ILM Ballot Polls for 2014 and beyond -- order, timing, "I would have voted if I'd known about it," etc

I still think there should be a Leonard Cohen poll.

Also maybe a kylie poll?

I still think there should be a Leonard Cohen poll.

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Tuesday, March 25, 2014

RUN IT!

Next up: Bob Dylan or Classic Rock?

The choice of Judas.

It occurred to me a few days ago that these ballot polls are like book clubs, but with an artist discog instead of Infinite Jest or Oprah's book of the month or whatever.

Anyway, some dude and tipsy -- what's the verdict, or do I chase down C.Grisso to do Sleater-Kinney?

Oh yeah, that's really good. It's to my regret that I've been too busy lately to get stuck into the most recent voting threads, but the work done there is ilx's best work imo.

Checking in. I could get the S-K poll started, but I'm almost at the tailend of one of my biggest workloads of the year, so it would have to be sometime next week (say, most likely Tuesday or Wednesday). That would probably work out okay with the end of the Dan poll, and ensures we get it done before Corin drops another solo lp (she's due for one).

This is down the road, but Yo La Tengo, which mookieproof was going to help me with, looks like it will happen sometime between next September and June. I can only do these during the summer, so I'll be asking for a handful of people to jump ahead.

So do we not have a live poll thread anymore that says when they are up and running?

Things are calming down for me work-wise that I can actually imagine kicking off Classic sometime this month, but if Dylan gets started before I do I will give it a lil breathing room. Getting really excited about all the ideas I have planned for CR though.

NTI, that's one of this thread's functions. This one replaced the original "order and timing" thread on 1/1.

As long as somebody gets going early next week when Steely Dan results are winding up, I'll be happy. I should have asked Tipsy about the Dylan poll at the Knoxville FAP on Saturday.

Polled At Last: STEELY DAN - ILM Artist poll #50

I can kick off Dylan this weekend, but tbh I'd be happy to wait a few weeks -- so if either the Classick or S-K want to fire up, that's fine by me.

I could do S-K next week.

Sorry to be anal about this, but me and Sleater-Kinney are next, yes?

Yeah, I think that's the best route. SD and TM both seem to want more time to set up. Steely Dan is finishing today I believe, so you could start today or wait until tomorrow.

OK. I could get it up late Monday or sometime Tuesday.

Question for my voters: I had originally planned to do a main tracks poll focusing on the Sleater-Kinney catalog plus the related works of Brownstein & Tucker (i.e. Excuse 17, Heavens To Betsy, Wild Flag, Corin Tucker Band etc.). However, looking at recent polls like the VU and especially the Ferry near-shutout on the Roxy rollout, would you folks prefer the non-SK stuff as a side poll instead?

yeah that might be better. happy for the dylan delay tbh, i can throw an s-k ballot together super quick but dylan one would take awhile.

god bless you for not continuing this "oh just throw the solo stuff in too" travesty of a mockery of a sham

^^^

would you folks prefer the non-SK stuff as a side poll instead?

It's kind of hard me to imagine that anything outside of the main SK canon will crack the top whatever, though it'd be interesting to see if the Spells or Cadallaca stack up.

Yeah, the Spells record is neat, and I'd sorta dig being able to vote for it in something, but no way is it going to take up slots in my SK ballot.

One more vote for side poll.

Noted! I'm working up some stuff now, should have the poll up later today!

Sleater-Kinney rules! :D

This is not specific to Sleater-Kinney, but I always figure a mixed poll is going to take care of itself. If you open up a band's poll to solo/side stuff, and the voters feel there's stuff there that's good enough to place, then they'll vote for it. If they don't, they won't. I plan to open up Yo La Tengo if anyone wants to vote for a Dump song, but I know that probably only one would have even a chance. No big deal.

Well, my original reasoning in including the non-SK stuff in the main SK poll was to augment the amount of votable tracks. The band's songbook is about 90 songs, and that number about doubles when you figure in all the earlier, side project, and solo work. The problem, as brought up by Dr. Casino upthread and illustrated in action by the Roxy Music poll, is that when you have a main body of work as a poll focus, that body of work will dominate over whatever else you include with it. Looking at the Roxy poll, and my disappointment at the lack of exposure to (new to me) Ferry solo tracks during the rollout, has led me to rethink how I'll run my poll.

