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Hello All,

This is an announcement for a quasi-vanity trash side event I'm currently in the process of writing. This will be a yet-to-be-named (taking suggestions) trash event on the broadly defined subject of rock music. I'm writing this because I think my time playing quiz bowl is drawing to a close and I've kind of always wanted to write something like this.

This event will consist of at least five packets (perhaps more like seven or even more if people want to make an actual competitive event out of this) of twenty tossups each which can be played shootout style or in teams or however the hell the folks playing want to do it. Why only tossups? Because I both dislike and stink at (in my opinion) writing bonuses.

A word about the subject matter of this little project: I want this event to test the depth of knowledge players have about rock music and its history. Thus, answer selection will be geared towards music that I think has had an important influence over the past 60+ years. This is where the "quasi-vanity" comes in. I'll be using my best judgement to determine what's objectively influential/important, but I may also delve into my own tastes a bit. For example, if you like late 70s Arena Rock like Styx and Foreigner, you'll probably be out of luck as I'll be writing about more critically respected bands (i.e. ones that played at CBGB). Also, things like Heavy Metal, Rap/Hip Hop, Jazz, bland Pop, etc will have little to no representation as I simply don't think I know enough to write good questions on those genres. Now, that does not mean there will be 1 Obscure Indie Rock band and 1 Bob Dylan album per packet, but my interest in things such as that may seep through in what some may perceive as disproportionate clue/answer selection.

Right now in the writing process, I'm trying to be as mainstream as possible in answer selection, writing things I believe to be gettable by the casual music fan. However, difficulty is hard to judge, as evidenced by the fact the "Highway 61 Revisited" came up in both Harvard International and NSC. My goal for this project is to have a good number of tossups answerable by the player who just occasionally listens to oldies/classic rock, a good number of tossups that appeal to real fans of the subject, and a few crazy tossups answerable by true elitist bastards.

So, to cut to the chase, here's the distribution as I currently envision it. If Rose and Valerie start screaming from the gallery that something should be changed, I'll take it under consideration.

20 Tossups per packet

5 Songs:
1-2 Pre-1970
1-2 1970-1979
1-2 1980-1989
1 1990-Present

5 Albums:
1-2 Pre-1970 (most likely post 1960 as well)
1-2 1970-1979
1-2 1980-1989
1 1990-Present

5 Artists/Bands:
1 Pre-early 1960s (This will be where foundational folk/blues/R&B things come in)
3 1960-1990 (It's hard to pigeonhole an artist to a specific year, so that's why the spread is so large here. I'll try and space things up as evenly as possible).
1 Post-1990

5 Other:
1 Common Link
1 "Trash" Music (crappy songs, crappy bands, etc.)
2 Misc (This will be things like historical events, music technology, Music in books/film/etc, and stuff that just doesn't fit elsewhere)
1 other Artist/Album/Song

Questions will be ACF style with no powers (unless you people are dying to have them). None will be more than eight lines, and I'll try and keep a little less than seven. Also, as you might be able to infer from this annoyingly lengthy post, my questions tend to run long, so I'd be interested in having one or two people read them over before they go to market and give me suggestions (if interested PM me or e-mail esser dot nolan at gmail dot com). Right now, I've been writing for about five days and have about a packet and a half finished and am writing with a drive I've never experience before, so hopefully this can get done fairly soon. However, I might get bogged down with work when school starts, so I can't really give a timetable for when this will be finished, though I can almost guarantee I'll be done by Christmas at the latest, if not much earlier. If any of you fall tournament TDs out there want to talk about it, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Anyway, please let me know if you'd be interested in playing this so I can gauge interest and determine if I'm writing this in vain. I imagine that it'll be around ten bucks a person depending on the number of packets. I'm really enjoying writing this and I hope you'll enjoy playing it.


Nolan

I feel like there are too many album questions, assuming the answerlines will be albums.

