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The League Of Extraordinary Tracks: CALL FOR PLAYERS
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Now the Charity Crusher tournament is safely back on Twitter we can do something else here. Something… new! Well semi-new. We’re going to do a LEAGUE music game focused on discovering new things and this is the post where I ask – who wants to play?

Here’s what playing will require. Every week for about 10 weeks, you’ll nominate a track based on a theme. Each week’s theme will be the same as a previous People’s Pop Poll – the actual TRACKS though will be all new. The first theme is Placenames, the second is Tracks From 2020 and we’ll take it from there.

That’s all! One nomination a week for 10 weeks or so, and the first round goes up next Sunday (11th June). Sign up in the comments if you want to play.

What? You want to know more?? OK.

THE FULLER EXPLANATION

The League Of Extraordinary Tracks is a 10-round music competition. You can take part as a Player (we’ll want between 10 and 12 players) or as a Spectator. Spectators and Players can vote and comment but only Players can nominate songs. You don’t have to tell me if you’re planning to spectate or not!

Each round every Player nominates 1 track on a particular theme, which they’ll usually know about a week in advance. Nomination deadline is Friday night each week. Nominations should go to the Peoples Pop Twitter DM if you’re on Twitter, or to freakytrigger@gmail.com if you aren’t – don’t post them publically!

Each round I put the nominated tracks into a playlist which goes up here along with a poll. Every voter (Players and Spectators) gets to vote for up to 4 tracks a week, but the voting is on Golden Beat Rules – i.e. you shouldn’t vote for anything you already knew. Initially, I won’t reveal the nominator of each track, though nominators can ‘out’ themselves in the comments if they want.

New Rounds go up on Sunday and finish on Saturday – allowing 6 days of listening and voting. On Saturday the poll ends and I put up a results post revealing the scores and the nominator of each track.

The player who got the least votes in a round gets to choose a theme for the next available round. I’ll announce this ASAP after the round ends.

To make it a bit clearer (?), here’s the timetable for the first few rounds.

  • Today: Call for Players opens and the players start looking for Placenames and 2020 nominations.
  • 9th June (Fri): Deadline for Placenames nominations.
  • 11th June (Sun): Round 1 (Placenames) BEGINS. Playlists and poll published.
  • 16th June (Fri): Deadline for 2020 nominations.
  • 17th June (Sat): Round 1 (Placenames) ENDS. Results posted. Last-place Player picks Round 3 theme. Players begin looking for Round 3 nominations.
  • 18th June (Sun): Round 2 (2020) BEGINS.
  • 23rd June (Fri): Deadline for Round 3 nominations.
  • …and so on

After 10 rounds the winning players are announced, and will get some kind of fabulous PRIZE. There’s then a Grand Final where each player’s most successful track competes to be named the overall track of the tournament, and we open the call for players for Season 2! Obviously prioritising people who weren’t in the previous season.

Does that make sense? If you’ve got questions I’ll do my best to answer them and clarify in the post. Now – who wants to play?

What Is A People’s Pop Poll (And Can We Eat It)?
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It’s been suggested a quick INTRO and UPDATE post would be helpful here!

This is the blog homepage for the People’s Pop Polls. These are regular (roughly monthly) themed music tournaments. People nominate tracks, I arrange them into groups, everyone votes on them and discusses the songs. It’s fun!

The polls have generally run on Twitter. I recently tried to move them off Twitter and it’s proved difficult for a bunch of reasons. So the tournament style polls are moving back to Twitter for now.

The current poll is the CHARITY CRUSHER. This was an unthemed poll in which people could nominate anything they liked to raise money for ActionAid and the Ruth Hayman Trust. We raised over £3200 and got over 400 tracks to poll. That’s too many for a normal poll so I’ve split it into two sections, ANCIENT and MODERN. The Ancient poll is anything released before the year 2000, the Modern is anything released in 2000 or since.

We’ve just finished doing the Modern Qualifiers (opening round) on this site, and now we’ll do the Ancient Qualifiers on Twitter.

After the Charity Crusher polls finish we’ll go back to the theme polls. The first two of these will be LATE WORK (tracks released in the 25th year or later of an artist’s career) and the year 2015.

Meanwhile on here we’ll be running the LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY TRACKS, a more leisurely poll taking advantage of the things we can’t do on Twitter but can on a blog. I’ll be opening player slots for this later in the week.

For a history of the polls and a lot more detail on how they work go here.

For a complete list of what’s qualified so far in the current poll go here.

And here’s the playlist for the entire Ancient poll (not in match order)

Modern Qualifier 51 – 21st COVERS 20th
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The first of two groups based on themes voted for by participants, with tracks drawn from your suggestions. This one is 21st Century covers of 20th Century songs.

  1. A cover of The Smiths’ “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”. Released as a single in 2000.
  2. A cover of Nirvana’s “In Bloom”. From the 2016 LP A Sailor’s Guide To Earth.
  3. A cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”. Released as a single in 2019.
  4. A cover of DJ DMD’s “25 Lighters” from the 2012 LP La Futura.
[ays_poll id=95]

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