Tori Amos beat up on Echo & the Bunnymen 78-22
Tom Waits crushed the Pretenders 74-22
This Mortal Coil bounced Yaz(oo) 51-31
Indigo Girls sent Pavement home 71-26
Analysis: From the beginning these games weren't close, which perhaps accounts for some of the lower overall scoring. None of these results came as a surprise, though we did think that The Pretenders would have stayed in the game longer than they did. The committee was sad to see Yaz go, leaving only New Order, who plays today, and Erasure, who plays on Saturday from the synth-pop (sort of) conference. This Mortal Coil was a real hard matchup, and if Yaz had had a better draw they might have gone much deeper. Instead Alison Moyet will be watching the games online, we can only assume. Vince Clarke, being half of Erasure, is still playing (against Joy Division on Saturday), but we suspect not for long.
We're most interested in the relatively low score of the Yaz/TMC game. Do those low numbers suggest, as one of the wine-drunk commenters noted, that neither of those songs are likely to contend against Indigo Girls in the second round? Or is it that the songs were so sad people couldn't bear to vote?
As to where this leads us: Tori Amos will meet Swans in the second round in an emotional matchup. Tom Waits takes on The Cure in an apparent mismatch. And Indigo Girls will play This Mortal Coil.
Today we've got one of the great sad bands, Magnetic Fields, against a probably outmatched The Church, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds against what might be a very underseeded Smashing Pumpkins, New Order taking on Lilith Fair mastermind and ASPCA champ Sarah McLachlan, and a tricky matchup between Bjork and Jeff Buckley.
I think folks might not be voting when they don't know the songs particularly well and don't feel like they have a horse in the race. That's the most optimistic explanation of voting disparity. The more cynical one has to do with the discovery I made by accident on day one (which doesn't even require making a comment, it turns out).
ReplyDeleteI think there are a number of factors that account for it: you're definitely right that people turn out more for Radiohead or whatever than Yaz. One is also the one you mention—which we could solve, but at the expense of ease of voting, so I think it's probably not quite worth it at this point. Another is that it's understandable that not everyone is going to be TOTALLY ENGAGED all the time in this thing, which is also fine (and which certainly mirrors my interest in the basketball tourney: sometimes I get excited but I'm not on it every day...). And on some days, a band or fanbase might mobilize more people to vote (like if a band's twitter feed picks it up, that can have a huge effect, but that might only last for that game or the day's games). Plus there are a lot of games to sort through on the first few rounds here. We're not complaining! But I do think that the turnout doesn't bode very well for This Mortal Coil, even as I don't know that many who care about TMC or Song of the Siren, but those who do seem to be SUPER passionate about that song. And you're also not as likely to vote if you see the game's not close, right?
ReplyDeleteBut you can't see that the game's not close until you vote. I think seeing it close (I could tie up the game I just voted on if I voted a second time) after one votes might incentivize the other thing. I mean, I'm enjoying myself even if I am a little skeptical (ok, I'm a lot skeptical) about the democracy at work.
ReplyDeleteBut what's a march tournament without questions about the refs?
You actually can: just hit "results" instead of "vote" and it brings that up. Agreed that it would be nice to have live scores, but that is presently beyond the reach of this tournament, though we are looking into what it would take to have some kind of live score ticker. (Also you may note that the voting should now not allow you to vote multiple times, though we haven't gone apeshit with the security on it so the crafty hacker can, I'm sure, find a way around that should she care; there is, as always a tradeoff between security and ease of use (or freeeeeedom).)
ReplyDeleteThe bubbles came back up when I reloaded the page but I didn't try it (even with the one I'm most interested separated by a single vote). Freedom ain't free, man.
ReplyDelete