OPO TMBG

Fascist pig

ANA NG!

Triangle Man can fuck off

:D

great soref post up there!

TMBG are the Star Trek of music (and I mean that in a good way!)

Long running, huge universe, rabid, detail-oriented fans.

I'd definitely vote in a TMBG poll. I don't think I've heard a single album of theirs post-Factory Showroom. There are a ton of them.

― reggae mike love (polyphonic), Saturday, August 4, 2018 5:53 AM (six days ago)

this is a near-impossible OPO for me and I would welcome a thorough poll including side projects and kids' albums.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, August 4, 2018 9:27 AM (six days ago

A poll would be interesting

― Vinnie, Saturday, August 4, 2018 10:59 AM (six days ago)

HEY FOLKS

If we were to do this, would people want to cut it off at some point, or break it down by eras, or suchlike?

Turns out I had a TMBG poll in the upcoming ballots thread, so I've been trying to prepare an eligibility list. I've just made it to the end of 2001 in the first draft of a long-list (so some re-recordings and remixes to be winnowed out, but more research still to do), and am sitting at over 450 songs, not counting side-projects.

Nearly 200 are just from their insanely productive 2001, but is anyone bar frogbs going to vote for anything later than No!, the first childrens album?


(I'm already seven hours in on this, so cutting it at 1982-2002 feels reasonable - they have another twenty-four albums and EPs of original material after that, plus lots of stuff on compilations and subscriptions and streaming and new songs on live albums and so forth. I can't imagine too many people listening to enough of it during a voting period to be worth the effort when it's up against the better-known material.)

but then I can't vote for this

https://vimeo.com/253025437

(btw hearing TMBG in 2017 try to imitate TMBG in 1984 is a real trip)

I feel like cutting it at 2002 makes some sense for people's sanity but defeats the spirit of an artist poll. There are some real gems scattered in the albums (and non album tracks) past that point - in fact, I think Join Us is a better album than anything after Apollo 18. Yes, you're right that probably none of it would get enough votes to make the final list, but there's at least 3-4 songs that I totally love and would easily make my ballot

I'd say keep it open to everything, but don't kill yourself trying to listen to everything. The TMBG wiki has a song ranking page based on user ratings (http://tmbw.net/wiki/Special:Ratings); I like a lot of the latter-day songs they rank near the top

feel like a lot of artist polls involving huge discographies run into some form of that problem. TMBG poll would be a lot of fun but I have no illusions that the top tracks are gonna be anything other than Birdhouse, Ana Ng, Dr. Warm, Don't Lets Start, etc

anyway tbh I feel like the real dodgy period of TMBG is between Factory Showroom and Mink Car...both those albums are pretty good but in between you got all the eMusic stuff, the magazine soundtrack, all the demos and junk released on TMBG Unlimited, honestly there's not a whole lot there worth voting for. on the other hand everything from The Else on is pretty good and would probably make up half my ballot.

Yep agree that the stuff in between those albums is a waste of time, of what I've heard. I think the Else-Join Us period was excellent - lots of cool songs even past the albums

artist polls should be as open as possible imo, allow votes on anything

yea that Cast Your Pod to the Wind comp has a lot of really good tracks on it

the one I like to rep for is Phone Power, it doesn't really feel like an album but it has a lot of really great tracks on it. I realize I'm kind of alone on that though.

I might as well admit that I am one of those people who feels warmly towards but is highly unlikely to vote for anything after Factory Showroom -- but I too feel we should poll everything, it's impetus to listen to more and to learn from all of your impressions of the later stuff!

particle man is such a good song, remember the tiny toons video for that - dope

Join Us - Nanobots I though was the relatively recent peak, but Glean/Phone Power was a massive plunge back to Mink Car levels of pointlessness. New one miles better.

if you took the best 15-18 dial-a-song tracks from 2015 you'd get a hell of an album though

2015? I don't think i've called it since 1993.

they have Dial-A-Song on the internet now, Morbs.

don't kill yourself trying to listen to everything

I'm not seven hours into listening, I'm seven hours into making the list

anyway tbh I feel like the real dodgy period of TMBG is between Factory Showroom and Mink Car...both those albums are pretty good but in between you got all the eMusic stuff, the magazine soundtrack, all the demos and junk released on TMBG Unlimited

see I was on Unlimited and have super-fond memories of that period and the wealth of stuff in different styles from different eras. whereas I never got to the end of December 2015 in Dial-A-Song, let alone started this year's. Half or more of No! came out on Unlimited!

artist polls should be as open as possible imo, allow votes on anything

i) when the main artist has this much material, some structure can be helpful
ii) an eligibility list is also a helpful roadmap for ppl who tapped out at some point, and a prompt for discussion and campaigning
iii) if I'm gonna tally hundreds of votes I want to know if they're for real songs, not Napster fakes or typos
iv) your massive solo Beatles thread eligibility lists were great on that thread for these reasons!

is anyone bar frogbs going to vote for anything later than

on the other hand everything from The Else on is pretty good and would probably make up half my ballot.

