Before I get POLLED: the WHO voting and nominations thread (ilm artist poll #25: deadline Friday, September 7)

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ku1edxF3Pr1qa770po1_500.jpg

Welcome to the poll, I guess you all know why you're here.
My name is Tarfumes, and I hope the rules are clear.
If you want to vote, you've got to send an e-mail.
Pick out your favorites, put them in order, you know where to put your votes.

Pick your 20 favorites, which will be scored like so:
1:40, 2:36, 3:33, 4:30, 5:28, 6:26, 7:25, 8:24, 9:23, 10:22, 11:21, 12:20, 13:19, 14:18, 15:17, 16:16, 17:15, 18:14, 19:13, 20:12.

Anything credited to the Who, or the High Numbers, is eligible (including solo Pete songs on Who albums).

If you're voting for a live version, please specify; enough votes may warrant a separate entry. Otherwise, results will be combined.

BONUS ROUND!
Your five favorite Who albums! Everything's eligible! Live, studio, soundtrack, bootleg, or compilation!

ANOTHER BONUS ROUND!
Your 5 least-favorite Who songs! Does "There's A Doctor" make you ill? Is "Eminence Front" just a put-on?

Send your ballot to tarfumes at g mail dot com.

Deadline is 11:59pm, September 7 (US east coast time)

Yayyy!

Least-favorite is a good side poll for this band.

This is the best discography I could find (there are others, but they really get into the weeds with alternate mixes etc.)

I'm curious to see what will be this poll's version of Sway, ie a relatively obscure song overwhelmingly beloved by ILM.

Possibly I Can't Reach You, or maybe Christmas.

http://www.songfacts.com/artist-the_who.php

List of songs by The Who

Quite a lot missing off that page, tho

This one is better, it has the 'various artists' tracks off the Polydor "Quadrophenia" film soundtrack though.

http://www.song-list.net/thewho/songs

Still a few things missing (no "Dogs," for one).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkEpopoiqtw

also...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U9uGSGUliM

Just want to remind everyone to be sure to give "Heaven and Hell" a fair shake in this one...

Oh, I forgot "Dogs", but it may not have made my top 20 anyway.

Ballot Sent!

Similar to the Rolling Stones, I'm guessing the cut-off point will break voters into four (maybe) five distinct groups. Some, like me, will stop with Who's Next; some will stop with Quadrophenia. Some will go farther. Some may even stop before Tommy.

Tarfumes, I love that Moony photo <3

Too bad we're not all in one big office where this would be easy to do, or I'd start a $1 pool for picking the position of the highest-placing post-Moon track. Closest gets the dough, earliest entry as tiebreaker.

It would probably be You Better You Bet or Eminence Front. Although the correct answer is Mike Post Theme.

If you've never heard that, do yourself a favor and check it out. You will be in for a treat.

"Eminence Front" of course, no?

that song is so dope

I dunno...Eminence is probably going to end up on my worst. Something about that song, I just haaate it

Yeah but I'm talking about picking its position in the final voting, not which song.

It would probably be You Better You Bet or Eminence Front. Although the correct answer is Mike Post Theme.

Indeed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6Zmh-KlYZo

Tarfumes, I love that Moony photo <3

I was looking through tons of photos thinking, which one best illustrates what set the Who apart from, say, Zeppelin or the Stones? And there it was.

my knowledge of their catalog - which is a total mess, of course - drops steeply after the mid-70s, after which I pretty much only know the hits. this will be an interesting poll tho

Yeah I don't know much after Quadrophenia

weird how few albums they actually put out, compared to their contemporaries

The Who By Numbers is great (I love it almost as much as Quadrophenia), and Who Are You has its moments. There are a total of five decent songs among the two 80s records, but Endless Wire is way better than anyone had any right to expect.

I'm def going to dig into Who By Numbers and Who Are You.

Underrated Ox Classics I Have Loved:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axk1NMYq76E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p0m2E7eQKA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6fFtWi318s

Love Trick of the Light

Ballot sent. Wanted to vote in the Cure and Kate polls but didn't have enough of their later albums to do it justice. Not that I've voted for anything later than Who by Numbers in this one!

Who By Numbers is definitely good.

I picked one track; if there had been 40 choices I might have gone for a few more, like Slip Kid, However Much I Booze or Dreaming from the Waist. Didn't do a worst of poll, but Squeeze Box would be a natural candidate.

weird how few albums they actually put out, compared to their contemporaries

True, but they put out a lot of non-album singles, probably more than the Beatles or Stones. There's about a double-album's worth of singles and b-sides, pre-Tommy.

