Anarchy in the R.B.

Scott Hardie | October 26, 2007
We can (and probably will) debate endlessly over whether this band or that band deserves to be ranked higher or lower. I'm pretty resolute and confident in my judgment, believe me, but in the interest of fairness, I've given in to a longstanding temptation and added a poll that lets you players have some influence over who gets a boost in rank next. Visit the Collection Guide to take part. The final say with each promotion remains mine, but I'll allow myself to be swayed by public opinion most of the time.

Yes, some players will only vote for their favorite bands or the cards in their collection (which is why it took me so long to offer this), but I believe that enough players will vote honestly enough of the time to make it worthwhile. If improper voting gets to be a problem and my personal veto doesn't cancel it out enough, I'll adjust the poll system or go back to life without one.

This is either the best time or the worst time to stress something that I think has been generally misunderstood: Promotions are supposed to be rare and special events, undertaken only to keep the game balanced, not commonplace or openly anticipated. There's a feeling that the current state of each card in your collection is only temporary and before long it will metamorphosize into something more powerful, and it's true that all cards below R10 will eventually promote, yes. But each card should be perceived as static, something you can count on and build a strategy around. I'm to blame for this misperception, by starting the game with too few bands without anticipating how many promotions that would make necessary, and then by mass-promoting a bunch of them on September 1st, obliterating most players' sense of their cards as static and unchanging. I know that adding this poll is likely to place even further emphasis on promotions, but I believe it's worth adding anyway.

What's important to keep in mind about ranks is that the game is a pyramid: There's only room for so many bands at each level, fewer and fewer so as you climb to the top. There have been complaints recently that Sex Pistols are "only" an R4 – "for shame!" I was told. I recognize their significant contribution to rock music and the regard in which they're held, but scroll down the Collection Guide and look at the R5 bands. You may disagree with one or two of them, but generally, I should hope you'd agree with me that most of the R5s hold even broader importance and influence in rock music than the Sex Pistols. If you don't, well, vote the hell out of the Sex Pistols in the poll, then. Based on their hostile reaction to the Rock Hall nomination, I don't think they'd want your vote anyway. :-P

Lori Lancaster | October 26, 2007
[hidden by request]

Amy Austin | October 26, 2007
In Lori fashion, I must give thanks to you, Scott, for singling me out! Not that anyone would have known it, of course... unless they review our concerts -- and fairly obvious which one...

I'm not mad about it, but I'm not sure what to feel about it. I realize that there is a lot of thought and effort that goes into these things on your end... but it's hard to keep thoughts like the one I shared to oneself. I'm sure that you're right about what I would think if I looked at the full Collection Guide... I generally try not to, for just this reason -- I don't want constant motivation to go "So&so is *only* R-whatever?!?!?" -- there are already plenty of times that I've thought this to myself... but I'm not about to jump into the middle of anyone's concert, or TC, to say so. If it's somehow relevant for me to say so at the moment that I say it, then I will.

I don't even remember what level Foreigner had in our match, I only remember that the bottom number on it was a "9" -- making them "unjustly badass", as I put it. I totally realize that the indivdual numbers on each card are randomly generated... how could it be any other way? Talk about being thoroughly subjective and pulling your hair out over something! It was the second time that card made a fierce showing, though, and the comment was intended as more of a funny observation than anything, and your response seemed to indicate that you got that. The Sex Pistols comment was only about a half-notch more serious than that, but I'm kind of feeling now like it struck a nerve that was wholly unintended... sorry if I'm wrong about that.

Amy Austin | October 26, 2007
Btw... having now visited the new poll, I must concur with Lori regarding the difficulty of it -- picking just one out of so many really is tough! This may be an absurdly difficult and ludicrous thing to even allude to -- let alone suggest -- but I would find it a much easier thing to put each list of musicians in descending order of importance than to just choose one of more than 20 as being the *most* influential... that's tough! Particularly so, if you wind up being compelled to pick a band that you really can't stand just because you know that their stature really does outrank all the others (as I just did) -- or there are two/three that you feel are equally deserving of said status... but one you really like, or another is just "meh"... because now I'd feel guilty picking the one I actually prefer over the others! (As I also just did, but In this instance, I sort of deferred to "seniority" as the deciding factor (sort of) -- as I probably would in general -- which eliminated my preference and will undoubtedly lead to more of the same.)

