« Newer post | Previous post »

21 May 2007

1 am Eastern

Band Madness 2007 Champion: The Beatles

Beatles 933, Led Zeppelin 551. Numbers that will forever be etched into our memories along with Babe Ruth’s 714 home runs, the December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor bombing, and September 13th, 1993 - aka, “Mortal Monday” (release of MK 1 for Super Nintendo). The fact that I had to Google the Pearl Harbor date just to make sure should clinch without a shadow of a doubt that I am not a human being of any worth, or, perhaps, that the Band Madness 2007 final score is more seminal than the Pearl Harbor date, and I only have the room in my brain to remember three important numbers (hence, proving the previous sentence anyway.)

Now that I can no longer impact voting by my moderative posts, I’ll say that I am actually somewhat surprised, though very satisfied, with the outcome. I’m satisfied because I do love The Beatles and because they certainly fit the criteria of “who do you like better?”, the tournament’s founding principle, as opposed to “who do people feel obligated to vote for even though they don’t listen to them,” i.e., a lot of bands that went pretty far in the competition. I’m surprised, though, because Pink Floyd looked like such a powerhouse last year, and beat the Beatles head-to-head, plus had a strong online following and a bunch of other strong online followings (NIN, Depeche Mode, The Cure, etc.) probably would have favored Floyd over The Beatles, despite the general public’s obvious persuasion towards the latter. I’m also surprised because I was fully expecting (/hoping?) that a fanbase would hijack the site, which the AFIers did, but general common sense won out in the end, though for the record, I do not begrudge those fans at all, they were terrific commenters and sparked lots of conversation. And not just “AFI / Ramones? AFI all the way!” “You’re queer and your fucking band is queer.”

We have another fantastical tournament on the way later this week (did someone say guitarists??? Besides me just literally typing that word out right now???) but in the meantime, what do people think about The Beatles’ victory, and/or about the ‘07 tournament in general?

13 responses so far

  1. fran Says:

    Do you mean queer as in unusual, strange, different? I’m sure you do.

  2. alex Says:

    think we should do albums next…

  3. Zach Says:

    fran said:

    Do you mean queer as in unusual, strange, different? I’m sure you do.

    No, I think it meant queer as in homosexual.

    Alex- Do you mean albums next year or as the next tournament?

  4. Veoki Says:

    I hate to bring this up again, but you did first, so:

    “I’m also surprised because I was fully expecting (/hoping?) that a fanbase would hijack the site, which the AFIers did, ”

    I thought it was never determined who was behind the hijacking. Either a crazed, moronic AFI fan who thought he wouldn’t get caught (or that just wanted to fuck with the site), or someone playing sabotage.

  5. Dan H. Says:

    By hijacking, I meant sending a bunch of fans to the site and tipping outcomes the other way, like NIN did last year, and without the negative implications inferred by the term ‘hijacking.’

    AFI sites provided us with more than 3000 visitors a week, which is how they won the first couple rounds. The illegal activity only started occurring in the Ray Charles matchup, in which the vote totals were tampered with and dramatically reversed on the last day of voting. The same thing happened in the Ramones round, but we let it slide so as not to appear biased or to piss off the legitimate AFI fans coming to the site. Only in the next round, when Pink Floyd’s vote total against AFI actually WENT DOWN is when we felt obligated to intervene.

    Either way, the whole AFI deal will go down as the most memorable anomaly of 2007. Not the 2007 tournament, either, I just mean of the entire year, internationally.

  6. alex Says:

    Zach said:

    fran said:

    Do you mean queer as in unusual, strange, different? I’m sure you do.

    No, I think it meant queer as in homosexual.

    Alex- Do you mean albums next year or as the next tournament?

    ___________________________________

    I meant next as in the nicholas cage movie

  7. Veoki Says:

    Dan H. said:

    By hijacking, I meant sending a bunch of fans to the site and tipping outcomes the other way, like NIN did last year, and without the negative implications inferred by the term ‘hijacking.’

    AFI sites provided us with more than 3000 visitors a week, which is how they won the first couple rounds. The illegal activity only started occurring in the Ray Charles matchup, in which the vote totals were tampered with and dramatically reversed on the last day of voting. The same thing happened in the Ramones round, but we let it slide so as not to appear biased or to piss off the legitimate AFI fans coming to the site. Only in the next round, when Pink Floyd’s vote total against AFI actually WENT DOWN is when we felt obligated to intervene.

    Either way, the whole AFI deal will go down as the most memorable anomaly of 2007. Not the 2007 tournament, either, I just mean of the entire year, internationally.

    ———————–
    Alright, that makes sense.

  8. nomargparra Says:

    guitar players next , definitely

    or you should do a poll on the home page to see what people want to have a tournament of next , i think thatd be a good idea.?? you could do

    guitar players
    acoustic guitar players?
    drummers
    singers
    albums
    songs
    best band of 60’s/70’s/80’s/90’s/00’s-current

    also could do best guitar players/drummers singers/albums/songs of each generation 60s 70s 80s 90s 00-current…

  9. fran Says:

    Actually after AFi was out of it the rest of the competion was a bit dull.

  10. Veoki Says:

    Oh Fran! Teehee.

  11. nomargparra Says:

    my grandkids grandkids grandkids grandkids grandkids great grandkids will be rocking out to the beatles..can’t say that about too many bands

  12. Sitius Says:

    What do I think about it?

    Uninteresting.

  13. fran Says:

    I need spell check. Competition.

    nomargparra said:

    my grandkids grandkids grandkids grandkids grandkids great grandkids will be rocking out to the beatles..can’t say that about too many bands

    I agree. The Beatles and their various parts still take up the most room on the CD/ record shelf. Plus I sighed over Paul M long before Davey was ever born.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.