Eb: > Under 700, but never mind. 1100 invited to contribute, but duh. > So you're tossing in a pointless Nickelback swipe now. Talk about > arbitrary. 1) Nickelback didn't even release an album this year. 2) > Even in 2001, I see that their album was voted for by just two > critics out of 600+. So, gosh, what a potent broadside you have just > launched at the critical community. Who's launching broadsides? You make comments, I clarify to you. You make further comments, I try to clarify further. I admit that I don't find myself agreeing with all the (###) critics and you turn that into a volley against the (gulp!) "critical community". Your logic is as thin as a spent Fizzie. And as far as editorializing, I have other avenues for any critical broadsides I wish to launch. You seem to think that because my tastes don't align with the status quo that (1) I'm wrong and/or (2) that bothers me. I also wonder where you get this notion that I'm jealous of "the critical community". I'm not the one who gets upset when their opinions aren't lauded or their favorite albums aren't championed by a stampede of replies. To answer your nitpick - I used Nickleback as an example of what I consider a commercially popular rock band with little substance. Substitute Creed, System Of A Down, or any number of tuneless headbangers into the mix. (However, I liked QOTSA. I was disappointed in the Foo Fighters, though). The point was that someone who thought are making the best records of the year is probably not the person who's list is used as a shopping guide. And yes, Eb, I'm aware that there is a huge gaggle of people who dismiss my list for the same reason - we've got little in common. And that's just fine with me - I don't know what is so hard to understand about that. I'm not going to defend or critique the Audities, CoF, P&J, Spin, Kerrang!, Mojo, Q, Alternative Press or The Grammys. Each has its own set of rules (or in the case of CoF, a lack thereof), each blends together people who spend the majority of their time (don't want to have you misinterpret "wallow" again) listening to a certain spectrum of music, and as these groups widen so will the diversity of the picks. For example, I haven't heard Interpol's CD yet, and there it is atop a couple of collective lists. So...I'll give it a try. That's the sum total of the significance of any of these lists to me (and my interpretation of the influence that my lists or reviews might have on someone else) - "sounds interesting...I'll check that out". Yet another statement that you seem to have trouble accepting, and I don't know why. I don't know if you write anything - Hell, I don't know the first thing about you, and that's part of the issue - but maybe you have different intentions behind your efforts than I do. I really hope your original point for all of this wasn't that the Village Voice Poll is cool and representative of a wide bandwidth of popular culture and the Audities poll is skewed towards an insular pop community that holds a certain list of releases in disproportionate high regard. > I haven't talked about anything *but* music. It's others who would > rather talk about breakfast cereals, third basemen and childhood > hard-ons. Every group/party/carpool goes off on a goofy tangent every once in a while. Personally it had no value for me, but so what? Switch from digest to individual messages before you bail out and you can sort and delete better. But my challenge to you was to drop in a live show review, post a link to an interesting band's MP3 site, share something of substance besides your irritation that this list isn't exactly what you had hoped and dreamed it would be. It ebbs and flows, it gets friendly and it gets snotty, and yes, sometimes there's far too little music chat going on. No one put a gun to your head and made you come here, and no one is blocking the door if you're not happy. Over the long term, things balance out. > Eb, once again asking for CC:/BCC:s in these post-impacted times, so > he doesn't have to rummage through the web archive Yeah, let's make life easy for you. :) Seriously, try the single-message thing, it's a lot easier to whittle down to what you want to talk about. If you're referring to this thread in particular, well, maybe you should have taken your torch to me privately instead of launching on the list and we could have saved everyone the bandwidth. If you want to park the mud buckets and have a spirited exchange about music 1:1, you're welcome to start anytime. b