If they do, it's got to be Castaways and Picaresque. Her Majesty's solid, but also solidly third-place.

Electric Version over Mass Romantic ?? I must respectfully disagree. (Haven't listened to Twin Cinema enough yet to offer a strong opinion vs. the other two, but so far I reeeeaaaallllly like it.)

Electric Version over Mass Romantic ?? I must respectfully disagree. (Haven't listened to Twin Cinema enough yet to offer a strong opinion vs. the other two, but so far I reeeeaaaallllly like it.)

So, do they get two albums? Twin Cinema will more than likely be in my Top 5 for the year, so it should probably go, too.

How many albums in the brackets? 64? If so, should we limit them to 2/artist?

I'd say 8 or 16 in the bracket. And I stand strongly by Her Majesty or Picaresque over Castaways & Cutouts AND by Electric Version over Mass Romantic, but y'know, that's kinda the point of the match.

So, how about 2 Decemberists & 2 New Pornographers?

16 is a really small number, especially if 1/4 of the slots are going to two bands.

Pool play could work, but then we're overthinking and overworking. Why not just a Decemberists qualifying bracket?

1. Castaways vs. The Tain
2. Her Majesty vs. Picaresque

3. Winner of 1 and 2 -> #1 seed in main event

Like I said, just with the Northwest you could come up with an eight-team bracket.

Someone has gone through and transcribed playlists from old 120 Minutes episodes from 1986 to 1995: [link]

I'm looking at the '88-'91 lists, back when I watched it, not terribly religiously, but I had friends who taped it and watched it later. It was our lifeline to the non-hair-metal music in high school.

Then it hit me that the 88-89 shows are as old now as I was when I watched them.

You know, I realized that most of my best of the half decade are local.

Also, I'd totally choose Mass Romantic over Electric Version.

Elijah Wood's iTunes Playlist:

One Blood (Single) - Terence Jay
Even Now We Are Preparing to Love You - Puny Human
King - Fireball Ministry
Summer's Gone - Aberfeldy
If You Want Me to Stay - Sly & The Family Stone
Throw Me Away - James Chance
Damaged Goods - Gang Of Four
Mr. Sellack - The Roches
Tom Cat (Electric Mud) - Muddy Waters
When You Were Mine - Prince
God Only Knows - The Beach Boys
Fearless - Pink Floyd
Alberto Balsalm - Aphex Twin
Space Oddity - The Langley Schools Music Project
But Not for Me - Chet Baker
Baro Foro - Gogol Bordello

He says the Sly song is his favorite.

There's a whole website called "The Shins Will Change Your Life" devoted to rock critic overreaches and bloviation. Painful, yet amusing.

And don't believe the hype re JK Toole -- he was apparently a lot more depressive than the standard romantic myth of his life would have you believe even before the book didn't find a publisher. (It's considered a great document of the woefully understudied NO dialect as well, by the way.)

Alongside the Perfect Pop category is the collector favorite Disturbing Pop. Glossy pop production wrapped tenderly around an utterly disturbing lyric. Perhaps the most disturbing song from the Girl Group era is the one described below. Note the inspiration was no less than Little Eva ("The Locomotion") herself.

*****

“He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)” was written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, after their live-in babysitter Eva Boyd (19-year-old singer Little Eva) returned from a weekend away with her boyfriend, covered in bruises. The boyfriend seemed to have spent the entire weekend hitting the girl but, when questioned about it, the girl didn’t bat an eyelid. He hit her because he loved her. And, in the song, because she deserved it.It was a brutal song, as any attempt to justify such violence must be, and Spector’s arrangement only amplified its savagery, framing Barbara Alston’s lone vocal amid a sea of caustic strings and funereal drums, while the backing vocals almost trilled their own belief that the boy had done nothing wrong. In more ironic hands (and a more understanding age), “He Hit Me” might have passed at least as satire. But Spector showed no sign of appreciating that, nor did he feel any need to. No less than the song’s writers, he was not preaching, he was merely documenting.Unfortunately, very few people agreed with him. While radio play was initially encouraging, the complaints quickly began pouring in and, with the general public itself apparently preparing to rise up in protest against the record, igniting one of those periodic feeding frenzies to which society is so oddly prone, Spector pulled the single, ironically just as it prepared to enter the chart. Controversy can encourage sales, after all, as well as cripple them. - by Dave Thompson