Scott Hardie | October 26, 2007
I did quote you, Amy, because it was a good quote, but it wasn't my intention to single you out. Several people had mentioned the Sex Pistols recently. Sorry if it felt wrong.

The Sex Pistols thing happened to make for a good illustration of why a low rank isn't a dishonor. After all, they have some pretty distinguished company in R4 – no one would call AC/DC, Billy Joel, Eagles, Frank Zappa, Little Richard, Metallica, Neil Young, Roy Orbison, or Van Halen minor rock stars. That still puts Sex Pistols in the top eighty-four bands of all time, which is accurate.

I didn't anticipate hearing that the voting would be called tough to decide, but I agree with you. I often have to glance over the list, arbitrarily choose one big name, and run it from end-to-end asking myself if any of the others are unquestionably greater. Often they are and I start over again.

About Foreigner with the strong bottom side, yes, it's all random which sides wind up strong. I'm kind of surprised that no one has wondered in writing whether this somehow suggests something, like if the drummer was pictured towards the strongest side of the card then it would suggest that he was an awesome drummer or something. The sides of the cards are random except for three rules:
1) The rank determines what the sum of the four sides will be: R1s add up to 7, R10s add up to 35, etc.
2) One of the four sides must be the rank of the card: Each R7 must have at least one side with a 7 on it.
3) Only R10s are allowed to have 10 on a side.

Erik Bates | October 26, 2007
[hidden by request]

Aaron Shurtleff | October 26, 2007
OK, I went through the polls (rather a lot of them), and I voted based on what I thought their status was in "rock history" in comparison to the other bands. That's about all I think you can do. If some of the bands aren't that well known to me, I can't really do in depth research on them all to see if something would sway my opinion. I tried on a couple, but... I had to base it on what I honestly thought, and how popular the person/band is/was, and how much of an influence on the rock genre (whatever that might be defined as by any one person, since it can differ, I think) that person/band had. I think the hardest part was that I felt that sometimes I had to vote for bands that I have cards for, and I felt like it would seem I was trying to promote myself at the expense of honesty. But I really didn't.

And seriously, right now, Bon Jovi is opening the new Prudential Center in Newark, NJ. They're doing 10 concerts in a row, and they are all pretty much sold out (my wife is going to be at 6 of the ten concerts!). They've had hits in every decade since they started out in the 1980's. How can you not be voting for them over all those other schlubs?! ;) I really need to actually get that card, before I promote them out of my league! :)

Aaron Shurtleff | October 26, 2007
Oh, and I totally didn't go by current rank, but the lists seemed to have been rank based, I think. They all seemed to be around the same level from what I could tell.

And I also think, that if you really put the time into this that it sounds like you did, Scott, you probably have a better idea of where these bands should be ranked than I could ever hope to do with my biased opinion. :)

Amy Austin | October 26, 2007
Yes, the polls only ask about one rank at a time -- all R1s, etc. -- so you're already judging within the same rank, Erik.

Scott Hardie | October 27, 2007
Erik, in my opinion, the current rank of the band is irrelevant. What it means to be an R2 or R5 or R8 shifts over time, as more bands get added and the really great bands gradually climb towards the top of the pyramid. When the game launched, R1 had some of the "great" bands in it, but now it seems suited to successful bands that probably aren't great. In time it won't even have successful bands in it, but a collection of one-hit wonders and obscure local bands requested for player birthdays. That's ok; the game is supposed to move gradually in that direction.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't matter if Golden Earring is a 2 or a 3, because the definition of what it means to be a 2 or a 3 is determined by the other bands in that rank. If you read the list and Golden Earring stands out as greater than its peers, it's ready to move up a notch.

And if you still really want to see what its rank is: Hit Ctrl-F (depending on your browser) and search for the band's name. You'll go straight to their place in the list and see what their rank is.

Incidentally, when I launched the video feature, you asked for the ability to comment on a band in the popup window. I like the sound of that, but TC and other discussion areas have their own natural pruning process, making old comments drop away out of sight (except Gay Marriage, obviously). I don't know if I like clicking on a band someday and seeing a long list of comments dating back years. What do you think? Anybody? :-\

Erik Bates | October 27, 2007
[hidden by request]

Russ Wilhelm | December 16, 2007
And now..........Another probably unpopular idea from yours truly. Unpopular because as is the case with most of my best ideas, this one deals with potentially shifting the balance of the game.

