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Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

This summer I'm going to have a bit of time on my hands, so I thought I'd take a stab at creating a game for this summer.

The game would be called "The Acclaimed Music World Tour" and the basic premise is that we would pick our favorite artists and songs each week based on geography. Every week the "tour" will stop in a different city, and we'd vote on two things, the "opening act" and the "set list".

The "opening act" is just a vote for the best artist from or associated with a particular city. Each voter would have 10 points to give to however many artists they like, and the artist with the most points wins.

The "set list" would be a top-ten list of the best songs associated with a certain city/region. Each voter would have 25 points to give to however many songs they like, and then I'd compile the top ten.

I figure the easiest way to choose cities is for me to compile a basic list and then solicit any additional nominations. They can pretty much be based on anything: population (New York, London), record labels (Detroit, Memphis), general music heritage (New Orleans, the Mississippi Delta), concerts (Woodstock) or the location of forum regulars (Houston, Stockholm). Each week would also have a "venue" where I would start the post with pictures of a music venue in the particular location (and I'll take any recommendations by participants).

The "tour" would have "North American", "European" and "Rest of the World" legs. Here are my ideas for locations:

North America

Athens/Atlanta
Austin
Boston
Brooklyn
Chicago
Detroit
Houston
Los Angeles
Manhattan
Minneapolis
Mississippi Delta
Montreal
Nashville
New Jersey
New Orleans
Philadelphia
San Francisco
Seattle
Toronto
Woodstock

Europe

Berlin
Birmingham
Brussels
Dublin
Glasgow
Liverpool
London
Madrid
Manchester
Paris
Reykjavik
Stockholm

Rest of the World

Auckland
Kingston
Rio de Janeiro
Sydney
Timbuktu (really a vote on African music)

Some of my favorite posts on AM are when Honorio posts Spanish music, or nicolas' posts on French music. I think this would be a fun way to take a new approach to games on AMF and bring some local color into our games.

Oh, and part of the reason I want to do this is to outdo Hall of Acclaim or Bracketology

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Also, if you have a suggestion for a "tour stop" feel free to nominate it.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Dunedin/Christchurch, New Zealand!

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Oh, timeframe for this: I'll start this when Honorio has finished unveiling the results of the 60s songs poll. After that, the only thing going on will be Moderately Acclaimed Albums 2. Slick, Listyguy, I hope you won't mind that this will start as Survivor 2 and UMT 2 are in their final rounds.

The first "leg" of the tour, the North American one, will likely run into the winter, then there will be a hiatus for a bit followed by the other two legs.

Brad, unfortunately New Zealand is pretty low on acclaimed artists, so there can really only be one New Zealand round (tops), but Christchurch it is!

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

I think it's a really good idea, but I would expand the rest of the world section more. Japan, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden, maybe one stop for Eastern European countries.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Alex D
Oh, timeframe for this: I'll start this when Honorio has finished unveiling the results of the 60s songs poll. After that, the only thing going on will be Moderately Acclaimed Albums 2. Slick, Listyguy, I hope you won't mind that this will start as Survivor 2 and UMT 2 are in their final rounds.

The first "leg" of the tour, the North American one, will likely run into the winter, then there will be a hiatus for a bit followed by the other two legs.

Brad, unfortunately New Zealand is pretty low on acclaimed artists, so there can really only be one New Zealand round (tops), but Christchurch it is!


UMT2 Will be finished on June 7th

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

And the unacclaimed poll ? Moonbeam ?

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

BillAdama
I think it's a really good idea, but I would expand the rest of the world section more. Japan, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden, maybe one stop for Eastern European countries.


So far the continental Europe cities are Paris (France), Berlin (Germany, Switzerland and Austria), Madrid (Spain and Portugal), Stockholm (Sweden) and Brussels (Benelux).

How about a round each in:

Rome (Italy)
Helsinki (Finland, Denmark, Norway)
Cardiff (Wales)
Warsaw (Eastern Europe)
Havana (Central America)
Buenos Aires (South America)
Beirut (Middle East/North Africa)
Bombay (South Asia)
Tokyo (Japan)
Seoul (Rest of Asia)

That way the entire world is covered.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

i know there's a bunch of people on here interested in african music so i'd maybe add dakar, bamako, lagos and oran

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

This crude map is my idea for African regions:



The North African countries can be included in the Middle East since stylistically the music of the two regions is similar.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Those work.

