j$ wrote:Maybe "indistinguishable" is the wrong word, I mean clearly this and your "all hail the snake" do not sound the same. There is a "good, not great" bar that Merisan set - in my head only, obviously! - which I could almost use as my benchmark for ordering other competitors in each round. i get frustrated because I believe that there is a truly great album from the two of you, well within your current capacities, that is just waiting to be unleashed, if you could get if not off the rails, a little away from them, a bit. So much talent, so much energy, so much rightness, that you couldn't make a bad song; but of the few Merisan songs I have heard, you've yet to make a great one. I believe you will and I get frustrated that you haven't. Man.
I can certainly listen to a Ramones best-of album, say, and never question where between constistency and complacency they lie. But they had a stick, a reason,a specific mission statement. The bands I truly love evolve and change, not wildly, or quickly, but they change. While still retaining their USP / identity. Compare the first five Clash albums and tell me any one sounds like another. Yet tell me you don't know it's the Clash as soon as you hear it.t
j$
I don't know whether to be flattered or frustrated.
We're just trying to make some good songs, not climb Mt. Olympus and sit among the Ramones or the Clash. So I'm flattered you think that's even remotely possible for us, but I'm also frustrated at the possibility that we're being held to a different standard because of perceptions of our potential. I personally don't hold anybody in Song Fight! to those kinds of standards, given the fact that we're all amateurs/hobbyists and we work under totally ridiculous time constraints. I expect crap and when the occasional great song comes along I am pleasantly surprised.
Maybe I'll try judging again next year. I know it's a pretty thankless and tiresome job at times, so, thanks j$ for taking the time to do it.