The idea hit me a few days ago but was fully formulated this morning while I was shoveling snow and ice off the driveway. For any of you who have not had the pleasure of this task, it is a high energy consuming workout, one step down from chopping down a tree with an axe. Not done that either? How about racquetball? Anyway, the point is it gets the blood pumping. Even more so at my age. So I guess the blood that has been pooling about in my brain got a transfusion of high level oxygenated fresh brain food.

Oh yeah, the idea.

I had the thought that I'm not thrilled about the promotion process, in that it is subjective and eventually status becomes an issue. Add to that, someday, a one hit wonder starting at R1 will gain the same status as the Beatles in Rock Block. whereas a band such as, lets say the Eagles, may only reach R8 in the same amount of time. Not cool, in a real world sense.

So eliminate real world status and remove subjectivity. How? Glad you asked, or even formed a partial thought in that direction.

The answer is by using a process that is already in place to limit an over abundance of a single band/individual from the game. Currently once there are ten cards that are the same in the game, that card is no longer generated. Instead make it that once there are ten cards that are the same in the game, that card gets promoted. At the same time, and this is where it gets unpopular, the cards get removed from the game and go back into the pool, and the card starts over with its new rank.

But wouldn't that eventually make all cards R10's? Same rule applies, even more unpopular, only a promoted R10 would start at the bottom as an R1. The Beatles as an R1? Inconceivable! Sure, but only as much as James Taylor teaming up with Megadeath in concert.

Would that mean that mean that those cards that there are currently ten of would be removed? Even I'm not that cruel. No. The current limit placed on them would need to be removed, but the next time it was duplicated, .....you get the picture.

That way status only plays a part in a newly created card.

One irony is that cards that become exclusive due to a "Rock Block", cannot be promoted. If you come to dislike your exclusive card, you would have to give up on it's exclusivity.

The upside of this. Power is definitely not necessarily permanent, a certain balance is brought to the game, promotions are as random as the "Card Exchange", and promotions are more infrequent. This meets all but one objective stated at the beginning of this thread. That would be the more than likely inability to maintain the pyramid.

Hey, at least you can't say that my ideas are designed to work in my favor. My chances of getting hit would be the same as anyone else, and losing "The Who" or "Jimi Hendrix" would hurt, but others would benefit from my loss, and I like the idea of changing the balance that way.

As always, even if this idea isn't well received, perhaps it will spawn other ideas that will serve to enhance the game.

Eric Wallhagen | December 16, 2007
I'll throw another idea in the pot... One that I'm not even 100% sure I'm in favor of, but like Russ,I may spur on other ideas/discussions.

Maybe have a certain number of cards allowed at any one rank at any time? So say no more than 5 total rank 10s, 10 total R9s, etc etc. Then, as a band gets voted up in popularity, and consequently gets promoted, another band would have to be correspondingly demoted. Eventually this would reach a level of balance.

I dunno. Yours is a bizarre and difficult burden Scott. I don't envy you. =P

Scott Hardie | December 18, 2007
Interesting ideas. I'm happy to receive any & all suggestions, although they almost always go to the "to do" list rather than get granted right away. Some ideas are best to let stew for a while and see if they still make sense after a couple of months when I finally have time to program them. I'm curious to read what others think of these.

Let me correct a minor misconception: Bands are not made unavailable for distribution when there are 10 of them in active play. Instead, I sort the bands by most-owned to least-owned and make the top 10% unavailable for distribution. Since there are 244 bands in the game at the moment, that means 24 bands. When I say unavailable, that means they can't appear in the Card Exchange as a today's free card, they can't be given as one of a newbie's 10 starter cards, they can't be given as a comeback card to a newbie who winds up with less than 10 cards, and they can't be given as a replacement card for someone who lost a card to a rock block. The last time we had a Block Party, I manually selected the cards using a random number generator on the web, and we wound up with three more Cheap Tricks in circulation (and it was already the most-owned card), so in future Block Parties I'm going to stick to the other 90% of bands.

