Monday, March 27, 2006

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.