I don't know what's going on with Unacclaimed. I think Moonbeam may be discouraged by the low participation.

I'd personally like to see it finished.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

You're not stepping on my toes, Survivor will be over in June. I'm antagonizing over some sort of albums game (and I know scheulese has it in the back of his head too).

As for NY, you could use many different venues: Jones Beach, Madison Square Garden, Nassua Coleseum, or the late Shea Stadium.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Alex D
Oh, timeframe for this: I'll start this when Honorio has finished unveiling the results of the 60s songs poll. After that, the only thing going on will be Moderately Acclaimed Albums 2. Slick, Listyguy, I hope you won't mind that this will start as Survivor 2 and UMT 2 are in their final rounds.

The first "leg" of the tour, the North American one, will likely run into the winter, then there will be a hiatus for a bit followed by the other two legs.

Brad, unfortunately New Zealand is pretty low on acclaimed artists, so there can really only be one New Zealand round (tops), but Christchurch it is!


Unacclaimed will return once my laptop (and hopefully its data ) come back from Toshiba.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Alex D

So far the continental Europe cities are Paris (France), Berlin (Germany, Switzerland and Austria), Madrid (Spain and Portugal), Stockholm (Sweden) and Brussels (Benelux).
.


I'm sorry but I don't understand this sentence. Why are you putting many country around one city ?

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Romain
Alex D

So far the continental Europe cities are Paris (France), Berlin (Germany, Switzerland and Austria), Madrid (Spain and Portugal), Stockholm (Sweden) and Brussels (Benelux).
.


I'm sorry but I don't understand this sentence. Why are you putting many country around one city ?


The idea is that we would cover music from multiple countries in one round.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Your map of Africa isn't bad Alex. I just ordered a great box set called 50 Years of African Music, made by the excellent French radio station RFI (Radio France Internationale, public radio, the French BBC World)
I understand that you want to keep it at 3 stops, but in fact the box set is divided into 6 regions

The five political subregions of the African Union so

- Northern Africa (Maghreb + Egypt Libya, Sudan, ...)
- West Africa (follow the coast from Mauritania to Nigeria + Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso)
- Southern Africa (SA Bostwana Namibia Lesotho Swaziland)
- East Africa
- Central Africa

and adds lusophone (Portuguese speaking) Africa (Cap Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Sao Tome...) which has a very specific musical tradition (Cesaria Evora and Bonga are the most acclaimed artists)

I found it very relevant, but for our forum this may be a little too much.

I agree with a 3 region format

Dakar (or Lagos) - Soweto - Kinshasa

Your maps puts together Eastern and Central, which is not a bad choice (although there's a big difference between Ethiopia and say, Congo in terms of popular music).

But I think Nigeria HAS to go with Western Africa. You can't separate afrobeat and juju from Ghanaian highlife, and Nigeria is a member of ECOWAS (the West African economic union).

So we could have 3 regions, Western, Central and Eastern Central covering a huge area from Ethiopia to Zimbabwe including Cameroon and Gabon).

if you want help for working out African stops, you can ask me. I know this part of the world pretty well.
Go to the Wikipedia page for Africa, you'll see the 5 regions and the list of countries for each.
Sorry for being so long but I just love this continent and its music that I'm just discovering.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

I originally had Nigeria in Central Africa because I thought it would be too much to have Kuti, Keita, N'Dour, Toure, etc. in one region and no big names in the other. But nicolas, you probably know a lot more about African music than I do, so Nigeria will go in W. Africa. Lagos, Kinshasa and Soweto it is.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

yes, and there will be a lot to discover in the remaining region : Ethiopia (fantastic scene in the 70s), Both Congos (one of the main music providers on the Continent since the 50's, from OK Jazz to Papa Wemba and Staff Benda Bilili), Angola, Ouganda (Jeffrey Oryema, great album for Real World), Cameroon (Manu di Bango)
Adding Malawi, Zimbabwe and Madagascar to the Southern region could also be an idea interms of balance, but I'm getting too specific

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

This is a fantastic idea!

I’m very in favor of games like this that are likely to introduce us to new stuff, rather than just having us vote for artists that are already our favorites (though that’s fun too).

