My Favourite Band is Far Superior to Your Favourite Band, Perhaps
We all like to think we have better musical taste than our cohorts; it's an essential element of the human condition. Now, thanks to a new website, you can actually get charts and graphs to justify your position.
Songkick.com is a London-based site dedicated to helping you find a good concert to see in your area. They do so by monitoring Amazon sales, blogosphere activity, and various MySpace statistics (song plays, profile views and number of friends) from the last five weeks and applying an undisclosed algorithm to come up with a proprietary ranking for every band in their database.
The coolest thing about the site is their Battle of the Bands page, which allows you to put in any three bands and compare their stats. So I thought it would be fun to put together a TO-centric battle royale to see who would come out on top.
In the gold corner, currently touring their soon to be released album Elephant Shell - Tokyo Police Club! In the blue corner, kicking major butt at the Radiohead Remix Contest, the electronic combo with the name you cannot tame - Holy Fuck! And, in the red corner, this town's sonic equivalent to the beloved Leafs (they're way past their prime, but still filling arenas for some inexplicable reason) - Rush! ...and Fight!
Looking at the Amazon stats, we'll see that Rush are sticking to their tried-and-true slow-and-steady approach, while Holy Fuck peak early and then drop-off, but what's this, coming up on the outside? TPC make their album available for download and their sales come out on top.
In the Blog Posts round, we see nobody's talking about Rush whatsoever. TPC had a fair bit of hype going on a few weeks ago, perhaps fuelled by their keyboardist's bathroom blog, but all the sensation over their Radiohead remix last week is giving bonus points to Holy Fuck.
In the MySpace stats, Rush proves that being a household name has its advantages; no one can beat them in profile views, even though TPC seems to have the most listens and friends.
When it's all put together and run through the Songkick number crunching thingamabob, it looks like Rush comes out on top more often than not, which means that I was right about everything in high school and everything since then has been a lie. Wait a minute, that can't be right! I don't even like Rush! I demand a recount!
Photo of Neil Peart by BlogTO Flickr pooler Jazmin$Million
Comments (8)
I used to love them. I've seen them at least 5 times. I just get tired of things and start looking elsewhere. Enjoy the show.
Hey now, YYZ is my Toronto anthem! In fact, if the song played every time I opened the BlogTO page I would be a much happier man!
Saw Rush last year at the ACC, hope to see them in July. "way past their prime"? Hardly. They still play and sound great. Neil Peart said himself that he's never been happier with his drumming.Whether or not you like their music (I have for some 25 years), these guys have been making music since they were in high school. They have stuck to their guns, done things their own way, even though it was more difficult. They could've sold out, they didn't. If anything, you should be proud that they are from Toronto. Aside from being known as one of the best drummers in the world, (and one of the most focused) Neil Peart has written half a dozen books and articles (not to mention he's read more books than you'll probably ever see). He's also an avid cyclist (bi-and motor) x-xountry skier, bird-watcher, etc. So, when you say "filling arenas for some inexplicable reason"...well, no, the reason is quite clear, 3 very professional musicians (who happen to be funny guys) who have made great music for over 30 years together. No breakups, no drama, no phony reunion tours. I know, it's cool for you, being young and hip, to knock the old guys. These guys could live anywhere and two of them still choose to live in and support Toronto.
Past their prime?...please. These guys are in their early 50'sthey extended their tour and are playing shows every other night. For crying out loud, you wanna knock someone, knock Loverboy. They got on stage with the Foo Fighters a few weeks ago to jam "YYZ", ar eyou gonna knock the Foo Fighters for hanging out with "old guys"?
Cool phot of The Professor, BTW.
Hi Steve,
It was a joke - relax. I greatly admire Rush for who they are and what they've done, even if I haven't gotten much out of their recorded output since Moving Pictures. They're one of the hardest working indie bands ever.
For the record, I'm far from young, and I'm definitely not hip, but it's nice to hear that some might think so. In reality, I'm chubby, balding, and in my forties.
And picking on Loverboy would be like shooting fish in a barrel. No one in their right mind would stick up for them.
Keep the fire, dude!
I'm chubby, balding, and in my forties.
My Brother!!! : - )
I didn't mean to get carried away. Their new album is probably their best since "Moving Pictures", but really, they sounded great last summer.
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