Summer Madness: PA's Battle of the Albums

yeah.. a fear we all had.  No one really thinks it will have the same level as participation as the classics... I'll just be happy if a few take advantage of the opportunity to check out and perhaps discover some great modern stuff.

Do that and the time invested in this will be worth it in my eyes.

It would be nice if some of you who are still on Facebook (Ian and HT, I am looking at you) could spread the word about this poll. I am sure that Leonardo of Moonjune and Marcello of AltrOck (to mention but two people) would be happy of the publicity.

Meltdowner wrote: I only know 10 albums from the modern polls That's a lot of albums to listen in one week

just have fun with it!!  I'm basing further listens on the samples that grab me. The one North Sea Orchestra bit so hard I had to immediately order the album.

I think I may have 2/3 of the albums in the modern poll, it's making for some really tough choices for me.

a few general thoughts on the classic polls..

I think we made the right decision to 'level' the playing field by eliminating the best from the best.. perhaps fanboys wanted them... the rest of us wanted to see interesting albums get some love and exposure and stick around long enough to see them get it rather than get ground under the wheels to meeting in the last rounds where we would simply have the 1000th PA's installment of CTTE v. SEbtP v. a Floyd album v. a mediocre and completely overrated attempt by Dull to be arty and thought provoking...

another point.. the draw was completely random.. the original list of 128 was bracketized by a random number generator with no 'do overs'  and it is really interesting how it really broke down a predominently English top.. and 'foreign' bottom half. That said.. it look to be a good showing for the Italians.. all but one album advanced in the top half and most of theirs are in the bottom half including albums by 4 of of the big 6 of Italian prog.  Throw in that most of the true German classics are in the bottom along with the French..as well as the VERY underrated late 70's Spanish albums and you have a really nice dicotomy in brackets. Only one really important heavy weight English group/album is in the bottom .. that would be G.G/Octopus and is still  likely the one to finally emerge from the bottom. but still.. a lot of great albums down in the bottom section for it to go through.

I like how the tiebreakers worked...  completely surprised me on the first tiebreaker.. I guessed wrong on both. Figured Eros would have had the higher percentage of 4 and 5 star reviews and even more surprised that Triumvirat did over Area.   I do think the quick draw 10 vote 2nd place tiebreaker worked well.  With all the polls we are doing..  we didn't need to draw it out that much longer. I thought my original idea of 5 was too quick... to 10 seemed to work well.. quick but not too quick to let people not immeidately on line at the time have a chance to vote.

One last thought.. going to the modern section. VERY pleased at the forum for engaging the modern polls as they have.  We didn't expect they would have anywhere near the same level of interest.. or especially import as natural the classic album polls might have but still really happy to see people getting into it.. and especially taking to heart the iimplied notion of it.  No one knows all the albums.. few know most.   vote as you wish.. but take the opportunity to perhaps check out some albums you might not know or have explored.. or even heard of.


Edited by micky - June 20 2015 at 21:51

  he was my discovery of the classics.. one of the very few I don't have.. and even fewer that I hadn't really heard.  I did quite enjoy the album.  Oh well.

The thing is, both lists were submitted to the collabs' attention, but very few people spoke up and recommended albums. In fact, I agree that there are some glaring omissions, and a few albums whose inclusion is rather perplexing (at least IMHO). However, nothing will stop us from doing this once again in the future with other albums.

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


Edited by micky - June 22 2015 at 18:39