Generally, Rock Block has turned out great and I'm terribly proud of it, but I confess that one problematic area continues to be the promotion system. I launched the game with only 110 bands, which meant that the first few months of the game would see an unusually high number of promotions, warping player expectations and planting it firmly in many player's minds that the numbers on a card are in perpetual flux, which no one should think. Then I experimented with slowing down promotions by various means, but I tended to fall too far behind, so promotions would come in mass spurts that disrupted the game. Then I added Michael Jackson as an R10 to slow down promotions, which was the right rank for him but way too early to begin deviating from core rock-music artists, and that decision along with a few others made my judgment seem even less credible than subjectivity already did. Then I talked endlessly about promotions on TC (still doing it right now), which placed way too much emphasis on the process and its importance in the game, and I got players worrying about its effects. It just kept being a big mess.

Promotions in this game are like race in America: It shouldn't really have much significance, but because of an ugly history, we keep talking and obsessing about it, which makes it seem much more important than it is and keeps us all unhappy. What I'm trying to say is that I wish promotions had been handled well from the beginning and that I had not discussed them here, so that they could happen almost invisibly in the background, with only the hard-core players even aware of them and nobody watching closely; imo that's the way it should be.

Things have gotten better lately. The poll, while poorly introduced, has been tweaked to a point where you shouldn't see it often and shouldn't be overwhelmed with options when you do see it, and I've generally been pleased with the player responses to the poll. (Fyi to players who consistently vote for bands they own: The system has always flat-out ignored your votes after you do it too often, so don't bother.) Something I wish I had done from the beginning but only introduced a few weeks ago is a staggering of the promotion candidates so that a band has to stay put in their rank for two months before becoming eligible for promotion, which should balance the need to keep ranks consistent so that a one-hit wonder doesn't surpass the Eagles like Russ said, but also allows the bands that you think I've underrated to climb slightly faster than others. As stated earlier, I took Steve West's advice to keep a card's four sides from getting randomly re-assigned in a promotion (they now only go up), and I think that has really helped to make the process invisible. Finally, we'll have a fourth R10 in the next few days, which will slow down promotions further. I said very early in the game that we would see a lot of promotions in the rest of 2007 and the rate would slow down to a more normal rate in 2008, and that promise is about to come true.

Let me also allay fears about a one-hit wonder climbing in the ranks: Ain't gonna happen. I can maybe see an R2 if they have been especially successful or if that one song was influential, but most are permanently stuck at R1 status. And novelty acts like Weird Al don't stand a chance of getting above R1 until the game someday enters a bizarro phase where R1 is solely populated by obscure foreign and local bands, and by then I'll probably stop admitting new bands to the game. I was surprised that Weird Al kept winning the promotion poll (I wiped out his votes and it happened again), so he's now blocked from future votes, and it's going to stay that way. This still ain't a democracy, polka fans.

As for the subjectivity of promotions, to me that's an essential part of them. An Eagles card should be worth more in your hand than the minor niche band next to them. (A Byrds in the hand is worth more than Tool and the Bush? Hmm.) Weird Al's popularity aside, the poll has generally been good at promoting who deserves it. Rather than favoring the one-hit wonder over the legend, it tends to work the other way. And if we would go so far as to randomize who gets promoted and evenly balance the ranks, why even bother with promotions any more? Promotions exist because I couldn't keep adding new R10s and R9s to the game over time, and so I had to add cards at the lower ranks and gradually push cards up to maintain a balance.

Anyway, that's just my line of thought about all this. I'm certainly interested in what the other players think.

And Russ, I do not envy your snow-shoveling workout. I have now fully acclimated to Florida weather and begin shivering when it's a mere 50 degrees on a December night.

Scott Hardie | December 18, 2007
Eric, I like that idea, and I had considered something along those lines myself, forcing the daily free card to balance out the ranks held in player hands so that there would be ten times as many R1s as R10s, etc. Instead of forcing demotions, the free card giveaway would bring the game a consistent balance over time, such that any influx of low cards from a newbie joining or any exodus of high cards from a veteran retiring would be balanced by the card distribution over the next few days. I guess there are a few reasons why I didn't go ahead with it, including that it was never supposed to be the case that there was a balance of cards in player collections, just a balance of bands in each rank. But mainly, I left it alone because the system seems to be fine now and why tinker with it? It's not like it was easy getting to this state of balance. :-)

Now that I think of it, maybe this would help to bring more balance to the game, between players. In the past, I figured it's not such a problem that veterans rack up huge collections while newbies have nothing, because A) veterans will eventually bore of having achieved everything and drop out, and B) newbies will realize the odds are against them and only play other newbies, but so far neither of those is happening.

