I’m having a hard time taking that “not taking northern culture seriously” line seriously. Philistines aside for the moment however as we should really kick into gear this upcoming music contest.

First the format. Marc has suggested, and others that I’ve mentioned it to seem to concur, that we should scrap the format of the last clash. Instead of having 3-song round robins where someone might not play a song for an hour or more and could also be eliminated from the contest before the night is half done we go with the following:

6 participants – names in a hat at the beginning of each so-called round. Names are drawn at random and that person (let’s say Stuart) is required to play 1 song. The next name drawn (let’s say Brian) is also required to play 1 song. The 4 non-participants then vote on the song that strikes them as being superior. Another name is then drawn from the hat (let’s say Kyle) and he has to play a song that then is pitted against the song last played (ie the song previously played by Brian) and another vote takes place.

And on it goes. Voting is thus taking place approx every 5 minutes so you need to be paying attention. Ties can occur with only 4 votes cast. That will result in a half point for each competitor as opposed to a full point for an outright win. At the end of the night total point tally wins the contest. This keeps everyone engaged and on their toes.

This was Marc’s idea so if I have misinterpreted your suggestion please chime in.

As for the content of the contest that is proving much more elusive. After another discussion with Brian last night let me throw out two ideas:

1) We stick with the sub-genre format (letting people select their own) perhaps from an approved list like Wikipedia’s which seems fairly exhaustive. It was suggested that each person have two sub-genres at their disposal and have to play a balance of songs from each of their selected categories.

2) Each person picks a particular year lets say 1976 and has to pick a second year but one has to be at least 25 years removed from the one first selected. So if you love 1976 you’re going to have to go back to 1951 or prior if working backwards or 2001 or later if working the other way. As with suggestion #1 a balance of songs from each year would be required.

Suggestion #2 arose as a result of my fear that with the sub-genre format we would once again be listening to the bulk of music coming from the 1965 to early 1990s period. Music in more recent times doesn’t seem to be categorized the way it used to be and I threw out some names (Sigur Ros, Beck, TV on the Radio) and wondered how these artists would be categorized under format #1.

Enough from me. Need to hear from everyone else so we can finalize this thing well before Christmas so I can spend the holidays ignoring friends and family and keeping my head firmly stuck up my musical ass.