Saturday, September 22, 2012

Band Wars 2: The Revenge

Well, it has been four months or so since Band Wars, a deathmatch style game (in my mind) in which bands pitted their new releases against the new releases of other, hopefully inferior, bands until one survivor remained.  Since Band Wars ended, I've been downloading (illegally) an immense amount of music.  The most promising contenders that have released an album recently seem to be:

Beach House, Bloom

Motion Sickness of Time Travel, Motion Sickness of Time Travel

Mount Eerie, Clear Moon

The Walkmen, Heaven

Japandroids, Celebration Rock

Sun Kil Moon, Among the Leaves

Hot Chip, In Our Heads

Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel . . . 

DIIV, Oshin

Twin Shadow, Confess

Dirty Projectors, Swing Lo Magellan

Frank Ocean, Channel Orange

John Maus, A Collection of Rarities

Passion Pit, Gossamer

TNGHT, TNGHT EP

The Antlers, Undersea

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Mature Themes

Divine Fits, A Thing Called Divine Fits

Matthew Dear, Beams

Four Tet, Pink

Wild Nothing, Nocturne

Dan Deacon, America

Animal Collective, Centipede Hz

Bob Mould, Silver Age

Mount Eerie, Ocean Roar

The xx, Coexist

David Byrne and St. Vincent, Love This Giant

Grizzly Bear, Shields

The Sea and Cake, Runner



That's 29 albums.  A couple of issues.  First, Mount Eerie released two albums over that period.  Ought there to be a rule against both albums competing?  I think not.  It could lead to matchup of Mount Eerie against Mount Eerie, which would seem funny, like forcing someone to punch himself.

Second, a single-elimination bracket works best with 16 albums or 32 albums.  29 won't work.  So over the next couple of days, I'll have a couple of decisions to make.  The first Band Wars involved 16 albums.  Should I go for 32 this time around?  And the other big question: Do I even want to bother doing it this time around?

While I think about it, I'll inevitably get to 32 albums by checking the new releases over the coming week.

* * *

I achieved all of my goals yesterday, except for the ants.  I was determined to kill 100 ants.  It's really hot here, ants hate the heat, they'll keep trying to come into my place despite the fact that I have made my apartment a death machine for them.  When I swept and mopped, however, the ants skedaddled.

I finally started writing something.  It is a sluggish process, and it was hard to get started, but once the hour was finished I found that I wanted to go back and continue what I had started.

Back in college, I used to wake up, turn on my computer, and play chess until my head felt hazy from lack of food.  Then I would eat and play chess until, once again, my head felt hazy.  Occasionally, I would do the same thing with short stories I was writing.  It's good to have OCD when I'm doing something productive.  Not so healthy to be OCD when there's beer around, and there's always beer around.

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