In considering it, I'm reminded of a real card game I play that involves "charity" at the end of every turn: If you have more than a certain maximum number of cards, you hand them over to the lowest-scoring player at the table, and in its own Marxist way it helps, more by reigning in the top players than by aiding the bottom players. But that game is a direct competition where you vie for sole victory after roughly an hour of play around the table, while Rock Block is a wide-open game without true victory or objective except to keep growing and earning. Why go against the very nature of the game?

Russ Wilhelm | December 18, 2007
You should be extremely proud of Rock Block, and the rest of the site as well. As I have said, I've never been interested in any game for very long, but here I am still around, and I don't see my interest waning in the least. You have a great gift, and have in turn allowed us to partake in it.

As for my ideas, that's what they are. They stem from otherwise fleeting thoughts that for some reason get stuck long enough to formulate. And good or bad, I put them out there. Otherwise they'll swirl around taking up space in my head that could be used for other useful information that may need to be retained. Gotta keep it fairly empty up there, you know.

Anyway, even if they don't work for Rock Block, they may be more suited for some future endeavor, yours, mine, or anyone else's. So I don't feel it's a waste of my time. Even if it gives that impression, we just learned something of how the game is evolving, and though I can't speak for anyone else, I find that interesting, so definitely not a waste of time.

Rock Block is a great game, and I'm happy to be able to partake in it. Thank You.

And I too remember acclimating to Florida. The first year I lived there (young and full of it) it was shorts and sandals, finding humor in those that bundled up. Two years later, I bought a coat. Funny the things that humble us.

Scott Hardie | December 18, 2007
Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad that my work is appreciated. :-)

I hope it didn't seem like I was dismissing your idea. On the contrary, it's wide open for consideration. I was just explaining my thoughts on the subject.

Aaron Shurtleff | December 22, 2007
Hmmm...so the mystery R9 got promoted to R10! Now I'm even more curious...

Scott Hardie | April 1, 2009
I can't believe that I once struggled over letting players have a say in promotions. The promotion poll has become a big part of my decision-making, and I think it has helped me guide the right bands to the higher ranks.

The problem has turned out to be presentation. Letting you choose from all bands in a given rank would make the form way too long. Besides, who can choose just one name from a list that long? I thought about incorporating the poll into the Collection Guide somehow that would let you choose multiple names off of the whole list, but never could figure out the right way to present the information without cluttering up the data already there.

With the addition of a separate page for each band, I think I have the answer now. Browse the Collection Guide, click on the bands that you think are most deserving of moving up in the ranks, and nominate each one for promotion on its page. You can nominate up to 10% of the bands in any given rank, after which the option will disappear. Your nomination will last until you cancel it or until the band is promoted.

There has been abuse of the promotion poll on the homepage, when players nominate with a strong bias for their own favorite bands. Players who demonstrated this statistical bias were ignored in the old version of the poll, and they're still ignored in the new version, so don't bother being one. (The same goes for players who mostly nominate the bands in their label, but that only happened a little.)

I should stress once more: Promotions are about keeping cards in sync with each other, because rank is relative. You may think that John Lennon is one of the greatest rock musicians ever and deserves to be called a "ten" instead of an "eight" – but what "ten" and "eight" mean is relative to each other. The Beatles as a band are R10. Was John Lennon approximately as important to rock history as the entire band was? When you think that a band is deserving of promotion, compare it to the other bands around it in the Collection Guide and ask yourself honestly whether it is truly greater than those other names in the grand scheme of things.

Comments and suggestions are welcome, as always. Thanks for helping to make the game better.

Steve Dunn | April 1, 2009
Huh. Interesting exercise. I have to say that Flight Of The Conchords being ranked higher than Huey Lewis & The News calls into serious question the notion that rankings are based on "stature in the history of Rock and Roll." Huey sold thirty million records. Sports was the second biggest album of 1984. First was Thriller.