I don’t know world music well, so I’ll leave that to the experts. But here are a few thoughts:

I think Memphis should really be on the list. I know there would be some overlap with “Mississippi Delta,” but that town’s music heritage seems too significant to leave out entirely.

Cases could also be made for Cleveland, St. Louis, Miami, and Washington/Northern Virginia, but the U.S. list is already pretty long.

In the U.K., I wonder if there’s a way to break the greater London area into two or three subdivisions, as you’ve done with the New York area.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

schleuse
In the U.K., I wonder if there’s a way to break the greater London area into two or three subdivisions, as you’ve done with the New York area.
London is generally divided in five areas: northwest, north (including the center), northeast, southeast and southwest. The easiest division would be along the Thames, giving us North London and South London. However, the northern part is larger and includes the center, which would give this division (just some major artists from London):

North:
Elvis Costello (North)
Cat Stevens (North)
Ian Dury (Northeast)
The Kinks (North)
The Who (Northwest)
Madness (Northwest)
Small Faces (Northeast)
Iron Maid (Northeast)
Sex Pistols (Northwest)
The Clash (Northwest)
Amy Winehouse (North)

South:
David Bowie (Southwest)
Squeeze (Southeast)
The Clash (Two members from Brixton, Southwest)
Siouxsie and the Banshees (Southeast)
The Streets (Southeast)

Dubious:
The Rolling Stones (Only Wyman and Watts are actually from London, respectively from the southeast and the north.)
Led Zeppelin (Only Page and Paul Jones are from London, respectively from the northeast and southwest)
The Jam (Greater London area)
The Police (None of the members are from London, Copeland not even being a Brit)
Sade (Lead vocalist is Nigerian)

I suppose we could completely arbitrarily add the dubious ones to the south, but it's not ideal. Three groups (east, west and north/center) would be more equally divided, but then where do we add the dubious ones?

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Someone may have already called Sydney, but I call in
Perth for additional Aussie representation. A lot of music I like comes from Perth.

In no real order:

John Butler Trio
Karnivool/Birds of Tokyo (share a lead singer, would kind of be hard)
The Panics
Tame Impala
Gyroscope
Institut Polaire
Hilltop Hoods

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

W
Someone may have already called Sydney, but I call in
Perth for additional Aussie representation. A lot of music I like comes from Perth.

In no real order:

John Butler Trio
Karnivool/Birds of Tokyo (share a lead singer, would kind of be hard)
The Panics
Tame Impala
Gyroscope
Institut Polaire
Hilltop Hoods

You forgot the greatest Perth band of all time,The Triffids...

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Oh, yeah! they'd probably be the headliners. Let's include them, too.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

schleuse
I think Memphis should really be on the list. I know there would be some overlap with “Mississippi Delta,” but that town’s music heritage seems too significant to leave out entirely.

Cases could also be made for Cleveland, St. Louis, Miami, and Washington/Northern Virginia, but the U.S. list is already pretty long.

In the U.K., I wonder if there’s a way to break the greater London area into two or three subdivisions, as you’ve done with the New York area.


I had Memphis on the original list and must have missed it somehow when making the post. The U.S. cities I most considered putting on but didn't were:

Miami
St. Louis
Portland
Kansas City

I think that in the future, after the "tour" has run its course if someone else wants to highlight additional cities/regions they'll be more than welcome to.

With regards London, I'd anticipated making it a "grand finale" of sorts, as it's easily the most acclaimed city, and it's hard to make a clean split like you can in New York with the boroughs.

Which reminds me, two, three or more rounds in New York? Manhattan (punk), Brooklyn (indie) and Bronx/Queens (hip-hop) seems to make most sense with three, for two it would be Manhattan/Bronx and then Brooklyn/Queens.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Midaso
W
Someone may have already called Sydney, but I call in
Perth for additional Aussie representation. A lot of music I like comes from Perth.

In no real order:

John Butler Trio
Karnivool/Birds of Tokyo (share a lead singer, would kind of be hard)
The Panics
Tame Impala
Gyroscope
Institut Polaire
Hilltop Hoods

You forgot the greatest Perth band of all time,The Triffids...


You guys want Perth, then Perth it is!

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Just a question, is it a world tour or a city world tour ?
Why do not take the name of the country and highlight the albums or songs for each country : German, Brasilian, Corean, American, english, French, etc.

