Hey, you've got to pay your dues before you pay the rent.

Okay, let's get this thing started. Here we go.

The Indie/Alt/College Tournament of Songs--Day 1

Vote (once for each person!) by logging into the comments widget or emailing me by 9:00pm CST Sunday. We'll post and tally the results then. If you want to say something about your reasoning, of course feel free.

Today’s Matchups from the Northeast Regional, at CBGB & OMFUG, New York City, NY

#16 The Smiths, This Charming Man (Amazon)
vs.
#17 De La Soul, Me, Myself and I (Amazon, iTunes)

Two great singles from two great debut albums.


#9 Nirvana, All Apologies (Amazon, iTunes)
vs.
#24 Stereolab, Ping Pong (Amazon, iTunes)

Marxist socialist electronica with bossa nova inflections versus… Nirvana. Wonder how this one will turn out.

#21 Pavement, Range Life (Amazon, iTunes)
vs.
#12 The Specials, A Message to You Rudy (Amazon, iTunes)

Rudy is an homage to dub that became an early Two-Tone ska hit. Range Life hates on the Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots. Both warm my heart.


#13 The Dead Kennedys, Kalifornia Uber Alles (Amazon, iTunes)
vs.
#20 Aztec Camera, Oblivious (Amazon)

Brutal, political west coast hardcore or sweeter-than-Splenda Scottish pop?

Welcome to the inanity. After Greg's post on decision theory (my favorite reason to hate on a band: Their fans are wankers/whiny/smelly/all suburban upper-middle class caucasian males between 15 and 30/otherwise somehow unappealing), here's a post on methodology.

Songs were gleaned from a survey of allmusic, Magnet top 60 albums of 95-05, Pitchfork's best albums/singles of various years and decades, and surveys of our friends and acquaintances. After that, the data sat on my computer until I forgot it, then Greg and I ran through the list in the last week. Seeding was done with minimum time and effort, and with a great deal of bias. There are 8 regions of 24; the first 8 seeds in each region gets a bye in the first round. See the brackets to the right for details.

The first matchups will go up shortly, after I get over seeing a Spoon song on a Jaguar commerical.

Howdy-ho. So in past music tournaments (dig around the archives here), many people apply a "radio test" to their votes; that is, these two songs come on the radio at the same time: which do you choose? That approach has its good points and bad, but I believe it doesn't help you here. Aside from some of the big names (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, U2), most places no longer have one radio station playing this stuff, let alone two. In real life, if you found an indie station playing one of these songs, the best course would be to leave it there and sooner or later they'd play another from the list. So I implore you to resist the tempting radio test, and instead assign some other arbitrary measure of worthiness. Here are some good ones:

*band members unattractive
*wearing too much flannel in band
*I want to tick off another poster
*fans of {xxx} beat me up in school
*that record store clerk made fun of me while {xxx} was playing
*s/he dumped me {at that show/while this was playing}

But don't feel you're unqualified to vote for (or against) something. Unqualified voting is what built this nation, to say nothing of the Academy Awards. We'll help out where we can, by providing some sort of samples.