Of all the biases evident in the rankings, the one that struck me most was the dearth of R&B (of which there is very little) and rap (of which I saw, maybe, the Sugarhill Gang?) I can't see all the cards, so maybe that's throwing me off, but artists like Tupac, B.I.G., Dr. Dre, Snoop, LL Cool J, Jay-Z, Diddy, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys , etc. etc. I think I saw the Roots. I guess the logic on rap just isn't clear to me. Some of the above (not to mention Seal, Mary J Blige, Salt n Pepa, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, TLC, Luther Vandross, and many many others) would seem to me to qualify for some of the higher ranks.

This game seems heavily skewed toward indie/alternative, punk and heavy metal. Artists from the 60s and 70s get a lot of extra credit (which is not necessarily inappropriate since "stature in history" presupposes some history has occurred).

Anyway, this was the first time I looked at all the cards (the ones I can see) at one time.

Scott Hardie | April 1, 2009
Huey Lewis and the News is one of the rankings that I look back on later and wonder what in the hell I was thinking. They really should have started several ranks higher, and I've been fast-tracking them up the ladder since I noticed. Shawn Colvin and the B-52s are other examples. There are more.

One of the problems with the old system was that it favored bands who entered the game earlier, like Flight of the Conchords which entered early because several players were fans of the show. Because I didn't want a ballot form that ran down the entire screen, I limited players to voting for only a handful of bands, and since I didn't want to hand-pick the voters' options for them since that would defeat the purpose of the exercise, I decide to let them vote for the bands who had been stuck at that rank for the longest. That resulted in one-hit wonders like Lynn Anderson and Rick Springfield climbing much too high and distorting the rankings, just because they entered the game early. I still believe that the rankings are a self-correcting system, but they got polluted and kept introducing new problems to correct. Hopefully this new system will help.

When the game started, I made a conscious effort to hold back on rap and only let a few rappers in slowly. Indie/alternative, punk, and heavy metal are all major forms of rock and roll – rap music, although not insignificant, is a cousin of rock at best. There are several rappers in the game that you haven't seen yet, Steve, but not many. I will seek to add a few more soon, but I still intend to make them a small part of the overall list.

As for R&B, I think I've done a pretty good job of including early R&B, enough to make it the second-most-populous "by genre" theme. But I have done very little with modern R&B acts like you mention, because the form has deviated further and further from rock & roll with each generation. I will make a point of including a few more modern acts. (Sometimes I let in a few bands that I would never consider otherwise in order to fill in an anemic theme. The Roots were let in long before their time to populate Plant Life.)

I confess to letting in too many heavy metal acts. It's the genre I'm most familiar with and that screws up my reasoning sometimes. I have to remind myself that while Venom and Napalm Death are important in the genre as I'm familiar with it, the average player has never heard of them. I'm trying to ease up on that genre for a while to let things even out. (And if it matters, several other players are heavy metal fans too. Aaron has such an outspoken affection for 80s hair metal that I've intentionally slipped in a few names - hello, Quiet Riot - that should inspire a grin or a groan among the rest of us depending on our feelings about the cheesiest of rock music.)

If I were to sum up rock history with sweeping generalizations, then the 50s laid the foundation, the 60s established the heights of what the form could achieve, and the 70s were the period of greatest expansion with so many great bands trying so many different things. Since the 80s, everything has fit into a commercial category, even "indie" in its own way, which isn't to say that some great music hasn't been recorded in the last three decades, just to say that the filter through which we perceive it is different. Anyway, if all of this is true, then the 60s should dominate in the high rankings, but the 70s should be by far the best-represented decade in the overall card population. If the 70s weren't the best-represented, then I would guess the 90s due to my generational bias, or possibly the 00s due to higher visibility of today's bands. But no, unexpectedly (to me), the 80s is the best represented decade in the game. I don't know that came about; I can think of no specific trend in my decision-making that would cause it. Hmm.

pre: 4
1950s: 36
1960s: 114
1970s: 158
1980s: 172
1990s: 146
2000s: 99

Steve Dunn | April 1, 2009
All this stuff is endlessly debatable, which is part of what makes it fun!

