Today we have a guest blog entry by Christopher Bradley
Hi, I’m Christopher and lately I have been thinking of embarking on the impossible. To find the best DRA song of them all. I have created a bracket and a system. Music is purely subjective, but this will be a fun way for fans new and old to appreciate Ryan Adams in a new way.
Here is a link to the bracket:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DNax9YqrfDo1to1ucy0U4XlCyLXwkH_80XKHK0e9wKc/edit
As you can see I have split the vast majority of Ryan’s career into 4 distinct regions (categories).
For these categories I want to pull 15 songs from certain albums in each category, for example:
Whiskeytown:
-Faithless Street
-Strangers Almanac
-Pneumonia
-Forever Valentine
Heartbreaker
-Heartbreaker
-Gold
-Love is Hell
-Demolition
-Rock N Roll
Cardinals
-Cold Roses
-Jacksonville City Nights
-Follow the Lights
-Easy Tiger
-29 (in the Cardinals Era)
-Cardinology
-III/IV
-Class Mythology
2011-Present
-Orion (I know it was 2010, but it’s hard to place it)
-Ashes & Fire
-1989
-Ryan Adams
-Pax-Am Singles
-Prisoner (with B-Sides?)
My goal is to create 4 separate polls with every song from each album in each poll, run it for a week, and the top 15 vote getters will be seeded as such. Then voting for each round till we have a winner!
The reason I have 15 and not 16 is because, as the vast majority of you will probably note, I left out a lot of unreleased, yet greatly loved material. I would like to make certain selections from the unreleased material as “play-ins.”
I would like to leave out Werewolph, Sleazy Handshake, DJ Reggie, etc.
I am going to add a 5th group as the so-called “play-in” group. That will consist of the following unreleased material:
Play-In
-The Suicide Handbook
-48 Hours
-Pinkhearts 1 & 2
-Darkbreaker
-Destroyer
-Fasterpiece
-Let it B Minus
-Swedish Sessions
-Exile on Franklin Street
The top 8 from this group will be a part of a preliminary first round of voting before the actual first round. Two songs will be paired against each other and placed randomly in each “region.” Obviously, these wont follow the era system I created, however it creates a nice element of randomness .
******ALSO*******
In the event of a tie in group play, such as 2 songs tied for the 15th seed, a coin flip will be administered with the song that is first alphabetically being heads and the other being tails. If there are 3 or more tied, I will use a random number generator with the same alphabetical law applying to ascertain the order. In the event of a tie during the tournament portion, there will be a coin flip.
************************************************** *******
The Group Play Survey is currently live until June 7 at 11:45 P.M. EST.
Here is the link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PM6XGHZ
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From there, the field will be set, the tournament round polls will be open for 1-2 days each thereafter to save time.
Group Play: May 31-June 7
Play-In round: June 8-9
First Round: June 10-11
Second Round: June 12
Sweet 16: June 13
Elite 8: June 14
Final Four: June 15
Championship: June 16-17
Expect the polls to be up at some point each morning and closed around 10 or 11 at night, I’m not going to do exact times because my real life is, believe it or not, busy.