Summer Madness: PA's Battle of the Albums

as a prelim to the unveiling of the albums...

a couple of notes.  As one might imagine, limiting it to one album per group made for some hard choices.

The hard part is of course we could debate till the cows come home on many of these. In some cases we did, many changes were made over since we started making the lists (right after the band contest ended).

Ange is a a perfect example and one we really debated. d Some think Emile Jacotey is the definative Ange album.. others think Au-delà du délire.. some others (including myself)  think it is Par Les Fils Des Mandrin. 

so which to include..  hard choices.  We could have used the album charts here but what is the point of doing the polls if one takes those into account. Those charts have given us winners haven't they?

On that note.  The albums from the 'big heavies'. ie Yes, King Crimson, ELP, Genesis and (ahem) Jethro Dull.

Again we know which albums everyone loves.. and when it came to the band contest. .for all the fun that was.. we knew who the last ones standing would be. So to keep things interesting..  we choose 'lesser' classics from those groups. We sort of want people to judge the music.. not just name of the group on the album. I am more curious to see how a later album from Genesis stands up against a great, but less acclaimed album from another group.

or to be to point.. I don't want to spend the months and months these contests are going to take.. when we have 1000 CTTE v. Foxtrot v. TAAB polls.  boring.

since we have leveled the playing field (in theory at least) there will be no seeding like we did in the band contest.  We have 128 albums in each  section and some night this week I'll do random selection and bracketize them.

Now for the shear scope of this. 256 albums.. whoa.  So to help speed things up slightly.  The first round of both brackets will be 4 album polls... the two highest vote getters will advance. Doing that saves a full month of running time.

I choked on one of the sponsor's pills.........I woke up with a stiff neck

Who's M@X?

time to start filling in your brackets.  Bracket winner gets.. something..

Progspin - Prog News without taste, flavor, access, knowledge or any semblance of discretion.

BREAKING NEWS!! - The tournament committee chairman has left his office and is now holding court in the bar!

Progspin was able to follow the tournament chairman, Mad Micky, to the bar and obtained the following interview:

PS: So what can you tell us prior to the unveiling of the brackets?
Micky: Buy me Vodka Tonic or two and I guess I can tell a bit about what we did.
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Micky: Cheers Mate!  Now what do you want to know?

PS: Let's start with the selection process?

Micky: Well much of the work went on behind the closed doors of the Colabotor Zone there at ProgArchives.  Unlike the Band contest that was for the most part.. no brainers and more a question of who is left out rather than who to include the album contest was a far more difficult venture so I enlisted the help of the various genre specialists to help put together the lists.

PS:  Did you get a lot of help

Micky: Damn right I did! It couldn't have happened without the help. I thought something like this, to do it WELL, was beyond just the input of one person.  I did get lots of suggestions and helpful advice, not just on the albums but on all the details of it. How to deal with certain groups and albums that could potentially unbalance the contest, along with find details such as cut off dates and types and numbers of albums per group to be included.

PS. What do you mean by 'unbalanced'?

Micky: Look man.. we all had a frickin blast with the Battle of the Bands contest but lets be honest as the contest ground down a certain air of inevitability set it. Perhaps it there from the start. For all the fun of interesting matchups, and potential upsets you knew who the last 4 to 6 standing generally would be.  A cynic could say we could have dispenced with the whole tournament and run the 1000th installment of a Yes v. Genesis v. KC v. Floyd poll. We didn't want that with this contest

PS: I know what you mean..  for me the fun ended as soon as ELP went out and don't get me started about half ass English groups beat non-English whose output and quality dwarfed those of the more 'popular'

Micky: haha yeah man I hear you there but lets not go there again.  So while we couldn't have a band poll without the usual English suspects, what we could do and did do was muddy up the waters a bit.

PS: how?

Micky: Easy.  Listen man, we know that CTTE, TAAB, WYWH and others like that are beloved and would win any poll when not paired against each other. What they would do on their path to meeting deep into the tournament is leave tire tracks over great, but less heralded albums on their path to the late rounds so we had either of two choices. Elimiinate those groups (the big 6) completely or try to make things even more interesting by choosing lesser acclaimed albums from those groups and pairing them off against albums of likely far greater quality but of far less acclaim and personality.

PS: the interesting part being..

Micky: exactly.. to see how people actually vote. It might well be that later albums from the big 6 still do move on but what it will not have, is the air of inevitability. 

PS: sounds interesting. So tell me about the modern lists. 

Micky: obviously we didn't have to worry as much as certain things with the modern list as we did the. Our biggest issues were the cut off date between the modern and classic eras and whether to include recent (2014) releases.  We changed the cut off date several times, especially as the lists began to take shape. More in relation to some albums that simply didn't fit in the era they were originally placed.

PS: Great! I notice you had previously announced the classic album list but I haven't seen the modern album list. When can we expect to see that?

Micky:  While I thought the classic list was relatively easy, they are 'classics' for a reason you know, the modern list was harder IMO for the shear amount of quality yet unstandably 'un-classic' works in the last few years. It does make it harder to select a good list.  We do have a list of 128 but since that bracket won't kick off till for nearly 2 weeks, I am sitting on it to have more time to look it over and modify as needed.

PS: Well Micky .. it is time

Micky: Damn right it is. To announce the brackets.  As noted. A prize will be awarded to the person who has the highest score for each of the brackets so post your predictions in this thread!

and without further ado.. the classic album brackets.  Saturday the contest kicks off with 16 4-album polls. Top 2 vote getters in each poll move on to the second round.

http://www.bracketmaker.com/tmenu.cfm?tid=459336

3rd round predictions, 4th Round (sweet 16 winners in bold)

 Bitches Brew
 ... And Then There Were Three
Palepoli
 Pawn Hearts
Waterloo Lily 
Hamburger Concerto
 Ys
PG3

Drama
Fish out of Water
Yeti
Rock Bottom
Scheherazade
Octopus
Future Days
Storia di un Minuto


Quaterfinal predictions (Semi finals predictions in bold)

Pawn Hearts
PG3
Rock Bottom
Octopus

my predicted  winner... Pawn Hearts

Am I missing something, I can't work out which 4 are going to be in which group in the first round, the brackets look like they've been set up as 1 vs 1?

The poll groups for the first round, I presume (my predictions in bold):

Edited by The Bearded Bard - June 07 2015 at 17:08