Cheynem wrote:I feel like there are too many album questions, assuming the answerlines will be albums.

I thought this would be one of the issues with the distribution and it's the thing I feel shakiest about. I feel I can write that album distribution, but I'm sort of unsure the answer space is big enough for decent conversion. How would people like to see it altered?

Habitat_Against_Humanity wrote:

Cheynem wrote:I feel like there are too many album questions, assuming the answerlines will be albums.

I thought this would be one of the issues with the distribution and it's the thing I feel shakiest about. I feel I can write that album distribution, but I'm sort of unsure the answer space is big enough for decent conversion. How would people like to see it altered?

I think you can comfortably do 1 or 2 album tossups per round. I would like to see songs and artists get the bump instead.

I do agree with Auroni that the questions would be better to be more geared towards Songs and Artists and less on actual albums. Either way I'd like to play this.

Album questions are fine when the albums cross a certain notability or have a recognizable title track. I don't see a problem with many album tossups if the latter model is used often (in other words, a few clues about other songs from an album that lead in to what is essentially a tossup on the title track).

Album tossups are tough to do; for something of a vanity event like this, you can probably do some ones that would normally be poor choices, but tossing up Argy Bargy; English Settlement; The Dirty South; Here, My Dear; From a Basement on the Hill; etc. - albums that are of value but not particularly famed - will work far less well than doing something on a song, the artist, common link things, whatever.

I would pay twice the entry fee to this (or any) tournament to hear a toss-up on "The Dirty South."

Fred wrote:The Dirty South

Well, there goes the ability to use "a song from this album features the question-writer's name" as a clue. But no, things like The Dirty South and its ilk will not be coming up. I'm sticking with albums that have aged well and appear and "Top X albums" lists. I don't really anticipate the older albums being an issue; I think there is a core group of albums that are known to most music fans. That's what I'll be writing on. Sticking with notability may be a little harder to do as I move closer to the present since an album from the mid 90s has had less time to establish itself. I think there will be plenty of stuff known the average music fan.

I'm pretty excited about this and would love to play it if it's mirrored somewhere close, but if not I'd be happy to look over the questions or write, since from what little I can tell from the original post and your avatar we have similar music interests.

Update: So as of last Sunday, this was going great. I had/have 60+ tossups written. Then my Mac decided to die. Files were backed up two or three days beforehand, so I shouldn't lose too much if anything, but I'm on a bit of a hiatus at the moment waiting for the computer to get fixed. School starts Monday and I'll be in what I hear is a fairly intense internship, so the pace may slow down a bit, but I still think I can get this done well before Christmas.

Dear God Nolan please tell me when this is ready.

Nolan,

How's the progress on the set?

Edward Elric wrote:Nolan,

How's the progress on the set?

Slow and not to my satisfaction. It will get done though, come hell or high water.

Habitat_Against_Humanity wrote:

Edward Elric wrote:Nolan,

How's the progress on the set?

Slow and not to my satisfaction. It will get done though, come hell or high water.

Oh come on Nolan, you know when the Huron River starts flooding, it backs up into Hell Creek, and thus all the lakes near Hell flood causing high water in Hell.

How is this side event coming?

Any plans to use this at the HSNCT?

Yeah, that's a thing wrote:Any plans to use this at the HSNCT?

Really no. I feel awful, but the writing process on this thing has completely stalled. By my count, I have 66 tossups written. I certainly plan on finishing this, but I didn't anticipate in August how busy my days would be once the school year started. Part of me really wants to power through this, but I'm sort of tempted to offer some of the questions as potential candidates for CO Trash, assuming it exists this year.

If this doesn't get finished (and if you still have the questions) would you consider releasing them to the public?

Huh, I thought I posted this here, but I guess I didn't. Some of my questions for this are being put into the Seth Teitler's Intimate Engagement (hey, how's that for a prescient tournament name?) set. I don't imagine that all of them will be used, so I'll release whatever doesn't get used when the set is finished.