One thing we could debate endlessly is how we define "rock and roll." I'm not really sure how modern R&B is anything other than a direct descendant of classic R&B, yet the latter is heavily represented in the game while the former is not. If Isaac Hayes and Marvin Gaye are "rock and roll" then Usher and Akon would seem to be as well. In terms of sales, there's no question at all. As just one example, the Boyz 2 Men record "II" has sold more units than Sgt. Peppers. TLC's CrazySexyCool sold more than The Joshua Tree, Dookie, Pyromania, 1984, Like A Virgin, and Nevermind.

I suppose rap is a different case since there is no direct antecedent from the 60s and 70s. I realize you have to draw the line somewhere, for example we don't see a bunch of new age artists, DJs, electronica, jazz, bluegrass, etc. The game is "Rock" Block after all, not "Music" Block. This much is understandable.

On the other hand, leaving out rap to the extent it seems to have been (from what I can see) just seems like a glaring omission from the history of pop music. 311, Limp Bizkit, Bloodhound Gang, Kid Rock - these artists and many many more "rock" artists are literally rappers. Blondie, who hung around with the Ramones (R9!) famously brought rap to a white audience in her song "Rapture." Run DMC covered Aerosmith's "Walk This Way." Rap has infiltrated rock to such a profound degree I'm not sure the distinction between rap and rock is any more significant than the distinction between punk and metal, or indie and emo, or folk and americana.

Aaron Shurtleff | April 1, 2009
I fought for Run DMC, Steve, and they are in already, as are a few others that don't come to mind right away.

I didn't realize I had quite so much love for 80's hair bands, until I saw that I do, in fact, seem to love getting them in the game. :)

Steve Dunn | April 1, 2009
Huey Lewis and the News is one of the rankings that I look back on later and wonder what in the hell I was thinking. They really should have started several ranks higher, and I've been fast-tracking them up the ladder since I noticed.

Huey's R2. That's the fast track?

By the way, I'm not a huge Huey fan (although I do know a guy who is a former president of their fan club, has met them several times, and owns a guitar played on one of their records). Just want to be clear I'm not offended by Huey's ranking from an "appropriate place in the annals of music history" perspective - just that they were an immensely popular band and having Flight Of The Conchords ranked higher just seems weird.

Scott Hardie | April 2, 2009
It's all good. Debating this stuff is one of my favorite parts of the game. :-)

Huey being R2 is the fast track so far. I could manually promote the band if I had to, but I prefer to introduce new bands that result in an imbalance in R1/R2 that results in Huey being promoted higher. That takes time. I guess no matter how many records they sold, I've always thought of Huey Lewis and the News as that cheesy 80s band that recorded the Back to the Future single, and I probably created their card in a hurry without thinking over it more or doing more research. My bad.

I have rarely used album sales as a criterion for rankings, for what it's worth. The Velvet Underground is considered one of the most influential bands ever among other musicians, but they were very weak in album sales to the general public. Sales are a factor in my thinking, just not a major one.

Steve Dunn | April 3, 2009
Album sales should be a criterion - not the only criterion, but worthy of serious consideration - if the rankings are to be based upon an artist's "stature in the history of Rock and Roll." At the very least, it's a good sanity check on the bias of personal taste. Any album that sold five million copies is historically significant.

I absolutely agree that lesser known artists should also be given their due, but I guess I'd rank them in addition to rather than instead of commercially successful artists. I love "artists' artists" such as the Jayhawks, Wilco, Rufus Wainwright, Pavement, and many others, but cheesy pop is also very influential and historically significant.

Personal note: Wilco deserves a promotion in the game. With all the Chicago connections on this site, I'd expect them to get a lot more love. I think I'm the only person who has listed them as a favorite! Some of their records are an acquired taste, but Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is pretty accessible. The key, though, is to go see them live. Best live act I've seen in a long, long time. Another option is to look up their performance on Austin City Limits - good sample of the live experience.

ETA: here's the Wilco performance I mentioned. I just noticed PBS has a fantastic web site...

http://www.pbs.org/klru/austin/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=127&Itemid=326

ETA2: Hmmm, the video only seems to show one song. Here's a site with audio from the whole set...

http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2009/03/31/wilco-austin-city-limits-september-15-2007/

Scott Hardie | April 4, 2009
I don't know that I agree with the automatic historical significance of any album that sold that many copies. It's a statistic. People buy a lot of forgettable, insignificant crap, and there are a lot more people buying albums with each later generation (except maybe this one, if downloads aren't counted). Sgt Peppers sold 11 million copies, and so did albums by N*SYNC, Creed, and Kid Rock, not to mention the Dirty Dancing and Titanic soundtracks. That merits a card in the game, but it's not automatically going to be a high-ranking card.