Every live version ive heard of Dreaming from the Waist crushes. Definitely an Ox showpiece on bass, even though its not "his" song.

Anything credited to the Who, or the High Numbers, is eligible

what about the first three or four albums by the jam? do those count as who albums?

OK, this one I'm going mostly straight canon. By which I mean, Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy.

yeah I doubt I'm going to be throwing up too many deep cuts high on my ballot but we'll see

the mention of Zep and the Stones reminds me of how thoroughly weird the Who are in comparison to a lot of their contemporaries. Townsend's obsession with technology and religion (synthesizers! meher baba!), the huge, left-field conceptual pieces (a pinball opera! LIFEHOUSE!), their lack of any allegiance to musical roots (Zep and the Stones were always super-conscious of their folk and blues idols, the Who had already jettisoned any traces of that by the dawn of the 70s). They're really such an oddball frankenstein of elements.

they also strike me as more neurotic than a lot of their peers, like there's this constant tension between wanting to be badasses and also wanting to be taken seriously and also just being proto-emo emotional wrecks that informs everything they do.

I've been re-listening to the first album and while it def gives a Beatles vibe, they just sound so much more, I dunno...dangerous, with the insane Moon drumbeat and the hardcore guitar. Also struck by how Daltrey's voice is really quite smooth and beautiful at times, like in a Gerry and the Pacemakers way. He could have totally pulled off Ferry Cross The Mersey, lol

yeah, the Who are freaks

my ballot might be all about The Who Sell Out and Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy

what was the first Who song you guys ever heard? Or remember hearing?

Mine was Substitute. For some reason that was the only Who song my local AM radio station ever played.

I remember My Generation and I Can See For Miles being on some comp advertised on TV (might have been Freedom Rock in the case of the latter)

I won't front--my intro was Bob Saget singing "My Generation" w/Jessie & The Rippers on that one ep of "Full House".

They appeared live on BBC2 at Charlton, I think the first song was "Young Man Blues"

But, I'm sure I knew "My Generation" from the year it came out, probably.

process question: will ballots that do not include "love ain't for keeping" be counted? Y/N

(i assume N on the basis of clearly crazy and/or trolling)

May well have been "Radio London (Days of the Week)," if that counts, off the copy of Sell Out I found in my parents' basement pile. Had no idea what to make of it, and the bathtub photo on the cover was gross.

this is insane

The album has now been re-issued in many countries and remastered several times using tapes from different sessions. The master tapes for the Olympic sessions are believed to be lost or destroyed. Video game publisher Harmonix had previously announced that Who's Next would be released as downloadable, playable content for the music video game series Rock Band. However, this never came to fruition, since it was discovered that many of the master tapes to the album were missing, as confirmed by Townshend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WeBTWEFn_M

soooooo badass

Totally; The Who were oddballs, freaks, jokers, four mismatched personalities who somehow became the greatest band ever to grace a stage. Even the debut is all over the place, glorious blues guitar on I Don't Mind, heavy duty riffage on the Ox, songs about divorce settlements and speech impediments. Then they got wilder....

How do i send a ballot?

Info in the opening post.

Take one (1) homing pigeon...

just saw the email address, thanks.

This is really freakin' hard. I've got 20, but that is missing a bunch of what I'd assume were locks for my list. They really were that good.

Tell me about it. Everything below my top 3 could easily change from week to week.

On the other hand, three of my bottom five are from one album. That was depressingly easy.

I'm trying not to think about my ballot now that it's in -- temptation to feel extreme remorse is overwhelming, lol

Would people object to me combining votes in the album poll for My Generation and The Who Sing My Generation? There are differences between the two, and I didn't want fans of "I'm A Man" (on the former) or "Instant Party (Circles)" (on the latter) to feel shortchanged.

done and done

seems reasonable

yeah no problem here

Ballot sent. I forgot "Dogs".

^^I didn't ("I saw him race at White City just last week...nice form...great buttocks...")

sent my ballot. i spent most of my available listening time this week exploring the Who catalog but still feel like i didn't check out remotely as much as i should've and stuck mostly to singles and the albums i already knew. excited to see the results, though.

I wish I made more time for this.:( Was pretty focused on the 80s rock poll.

Yeah I wanted to listen to more albums I hadn't heard but I had so much fun revisiting the Peel Sessions and Live at Leeds and Who's Next that I fear I failed our boys, somehow.