Yes, it only works in one direction. (In one direction, not with One Direction.) If you want to poll solo stuff by Velvet Underground or Roxy Music or whoever people--even though I liked the combined Velvets poll--you can't include the band, because the band will dominate. But if you're polling the Velvet Underground or Roxy Music, I think it's fine to open it up to solo stuff. The solo material will probably place a few songs at best, and only if people actually choose to vote for them (they may not as a matter of philosophy). But the main poll won't be compromised--at least I don't think it will.

i think w/ velvets it worked solely cuz velvets catalog is so small and solo catalog so large and the gap in popularity and exposure wasn't insanely huge. plus the ballot was 50 tracks so you could easily do a top twenty vu and then have a top ten reed, cale, nico or however you wanted to break it down. even there shakey split the results so who knows what it would've looked like combined.

i thought it was weird that it was all voted for on one ballot and then split into different countdowns. prefer a solo track subpoll as a distinct thing all the way, like w/ Steely Dan.

in the past i might've advocated for polling everything include side projects for some bands, but more and more subpolls seem like the way to go. especially since it's hard even for a song or two from after the act's 'classic era' to place in the countdown, what hope do songs from solo albums have.

Thanks C G/M for stepping up to do SK. For planning purposes -- and to give everyone ample warning! -- I will plan to start the Dylan nominate/discuss thread immediately after SK wraps. UNLESS Some Dude wants to do the classic rock one then. Or that one could probably run alongside Dylan, since they're different enough, as long as the result rollouts were staggered.

So, whatever people want to do is OK by me. Just saying, start thinking about Dylan. It may be a slow train, but it's coming.

Can we vote for the Traveling Wilburys? The Masked Marauders? National Lampoon? (Not a serious question.)

Paul Simon was also an interesting test for this - huge catalog, arguably equally famous solo and band, one ballot, one rollout. I thought it produced an inarguably excellent top-tier Simon tracklist - maybe not as many funky surprises as you'd get if the ballot was only solo stuff - but a totally reasonable mixtape or 'best of' that I've handed off to people unfamiliar with Simon. And the rollout was super fun, so there's no point wondering if it would have been more 'interesting' if it was only solo. And if we'd had to produce two separate ballots, it's possible I might not have gotten around to voting (though in this case I doubt it).

(not THAT huge of a catalog mind you - he's not Dylan - but distinct from VU or the Police or somebody where winnowing it down to twenty songs on a ballot isn't quite so daunting.)

yeah Paul with and without Art is a rare example where 2 distinct acts/eras are remotely equivalent. Even The Police/Sting, which are pretty well matched commercially, would come out really lopsided in an ilx poll.

i thought it was weird that it was all voted for on one ballot and then split into different countdowns.

had to subvert popular will somehow

Lou woulda been proud, boy

since it's hard even for a song or two from after the act's 'classic era' to place in the countdown, what hope do songs from solo albums have.

No hope if they're not liked enough--I just don't see that as a problem. Unless you feel that once you open up a poll to solo stuff, it follows that solo stuff must therefore place. Don't mean to harp on this. I just see it as a non-problem that resolves itself.

Have we hit peak sub poll burnout yet? In the Pink Floyd poll, I only received two ballots for the non-Syd solo sub poll.

How big is the non-SK catalog? And are we going to count Lora M's band, or are we keeping it to Corin/Carrie/Janet? I might scrape together 10 songs from:

Heavens to Betsy
Excuse 17
Quasi
Cadallaca
The Spells
The Corin Tucker Band
Wild Flag

And hah we might as well count anything from the self-titled debut as non-SK.

since it's hard even for a song or two from after the act's 'classic era' to place in the countdown, what hope do songs from solo albums have.

No hope if they're not liked enough--I just don't see that as a problem. Unless you feel that once you open up a poll to solo stuff, it follows that solo stuff must therefore place. Don't mean to harp on this. I just see it as a non-problem that resolves itself.

― clemenza, Monday, April 7, 2014 7:43 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not a 'problem,' it's just a matter of, like, it was fun to count down the top ten Walter Becker/Donald Fagen solo tracks as an appetizer for the Steely Dan poll, but if it'd all been thrown in the same pot, there would've been at most maybe one Fagen track in the list. so by putting the solo stuff on an equal playing field, you're actually marginalizing it further instead of giving it its own space to evaluate and enjoy it.

xpost to Leee: I'll include Janet and Lora's stuff in the solo/side poll as well (just checked, Lora's band ninetynine has done EIGHT albums).

don't think quasi really should be in there

Have we hit peak sub poll burnout yet? In the Pink Floyd poll, I only received two ballots for the non-Syd solo sub poll.

i don't think so there were only a few ballots for the Steely Dan solo stuff but i got enough to make it interesting. plus the albums subpoll got 40 ballots for it, which is a huge number.

what abt portlandia xpost

like bee ok would admit to any sort of poll burnout

let's do loose fur next

I usually don't vote in any of the side polls unless I know the discography backwards and frontwards. Lately, the polls have been learning expeditions for me (Roxy, Dan). If there's a Dylan albums side-poll I'll definitely vote in that. I think the only Eno side poll is going to be Fave Production Job unless there's a clamor for Albums.