Wilco is one of the bands on my promotion fast-track list after I realized how much I under-ranked them at the start. I'm not a fan, but they've got a lot of credit with critics.

And that brings me back to a thought I had recently, which is that maybe rank should mean something different now than when it started. I researched the hell out of the original 110 bands to make sure I ranked them just right, considering critical opinion as one of my major criteria. There are 730 bands now, and more being added daily, and I just can't research all of them in that much depth. Some ranks have as many cards as the game started with. Gauging the comparative stature of that many bands at the same rank could be a fool's errand. If the definition of rank grows to include such elements as, say, popularity among RB players, that would give us something real to base the rankings on. (The promotion poll might be the same thing.)

Something else I've been trying to figure out lately is how to make a bigger deal out of the really big names in rock music. At the beginning, it was enough that they were ranked so high; it really meant something to claim a Bob Marley or Eric Clapton or David Bowie card for yourself. We used to obsess about collecting R10s in the Card Exchange. Now these big names are lost in the crowd of low-ranking cards and don't seem to stand out. The "by collaboration" themes that are all about certain major artists are a step in the right direction, but they don't fully satisfy my urge to get the really big rock stars more involved in the game and/or more prominent. Anybody have any suggestions?

James Voltz | April 21, 2009
Add another name to the list of Wilco fan boys.

As for getting the bigger names involved in the game more, I disagree somewhat with the premise that the big names have lost some mystique. As a newcomer, I have no cards in my hand higher than an R7, so getting anything near an R10 seems like an impressive feet at this point. I'd flip if I got a Springsteen card.

Still, you asked for suggestions, so here's one. For the newbies like me and Ryan, allow us to play games with more experienced players using cards of higher rank, but those high cards would only be available during that one game - they wouldn't become part of our label. That would allow more experienced players to use their 8, 9, 10 level cards without risking them. It would allow newbs to see the big guns in game action, but it would protect the current system pretty well, too. And finally, it would give newbies access to enough cards so they could play multiple games at once.

Scott Hardie | April 21, 2009
That's not a bad idea. If your collection is still under a certain number of cards, you can "borrow" a few larger cards in concert. The themed concerts already exist to let you play with cards that aren't yours, but you have to see enough cards in the theme to be able to play it, and that's not easy at first. I really don't like how new players are limited to only two concerts at once; perhaps starting with more cards is the answer. On the other hand, should the concerts count if the cards don't really belong to you? And is it right to expose high cards to new players in this semi-arbitrary fashion? (Here's Springsteen; isn't he so much better than the lame cards you really have?)

If this game had more players, I'd like to set up tiers of players based on the size of their collection and their accomplishments. You would gradually rise through these tiers and play with people of your own ability so there wouldn't seem to be as much discrepancy. There needs to be some degree of playing against the best players to get better, but I still think there's merit to this idea.

Steve Dunn | April 22, 2009
It's already easier to acquire cards than it's ever been. Just keep playing, and they come. It doesn't take too long. You can play plenty of theme concerts regardless of how many "real" concerts you've got going.

By the way, Scott, I have a friend who lent me a portable hard drive loaded with music. Most of it didn't interest me, but I did manage to download the classic Huey Lewis record, "Sports." Naturally I thought of you.

Aaron Shurtleff | April 22, 2009
Re: The re-ordering of Achievements. As a person who couldn't string together 5 straight wins to save his life, I would consider that much harder to achieve than defeating 25 different opponents, which I only need one more to do. That's just my opinion, though. Can't let Scott make a change without a single complaint! :P

Scott Hardie | April 24, 2009
The five-consecutive-concerts rule isn't easy, but there are shortcuts to getting it. The one that intimidates me is the one that requires a daily victory for three weeks, which requires a volume of playing that I just can't do right now. It has been unlocked, however, so I know it's possible someday. I'm working on some new rules to add soon.