For this year's pop-culture bracket, we decided to tackle the world of music. But with only 64 slots, plenty of acts were left out.
The Clash? Didn't make it.
Neither did The Allman Brothers, Wilson Pickett or Motley Crue (a personal favorite of mine).
What did we get wrong? What did we do right? Let us know below, and don't forget to fill out the bracket. The player who picks closest to the consensus will win something fun.
MattEhlers, a more fitting penance would be attending a Village People reunion while loaded.
The NCAA brackets aren't all that scientific either. The pairings are subjective.
Music Madness is just for fun -- however, what happened to David Bowie and Marvin Gaye? Glaring omissions!
Pink Floyd should be a top seed and you don't even have them in the tournament.
Did you forget about the Wall, Wish You Were Here and Dark Side of the Moon, not to mention many other great albums?
Gkaburch,
I wasn't complaining about the initial pairings, I was complaining about the overall selection of musical groups in competition. In the NCAA tournament, no matter what you may think of the teams and their pairings, at least they are all college basketball teams! The music chart is like asking us to choose which is better... the Duke men's hoops team, the Chicago Bears, the New York Yankees, or the Carolina Hurricanes. They are all sports teams, right?
If you are going to compare The Beatles, The Who, and The Rolling Stones, aren't you kind of obligated to ask about The Kinks, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Queen? Maybe throw in Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, KISS, or your favorite other hard-rocking guitar bands. Fine. But how do you make a determination as to whether these groups are "better" than a solo R&B singer like Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross, Otis Redding, etc? It's apples to oranges.
Not that any of this matters a whit, of course. I'm not delusional... The newspaper is in the business of selling soap. If they can show more participation and feedback numbers, they can charge higher rates for advertising and capture more sponsors. After all, we all know they don't have the funds to support news reporters, local staffs, or print as many sections as they used to. But there is always space left for a big full-color spread on a made-up, meaningless game.
Wow, I'm feeling cynical and bitter this morning! Gotta get some more sleep. Enjoy the bracket and have fun, everyone. I'll try to lighten up.
No Zeppelin voids it right there. How about this: Page, Clapton (Cream anyone?), Hendrix, Townshend, etc all got their licks and covered BLUES players. Where is Robert Johnson, Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, Hounddog Taylor?
Even Donnie Lonigan could take a Timberlake with one guitar hand.
Heck, Bobby Parker for "Watch Your Step" which Lennon claimed spawned no less that 5 Beatle number ones ought to at least get a nod.
90% of those R&Bers can't rock like "Watch Your Step" does. Learn some music history bro.
Where is Big Momma Thorntan? The original "Hound Dog" singer? Blige my @#$%
Okay, first on what you got right.....
Post-1980's rock has some pretty good selections, although AC/DC is really 70's (Bonn Scott, anyone?) as was ZZ Top. Still, you have U2, Police, Metallica, Nirvana, R.E.M. so, those are fairly good choices so you get decent marks for those entries.
On the R&B side.... decent selections, but no Marvin Gaye.."What's going on?" with that? By the way, whats the deal with 'rock' matched up with R&B? You could have broadened the Rock to have hard rock and prog rock or some other categories pitted against one another rather than R&B.
Okay, now on to what you really botched... and I mean really badly!
The category of pre-80's rock.... are you serious? Were any of your writers even around in the 70's? They must not have been... no way they could have missed so badly...
glaring ommission = Queen
stunning ommission = Pink Floyd
"invalidated,no credibility, a complete joke" ommission = Led Zeppelin
Ever heard of a song called 'Stairway to Heaven'? ...just wondering.. and thats not even their best...try 'Kashmir' on for size. Not to mentione their immense influence on all of music (second to the Beatles?)
Oh, where is Aerosmith too? at least you got the Beateles and Stones...
My suggestion is that you have a separate 'tournament' for rock, R&B, hip hop, country, etc. so you can include all the groups relevant to those respective genres. That way you won't leave out such obvious choices as Zep, et. al.
No important pre-1980 artist listing is complete without Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd!!
Yep, you are right on this one, they are the moguls of rock music and they should be considered in very rock list. As a note of novelty young rock artists deserve a good reservation on that list too. I recently got a Paramore cd and it really got my attention, those kids have a lot to give.
My heartfelt apologies for leaving off Led Zeppelin. The selection committee suffered a gigantic brain fart. As the previous poster pointed out, it was a terrible omission.
As penance, the entire selection committee with attend a Zeppelin laser show at the planetarium. Sober.
Silly, silly, silly
The basketball bracket works because all the contestants are playing the same game. The winner of each contest is the one who scores more points than the other. This music bracket is fundamentally meaningless because the contestants are playing different games. Which is "better"... Aretha Franklin or Talking Heads? Rolling Stones or Luther Vandross? They aren't remotely comparable. What is my ranking criteria... Whether I happen to like a bunch of their songs? Whether there is one particular song I really like? Their influence on the music business and other artists? Or just the total number of records sold?
Oh well... As they say in politics: If you can't find someone to vote for, you can almost always find someone to vote against. It was fun knocking off my choices for overrated and undertalented acts.
Come to think of it, you messed up the validity of the results by making a contest out of awarding something to the entrant closest to the general consensus. If I'm trying to win a prize, I choose artists I think more people will vote for instead of artists who are less popular but more deserving in my own mind.