― frogbs, Saturday, August 11, 2018 1:13 AM (one hour ago)

the one I like to rep for is Phone Power, it doesn't really feel like an album but it has a lot of really great tracks on it. I realize I'm kind of alone on that though.

― frogbs, Saturday, August 11, 2018 2:20 AM (twelve minutes ago)

see

but I too feel we should poll everything, it's impetus to listen to more and to learn from all of your impressions of the later stuff!

see what I was thinking was: after the First Twenty Years Poll (or whatever), we could have a 21st Century Giants listening thread. giving me an extra month to put the rest of the list together, and then over the remainder of the year or so, ppl can work through chunks and mini-eras and chat & learn & enthuse and low-key campaign for a future poll

I am now listening to the 9th December 2015 Dial-A-Song. Only four more to go before I've given ONE LISTEN EACH to 52 songs I started listening to in the first week of January 2015!

i) when the main artist has this much material, some structure can be helpful
ii) an eligibility list is also a helpful roadmap for ppl who tapped out at some point, and a prompt for discussion and campaigning
iii) if I'm gonna tally hundreds of votes I want to know if they're for real songs, not Napster fakes or typos
iv) your massive solo Beatles thread eligibility lists were great on that thread for these reasons!

the two biggest polls I've run so far were the P-Funk poll and the solo Beatles polls - in both cases, huge discographies from multiple artists were involved. My Beatles list was riddled with errors, and I didn't even bother making one for P-Funk cuz it really was just too impossible to catch everything. But I think the overriding goal should be not giving people a comprehensive list of things to listen to, but allowing people to vote for whatever they want, because the latter is what produces interesting results. Also good to avoid ppl getting butthurt or refusing to vote because something they love has been disqualified.

just my 2cents

that being said, as the pollrunner the biggest headache (by far) is standardizing songtitles and tallying the votes accordingly, because people *are* going to misspell/be inconsisten with names no matter how hard you try to make them stick to a pre-developed list

now that I think of it the other big headache poll I did was the VU + solo careers poll, because those were *combined* and that was a lot of songs

people still bitched about how I did it, what can ye do

see

look I can't be the only one here that's kept up with them. they just don't want to admit it!

I do think the idea of splitting their career in two around say Mink Car is interesting. even though ppl know and like the earlier stuff better I could probably write down the Top 10 in an envelope right now and get it mostly right.

see I was on Unlimited and have super-fond memories of that period and the wealth of stuff in different styles from different eras. whereas I never got to the end of December 2015 in Dial-A-Song, let alone started this year's.

I get that, I mean I was 14 when the Unlimited stuff came out and I owned like a dozen CDs total, compared to now where my tastes have changed a lot and I have access to the entire history of recorded music. but the 2015/2018 stuff is way better than Unlimited

Shakey:

But I think the overriding goal should be not giving people a comprehensive list of things to listen to,

it's not so much this

but allowing people to vote for whatever they want, because the latter is what produces interesting results.

sure but when even the two people who want to vote for things from that era agree that none of them will rank, the results aren't likely to be (made any more) interesting! and a latter-era listening thread seems like a better way for more of us to actually engage with that stuff. and might get as many as five or six people voting in a further poll, not two

I had at least three physical TMBG CDs from the '00s, and can't name & hum a single song from any of them. Can't Keep Johnny Down's chorus I do remember from the video though.

that being said, as the pollrunner the biggest headache (by far) is standardizing songtitles and tallying the votes accordingly

yeah this is the thing

frog:

I do think the idea of splitting their career in two around say Mink Car is interesting. even though ppl know and like the earlier stuff better I could probably write down the Top 10 in an envelope right now and get it mostly right.

yeah, the top 30 is likely to include everything off the first three albums before the fun really starts.

I was thinking No! as the cutoff rather than Mink Car because
a) most of the songs on the two are from the same writing & recording period anyway
b) the success of No! really kicks off a different phase in their career, with major-label kids albums as the day job that Hollywood had been in the previous one, while being even more prolific running their own indie label for "grown-up" songs.

Dial-A-Song 21st December 2015: man, I Love You for Psychological Reasons is just the melody of Spiralling Shape but boreified by about 36%

Please tell me your stand out tracks from Glean and Phone Power. I've listened to them plenty times but generally found the experience to be bland and forgettable, with a couple of songs (Underwater Woman, Let Me Tell You About My Operation) veering towards painful self-parody. The quality of I Like Fun suggests they might have just spread themselves to thin during 2015, though.

from Glean:

Erase, Music Jail, Unpronounceable, All the Lazy Boyfriends, I'm a Coward, Aaa

Phone Power:

Apophenia, ECNALUMBA, Impossibly New, I'll Be Haunting You, Shape Shifter

To poll TMBG you'd need to do a "when did you get off the bus?" poll first then do the big poll just for everything that includes maybe 75% of respondents.

The eligibility part is not hard with this band - the wiki I linked is pretty meticulous about cataloging the songs

Ballot poll OPEN: Hope That I Get Polled Before I Die: THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS 1982-2002 POLL - Voting, Campaigning, Discussing

birdhouse in your soul. everything else by them can be deleted.