The Fall Albums League 2008 will be a round robin series of matches between the 27 studio albums (including Seminal Live, which has a substantial studio element). Each album will meet every other album once over the 26 week course of the competition. As there is an odd number of albums taking part, one album will get a bye each week. A points table will be kept on the following scoring system:

2 points for a win
1 point for a draw
0 points for a loss

1 bonus point will be awarded if a winning album receives 80% or more of the votes in a match.

In the event of a tie in the final table placings, the ranking will be determined by reference to the votes for/against differential.

The league line-up is as follows:

1. Live At The Witch Trials
2. Dragnet
3. Grotesque
4. Slates
5. Hex Enduction Hour
6. Room To Live
7. Perverted By Language
8. The Wonderful And Frightening World Of...
9. This Nation's Saving Grace
10. Bend Sinister
11. The Frenz Experiment
12. I Am Kurious Oranj
13. Seminal Live
14. Extricate
15. Shift-Work
16. Code: Selfish
17. The Infotainment Scan
18. Middle Class Revolt
19. Cerebral Caustic
20. The Light User Syndrome
21. Levitate
22. The Marshall Suite
23. The Unutterable
24. Are You Are Missing Winner
25. The Real New Fall LP Formerly 'Country On The Click'
26. Fall Heads Roll
27. Reformation Post TLC

This will kick off in under 24 hours....

Sounds fun :D (as long as PBL doesn't win)

Ditto, except replace the reference to PBL with TWAFWOTF. ;) :lol:

Wot no Interim? :o

Can't wait! Thanks, Conway. :applaud:

B) Guess my vote...
Thanks, Conway!

For ease of comparison between the LPs, I will be basing my votes on the original version of the LP, as defined in the discography section, and not on alternative listings (e.g. Extricate tape vs vinyl etc) or subsequent re-releases with added tracks.

So should everyone, IMO

Will there be side bets again? Not for the sake of winning anything valuable, just for fun.

I suggested the following in another thread. Requires a bit of effort though... -_-

As you're the one who invented this ingenious system you're entitled to calculate the participants' points (except your own, of course). :blink:

I knew there had to be a catch... :lol:

I'd be happy to do it though.

I've used the Ipod ratings to try to puts some science behind what my preferences will be.

Plumped for a percentage score based on the sum of each LPs song ratings with an extra point for 5 star, so 5 star gets 6 points and the others attract 1-4 points according to their rating.

E.g an LP with 10 tracks gets a possible total score of 50.

If the LP has 9 3 star songs and 1 5 star song it will get 33 points or 66%.

Seems to capture the true relative worth in my mind.

Will resort to personal listenings where the % scores are very close.

I was about to create a thread to kick it off, but it seems only Conway can make them in this subforum...

guys, ive got a feeling this is going to be epic

Hurrah.

Sorry, too late now. "Rehearsals & live" - it doesn't really count anyway.

Perhaps you could try just picking the top 10, that would make it a bit easier on everyone... Once a decision is reached, I'll open up a separate thread for people to post their lists.

The one problem with an odd number of albums is that the table will only give a true ranking at the end of the final week, once every album has had its bye week. I guess I'll mark on the table which albums have had their bye week to date.

Fair enough for me I guess, allthough it would deprive us of the sadistic joy of predicting the relegation candidates... :devil:

Well, if everyone wants to rank the whole 27 that's fine by me...

Just like to note that I haven't heard a few of these albums so won't be voting in any poll where there is an unknown factor.

For the beggars albums, where many of us haven't heard the original article, am I voting for the "current" track listing, or the original LP version?

This is my first Fall League Cup, and I don't want to f' things up.

A suggestion to the FL administration.

Once this inaugural Album League is finished, can the final table be split in two and from thereon be a Division 1 and Division 2, with promotion and relegation each year?

I didn't vote in last year's cup cos I was on dial-up and it took too long.
This year I am keen to participate, and I got broadband, but still it seems a faff - I have just voted on the first wk's draw but i can't be arsed adding comments too. Is there any way this could be more user-friendy? Is it not possible to have all the matches on one page, rather than going back and forth all the time? Sorry to be such a lazy arse :zzzz:

Good question. It would certainly mean something for my votes.

I assumed it was the original LP tracklisting though, without bonus tracks...

:rolleyes: :lol:

The matches are up for a week. How about you comment on only 2 matches a day? Or would that take too long? :P

Its hardly worth commenting on some of them anyway....Grotesque Vs Reformation, Hex v Cerebral Caustic etc

It probably depends upon the version you're used to.

I got my first CD player in 1987 which made The Frenz Eperiment my initial Fall CD. Personally I never considered the bonus tracks on the albums up to Bend Sinister part of the LPs. If I counted Living Too Late and Auto-Tech Pilot as "real" Bend Sinister songs the record would surely receive more votes from me in the upcoming matches.

On the other hand post 1987 I bought all Fall albums exclusively on CD. Therefore I only found out much later in many cases that specific songs were actually bonus tracks. Now these tracklists are so branded into my mind that I'm not able to erase the bonus tracks.

I'm just going to vote for the easier ones now, then re-listen to all the close-ties together before voting....

Will Conway tell us when/before this week's voting will end?

Blimey, there was only a few "easy" ones...better get me LP's out, pronto!

I decided to do 5 head to heads this week.

10 Lps.

2 head to heads are done. The exercise was very helpful in deciding my vote, and pleasant too

:D

I'm being more impulsive - if you listen to the albums again, you may well decide one is better on a tuesday, then repeat the process on wednesday and come to a different conclusion...

I'm going on a general impression of which lp I prefer to listen to.

My comments therefore might be a bit dull anyway, eg I voted for hex cos i like it better than the other one, etc

A friend of mine once said you can only judge music on how it makes you feel - if it makes you feel good when you listen to it, then it must be good.

Obvious, simple, but true

I think you should try to consider the original LP tracklisting & ignore the bonus B-sides which appear on the CD. The discography (linked above) will help if you are unsure which tracks are which.

Having said that, there's probably only one album - The Wonderful & Frightening World - where the bonus tracks make such a substantial difference that they could affect the outcome.

I wasn't planning on doing it every year. Probably alternate it with the Fall Cup (individual songs). And personally, I'd rather keep all the albums in one league.

I can't do that on this forum set-up. What you can do with a tabbed browser is start at the index page & open up each poll in a separate tab. It's not that hard to flick through 14 polls a week, surely?!

The closing time is in the thread with the current week's draw. I'll try to stick to the same time throughout the competition:

"Polls will close at 10am GMT* on Tuesday [, 26 Feburary 2008.]

* = 10am UK; 5am US Eastern; 2am US Pacific; 11pm New Zealand; 9pm Australian Eastern."

And I'll give warnings each week as we near the closing of the polls, like I did with the Fall Cup.

From the votes so far, it looks like The Marshall Suite, Hex, Dragnet, Grotesque and This Nation's Saving Grace are heading for a bonus point and will top the table after the first round.

No real surprises there, except for The Marshall Suite perhaps (yay! :applaud: )

Early days, son... early days.