you could just go with America sans breakfast.

As for Brian's hubris perhaps he is just now beginning to realize how much help he's going to need simply to win a round never mind reaching the final.

3 or 4 songs should be about right. Let's say we limit it to 15 minutes per person per round as we don't want Kyle getting carried away with the likes of Rush, Genesis and King Crimson that could easily see us closing in on an hour for 3 tracks.

Hoping I can locate my original copy of Breakfast in America in time....

I'm happy with the wildcard coming into play only on the verge of elimination. It'd be tough to offer more than one impassioned plea for a stay of execution for any decade.

Derek, you have a flare for organization. A couple of questions - how many songs per decade per round should we be thinking about? I was imagining three or four. And secondly, perhaps Mike would have a bit more involvement if he could jump in whenever a decade was on the ropes on a vote, and not just the second time through (thinking he might not get to play anything for the first half under that scenario)?

Gentlemen, I've done a lot of listening in the past couple of weeks. The 80's were an outstanding decade of music, and dare I say, could be the frontrunner going into the big shewdewn.

The decades involved are the 60s (Stuart), 70s (Kyle), 80s (Brian), 90s (Derek) and 00s (Marc).

Since a decade can only lose twice and then is eliminated I think that we are looking at a minimum of 7 rounds and a maximum of 9. Thus each decade will be in play for 2 rounds at a minimum and likely 4 at a maximum.

The idea behind a wildcard like yourself Mike is that if a decade has already lost once and has been voted against for a 2nd time then you could throw out several tunes from that era as a lifeline to see if that would somehow sway the vote and keep that decade alive.

CDs, Ipods, or vinyl I think we can probably accommodate any format so that will be up to each individual. Having an album cover with lyric sheets might even play a small part in the persuasiveness of the song.

Speaking of the big battle of the decades, I did get a quick introduction to the concept from Brian when he was here. As I understand it, I need to prepare some songs for each decade to attempt to reverse the outcome of each round when the voting is done. I assume that the last decade to be included is the '00s - how far back are we going? And how many rounds of competition will there be in total? How many rounds could any one decade potentially have? Finally, are we all bringing CD's with our chosen songs on them, or are we playing them from mp3 players?


Thanks,


Mike

I'm probably most interested in the new Field Music and Frightened Rabbits albums. Didn't realize that Rogue Wave, Quasi and most especially Bettie Serveert were still making music. I guess once bands lose a certain newness they just fall off the collective radar. Anyone hear anything from Ben Folds Five lately?

As for Robert Pollard I'm not sure anyone needs to hear new music from the man who doesn't have a thought that doesn't get turned in to a lyric. And I'll pass on anything new from Vampire Weekend, a band I tired of very quickly.

Looking forward to January 15th. One of the rules that came to mind is that a winning decade in any round should not go directly back in to the hat as we could select the same match-up two rounds in a row. Having said that should we avoid identical decade match-ups at least until the final round when there are only 2 decades left. My song selection will remain very top secret until the night in question although I might just run with the complete discography of Ace of Base and let all comers fall in its wake.

Out with the old, in with the new....a nice primer from pitchfork on upcoming 2010 releases. Which ones am I most looking forward to hearing? If pressed, I'd have to say Besnard Lakes but to be honest, I'm most looking forward to hearing from bands with whom I'm not presently familiar. The new stuff is what usually ends up being my faves of any given year. Perhaps you feel differently and there are some new releases for which you await with baited breath? Conversely, are there any artists who should not, iyo, put out any album this year or at any point in the future?

Also, I understand from the email flurries that we are looking at Friday January 15th at Marc's for the big meeting/showdown. Yes, Feel free to start posting rules/thoughts/song nominations, etc so we can all prepare.