First I need to ask: Is anybody else planning to vote in either the Wildcard or the 2801-3000 block before the vote ends?

I ask because it'd be nice if I could assemble the draw on Sunday when I'm not working as opposed to Monday when I am.

Here's a brief description of how I'm planning to run the elimination draw, in order to give people a chance to object.

The 128 qualifiers will be split into eight 'divisions' based on year, and those divisions will be seeded 1-16, then the draw will be run NCAA style (1-16, 8-9, 4-13, etc).

Eight votes will be run at a time, until the final 16 when each round (Except the final of course) will be split into two groups. Each vote will run one week. This means the game ends in about mid-December.

Votes will not be posted here. Please send them to AMModeratePoll@gmail.com. Comments in the vote emails are welcome and encouraged but not required. Comments in this thread, of course, are welcome. (Especially campaigning for people to listen to albums they may not have!)

Ties will be broken, if possible, by getting my music loving friends to throw in a vote, but if necessary by canceling my own vote.

A word about voting: It's ideal if you only vote when you've heard both albums from front to back, but use your judgment. If Album A is your absolute favorite of all time and Album B is an album by a band whose other albums you're not fond of, it's fine to vote for Album A. But if you have no exposure to Album B at all, maybe you should check it out on Lala or something before voting against it. And please, no voting for albums you haven't heard because you hate/want to eliminate the album they're against.

All that said, the full bracket is going to be up on bracketmaker.com, and the first elimination vote starts Monday night.

And voting is officially CLOSED.

The full bracket can be viewed here:

http://www.bracketmaker.com/tmenu.cfm?tid=329857&tclass=

And yes, the character limit was small enough that it cut off a lot of the album titles.

Some statistics about the bracket:

Bands with 3 albums: Beck, Belle and Sebastian, Elliot Smith, Pavement, REM, Spoon, The Beatles, The Decemberists

Bands with 2 albums: Aimee Mann, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd, Sleater-Kinney, Sufjan Stevens, Super Furry Animals, The Cure, The Flaming Lips, The Hold Steady, The National, They Might Be Giants

1950s: 1
1960s: 12
1970s: 16
1980s: 15
1990s: 37
2000s: 47

Years with most qualifiers:
2003: 6
1996: 6
1997: 7
2004: 8
1998: 9
2005: 9

If anyone's wondering how Alligator wound up with a higher seed than Boxer, keep in mind the formula was supposed to give a hedge to the albums lower down the list.

And, the first group of matchups:

1959-1971 division:
1. The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour
16. Bridgette Fontaine - Comme a la Radio

1971-1982 division:
8. The Cure - Faith
9. Electric Light Orchestra - A New World Record

1983-1992 division:
5. Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend
12. Ry Cooder - Paris, Texas

1993-1997 division:
4. Pavement - Wowee Zowee
13. Tom Petty - Wildflowers

1997-1999 division:
3. Beck - Mutations
14. System Of A Down - System Of A Down

1999-2002 division:
6. Spoon - Kill The Moonlight
11. The Shins - Oh, Inverted World

2003-2005 division:
7. TV On The Radio - Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes
10. Interpol - Antics

2005-2007 division:
2. The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
15. The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday

Feel free to comment in this thread, especially feel free to campaign for people to listen to albums they may have not. As mentioned in the above post, do not vote in this thread. I won't post every ballot unless people want me to, but I will post any comments sent with the votes.

Every round will end Sunday at midnight board time.

If I want to be honest about my voting, I could only contribute to one of these first battles, since that's the only album couple I've listened to completely. Hopefully you get plenty of participants.

I think the bracketmaker site is kind of neat though... I just love staring at the March Madness layout in the paper when it comes out. It gave me an idea for another game that would let us really get to know the music tastes of a fellow AMer. What if we made a bracket of the top 64 songs of an individual AM forum participant (conveniently archived in the all-time songs forum, though no doubt changed by now) and let everyone else listen to our favorites, and choose a champion? If we accumulate enough champions we could even have a sweet 16 of some kind, pitting all the song champions against eachother.

There's a risk that the same songs will just be voted the top again, but on the other hand it could create some interesting matchups.

Regardless, thanks BillAdama for setting this up.

Bracketmaker.com is really useful for this sort of thing.

Jonah, I deliberately left room for personal judgment as to whether you're qualified to vote in any given matchup. Like, for example, if Crane Wife happens to be an album you love, and you haven't heard Separation Sunday but hate Boys And Girls In America, I don't expect you to go shell out money for the whole album before you can vote for The Crane Wife.

But, I do hope you at least go on Lala and listen to a few tracks from Separation Sunday to make sure you're judging it fairly.

Because I don't want people just automatically voting for the album they've heard, but I don't want the album that's everyone's favorite to lose because only one or two people have heard the one it's up against and they both vote for it either.

I was able to find most of the albums I hadn't heard on Lala, with one exception. Paris, Texas is just not on it. The title track is, and I like it, so I'm thinking of voting for it, but I want to hear more of it first, and all I can find are thirty second samples.

I'd like to take a moment to mention that bracketmaker.com has a prediction game built in. Right now three people have filled out brackets. If that number gets to ten, I'll throw in a prize. Any album in the draw attainable under $20.

I can't find the time to listen to all the albums. There are too many to listen to every week.

Did you get mine? I e-mailed it. Just checking.

Greg: Yeah, I got your vote.

Rune: It's fine to vote in some matchups and abstain from others. If people don't want to devote huge blocks of time to listen to every single album they haven't heard, they don't have to. But I hope you're at least voting for any albums you really feel strongly for.

Would anyone rather the early rounds be slowed down so they have time to listen to more? Like Matt I don't want to break it up so much the game goes on for another year, but there's no reason the second and third rounds can't be done in four matchups at a time instead of eight. It would just extend the game another month and a half and finish in late January instead of mid December.

I would be in favour of extending the early rounds. I think it would give people a bit more time to sample any albums they haven,t listened to yet. My intention once we got to this stage was to fully listen to any albums I had not heard before, but 1 week does put a bit of pressure on, particularly if something crops up to but a spanner in the works, which has happened with me this week.

BillAdama, I think this is a really fantastic game that I,m sure has unearthed many wonderful hidden gems for most people; Anthony's Millenium post being a perfect example, so I really think that extending it out a little bit would be beneficial for people.

If the first round was done four at a time instead of eight also, the game would run into late March.

Since the point of the game was to get people to find new hidden gems, I guess I could do that if it meant everyone would have time to hear stuff and vote.

If we do decide to change it to four, only the first four matchups will be counted this week, and anyone who voted in the other four will have their votes saved until next week.

Yeah can we please extend the time? That would be really great, as I've gotten unusually busy recently.

Ok, since a lot of people seem to feel this way, here's my ruling:

Four matchups per week. But, the quarterfinal and semifinal round will happen in one week instead of two. At least that way it's a 12 week increase instead of a 14.

The four matchups for this week will be the 1-16, 8-9, 4-13, and 5-12 mentioned earlier. Anyone's vote in the other four will be saved for next week. In addition, there will be two extra days for the first week of voting because of the change. After that, it will go back to just being a week.

I just noticed all the prediction brackets. I think its funny how we all picked the same winner.

Do you need any more of a time extension than the 'four per week instead of eight' change we already made? This game is starting to get lengthier than I intended.

This game is already going into March, so I really don't want to extend it any further. So how about this. I post the entire schedule for the first round, so you can look ahead and prioritize any listening you want to do for it?

Just gimme a few hours.