If you take 20 cities for representing one country and one city for representing several countries in the same time, I find it strange.
What I want to say : if this game is here for discovering music, I don't know if it's necessary to push the cities where a lot of know bands or singer exist, no ? It would be better to put countries or cities with unknown bands (but how decided which band exist if nobodies know them, I don't know).

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Romain
Just a question, is it a world tour or a city world tour ?
Why do not take the name of the country and highlight the albums or songs for each country : German, Brasilian, Corean, American, english, French, etc.

If you take 20 cities for representing one country and one city for representing several countries in the same time, I find it strange.
What I want to say : if this game is here for discovering music, I don't know if it's necessary to push the cities where a lot of know bands or singer exist, no ? It would be better to put countries or cities with unknown bands (but how decided which band exist if nobodies know them, I don't know).


It is cities. The problem is that doing only cities leaves a lot of the world uncovered (we can't possibly do every city in the world that has produced a few artists). By having a city represent a whole region, we can cover areas of the world we might not have been able to otherwise.

The point of the game isn't just to discover new music, it's to celebrate the music we do know as well. Some people will know the music of a particular city or region better than others. I'm just choosing what most people consider the most important places for music.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Alex, are you gonna give us a final list of cities from the star or is it likely to evolve ?

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

After this week this is the plan I have for the next few rounds:

Seattle
Calgary/Vancouver (I haven't decided where exactly, but the idea is Western Canada)
Minneapolis
Austin
Houston
Athens
Nashville
Memphis
Mississippi Delta
Chicago
Detroit
Toronto
Montreal
Boston
Philadelphia
Asbury Park (New Jersey)
Woodstock
Brooklyn
Manhattan

Havana
Buenos Aires
Rio de Janeiro
Soweto
Kinshasa
Lagos
Beirut
Bombay
Hong Kong
Tokyo
Christchurch
Sydney
Perth

Stockholm
Berlin
Warsaw
Vienna
Rome
Madrid
Paris
Brussels
Dublin
Glasgow
Manchester
Cardiff
Birmingham
London

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Alex D
Brooklyn
Manhattan

Being a New Yorker, I think that one of these should include Queens/Long Island (Probably Brooklyn). I would also recomend the Venue to be Shea Stadium (R.I.P.) A lot of great groups, including the Beatles, played their over the years. But, it was in Queens.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Alex

You forgot New Orleans !!

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

It's right there in the list though.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

I was referring to the second list he made that's why

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Haha, right. My bad. That's what happens when you start traveling and stop reading every single post.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

nicolas
Alex

You forgot New Orleans !!


My bad, it will be after Houston, before Athens.

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

Alex, I have an idea about the very big cities, I mean New York and London

Why don't we just pick several venues associated with a particular genre (mainstram/classic, soul/rap, punk/indie, electro ) ?

I'll come up soon with a few suggestions about towns. I think (or maybe it's just because I love roots music) that we could use at least one more Southern town (like for example, split Atlanta and Athens)
Atlanta : Ray Charles, J Brown, Outkast...
Athens : REM, Drive-by Truckers, B52's...

In UK, Sheffield or another Northeastern town (Leeds, Newcastle) could be cool, as well as maybe Bristol or anothern Southwestern stop (Massive Attack, Portishead, PJ Harvey...)

Re: Forum Game Idea: Acclaimed Music World Tour

nicolas
Alex, I have an idea about the very big cities, I mean New York and London

Why don't we just pick several venues associated with a particular genre (mainstram/classic, soul/rap, punk/indie, electro ) ?

I'll come up soon with a few suggestions about towns. I think (or maybe it's just because I love roots music) that we could use at least one more Southern town (like for example, split Atlanta and Athens)
Atlanta : Ray Charles, J Brown, Outkast...
Athens : REM, Drive-by Truckers, B52's...

In UK, Sheffield or another Northeastern town (Leeds, Newcastle) could be cool, as well as maybe Bristol or anothern Southwestern stop (Massive Attack, Portishead, PJ Harvey...)


I'll think about the big cities idea. It might be an issue determining which genres are good enough for which cities and which acts belong in which genres.

Atlanta and Athens could definitely be split. Then the South has those two, Houston, Austin, New Orleans, Miss. Delta, Memphis and Nashville. I think that's good enough.

Bristol certainly deserves a stop and Sheffield is a good idea, a strong candidate. I can both to the list.