Sent!

found these, thought they were worth sharing

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9byh5HdFS1r0xrjyo1_500.jpg

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9byh5HdFS1r0xrjyo2_500.png

The Who should get bonus points for having 4 equally crushworthy dudes. There's no Ringo/pity-vote sadsack situations.

Keith was 18. He lied about his age his entire professional life. It wasn't until Tony Fletcher's 1999 bio that it came out he was a year older.

Also, 26 ballots! Can we get to 30?

xpost Wonder why - I mean it's only a year!

voted

xp It's weird, right? I think it's the only time Keith Moon ever thought, "Eh, one's enough."

Lol!

sent my ballot, in the nick of time

....mostly canonical stuff since I had almost no time to listen through rarities due to, amongst other things, an ear infection I just got treated yesterday that made it hard to listen to anything.

I'll keep the polls open until tomorrow morning (US Eastern Time), just in case there's any stragglers.

For the results thread, I'm thinking of starting the roll-out Saturday afternoon, but I'm happy to wait until Monday morning for those who primarily peruse ILX while procrastinating at work. Thoughts?

LOL @ "There was nothing in my life bigger than beer"

Haven't heard "Dogs" in a million years. Love it. That's my favorite era of the Who, so most of my list is gonna be mid-to-late 60's novelty songs that sound like thunder.

"Tattoo" might end up number one. Not sure. Looking at this list of 20 so far, it's sort of a 20-way tie.

Btw, this is just silly and fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HlMIhR6ckQ

"Tattoo" might end up number one. Not sure. Looking at this list of 20 so far, it's sort of a 20-way tie.

Ha, listening to the Charlton '74 recording right now! As much as the Who get maligned for being stadium behemoth dinosaurs, none of their peers ever dared play anything this delicate/nuanced/funny in a stadium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jK4K-v5t4g

Extension appreciated, ballot sent. Cheers to Dogs and Mike Post soapboxers, both were fun to debut, and one actually made my ballot.

Ha, listening to the Charlton '74 recording right now! As much as the Who get maligned for being stadium behemoth dinosaurs, none of their peers ever dared play anything this delicate/nuanced/funny in a stadium

At the LA Coliseum show in 1982 (my first big stadium show... The Clash opened!), they played "Sunrise" and I fell out of my tree.

This is cool...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSWFeqb3EfU

There's a nice recent one of him playing I Can't REach You at home, somewhere on youtube. Will try to dig it out later

For the results thread, I'm thinking of starting the roll-out Saturday afternoon, but I'm happy to wait until Monday morning for those who primarily peruse ILX while procrastinating at work. Thoughts?

― Sunn? Sunn? It's your cousin, Marvin O))) (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Saturday, September 8, 2012 12:48 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

i think it'd be great if you at least ran something over the weekend -- maybe the results of the albums/least favorite tracks polls and/or a little bit of the main poll results. how many songs are going to be in the rundown?

Some weekend results would be tasty. I hope Adam B sent his ballot in time.

There's 120 songs, so I'll count down the top 50. I'll start with the worst and albums today, and the bottom 10 tomorrow.

sweet!

Yeah got mine in last night at 1am, thanks for the extension!

wahoo!

*drinks a quart of brandy to get ready for the gig*

I listened to "Dogs" 5 times this morning already. What an awesome throw-away song.

So...just to make sure I'm doing this correctly, instead of using a different scale for the album points, I used the same scale as the track points, but only using positions 1-5 (e.g., 1:40, 2:36, 3:33, 4:30, 5:28). Since I'm beyond hopeless in math, can someone please confirm that this will result in an accurate tally?

As long as the #1s get more points than the #2s et cetera, should be fine. I used 10-7-5-3-1, but those were just numbers out of hat that I didn't want to be too big because I did albums and least-faves by hand instead of spreadsheet. It seemed to me that the more space there is between the point values, the less likely it would be for ties to happen, but I don't know if there's any statistical reason for that to be true.

For me, it works even better for albums, although that would vary from person to person. It's hard to weight these things, but I'm pretty sure the distance between my favourite and fifth-favourite songs would be much smaller than between my favourite and fifth-favourite albums; 40/28 would come closer to working for albums than for songs.

yeah i think it might be good to have more than 2-4 points' difference between each spot on the list but in general it should be fine whichever way you do it (xpost)

Cool. Yeah, the point totals make sense, just wasn't sure if there was something I was missing. I will start soon with the 10 least-liked tunes...

There will be blood.

I think this is a POLL of shit while John Sinclair rots in prison: THE WHO RESULTS THREAD (ilm artist poll #25)