Bill:
>this is now about someone posting for their own ego. It's a clear "look at
>me I'm important and can stir things up and be the focus of your list".

Not at all. Actually, I basically consider myself a lurker. I stick 
with the more passive digest format, and I rarely start threads -- 
usually, I just skim what's out there and add a brief two cents. It's 
just that the insecurity and hyperdefensiveness are so great that 
even my two-liners can cause an uproar. With a pretty high percentage 
of these arguments, I'm amazed that my comments provoked such grief. 
"I saw David in Amoeba." "Music's best drummers aren't confined to 
power pop." "Can you Bcc: your direct replies?" "Here's a different 
album poll, which is popcentric yet not IPOcentric." "CoF has a plus 
over the Audities poll because it includes the individual lists." 
"Here's 28 pop albums I liked a lot." Hardly volatile. Almost common 
sense, in some cases. Yet every one of these quickies drew bitter 
replies. Oh, and to the guy who hoped to jab me for being a 
non-musician, try a Google search for the words "i can't play a 
single note on anything."

>even when Eb does some thought through response, the
>underlying theme is still not what this list has been about since 
>its inception.

Now you're at the heart of the matter. It doesn't matter so much if 
my responses are "thought through" -- what matters more is that they 
violate groupthink and challenge some of the list's fundamental 
assumptions. I receive too much positive, intelligent feedback to 
agree that I'm just some trolling, thickheaded canker sore.

On-topic FYI: Jason Falkner played with Beck on SNL last night.

Incidentally, I've recently been checking out some more mp3s from 
"Audities faves." Strikeouts on almost all of them, but I'll probably 
buy a Model Rockets disc sometime. However, I don't regard this as 
any big surprise, because I've enjoyed the Pop Llama scene for years. 
Not so much of an Audities thing for me. I've already said that I 
loved the last Minus 5 disc, and this sounds awfully similar. I also 
thought two songs by the Lackloves were much better than the norm and 
possibly worth investigating, but then a third one was a generic 
pastiche o' psychedelic wiggle which seriously discouraged me.