We've come to the final installment in our series of favorite song polls: Time's Incinerator. Although one may argue about whether it is actually an album or not, it does contain enough new songs that it makes sense to include it as well.

The next poll will be the grand finale, where the winning songs of the previous polls will face off in fierce competition in a discography-spanning battle for glory. Until then, be sure to go back and make sure that you have voted in all of the earlier polls so that you're giving your favorites the best chance of reaching the final.

I can't vote on this one. I've listened to this exactly one time, put it away and never took it out again.

Not much of a question for me. If you discount the songs that were later released on Karl sold the truck, there are only a couple songs of real note. The best by far in my opinion is Nowhere To Go. I want to say that was a Danny song, and it just really sounds great. Considering they wrote/played that back in '81, it really was "ahead of it's time". It also starts to show the "countryish" sound that would later be seen in parts of Made To Be Broken. It also is one of the songs where they weren't trying to be "punk rock" or "loud fast rules" or whatever.

Also, you can't beat Karl's monologue at the beginning.

And the sheep were mighty nervous,
Phil

Never heard it.

We could also have a poll for Dave's solo album too. I would venture to guess that most people on here are familiar with it.

-Rob

we could absolutely poll daves record.

Homesick wrote:The next poll will be the grand finale, where the winning songs of the previous polls will face off in fierce competition in a discography-spanning battle for glory.

I don't mean to nit pick, since I know this is intended as fun, but what exactly would the "winning" song from such a poll be considered? It would be misleading to consider it the favorite song overall, since a list of favorites culled from the favorites off each individual album is not the same as a true list of favorites. For example, the favorite song off Time's Incinerator will be in the running, whereas there are songs that are people's second, third, and fourth favorites off other albums that they would probably consider better than their favorite song off TI. And while "Closer to the Stars" is one of Soul Asylum's very best songs, it might not even end up in the final, list since most people don't like the While You Were Out version as much as they like the later version.

Out of the "new" songs on here, Nowhere to Go does have the funny Karl monologue. I always did like Freeway too...I bought Time's Incinerator the summer I learned to drive.

I associate TI with staying up late and playing Tetris too. I suppose it was an enjoyable enough listen, but I didn't understand enough of the words to sing along, so I could devote my late-night brainpower toward the Tetris game.

Miss Fitt 2 wrote:I don't mean to nit pick, since I know this is intended as fun, but what exactly would the "winning" song from such a poll be considered? It would be misleading to consider it the favorite song overall, since a list of favorites culled from the favorites off each individual album is not the same as a true list of favorites.

I'm well aware of that, and you're right in that the list won't be completely fair (although the ultimate winner should still be the same come to think of it, that's not necessarily true). The alternative would be to create a single humongous poll where all of the options are present. This would make for a lot of entries with no votes, though, and it would be harder to get a good overview of the results (since the list would be so long). Either way, there's really no good way to include a contemporary version of Closer To the Stars in a poll like this, since you'd ultimately have to include any and all songs that have changed since their initial recording, and there's still the trouble of deciding which incarnation to use.

I guess we could do a poll like this sometime, of course, but I've gone with this option for now since I think it's more interesting. There are two factors that I'm still thinking of, though:

• How many songs from each poll should qualify for the final?
• How many options should each user be allowed to vote for? (phpBB3 supports multiple-option polls.)

As for Faces & Names, I think that's best saved for a separate poll.

Homesick wrote:I'm well aware of that, and you're right in that the list won't be completely fair (although the ultimate winner should still be the same come to think of it, that's not necessarily true). The alternative would be to create a single humongous poll where all of the options are present. This would make for a lot of entries with no votes, though, and it would be harder to get a good overview of the results (since the list would be so long). Either way, there's really no good way to include a contemporary version of Closer To the Stars in a poll like this, since you'd ultimately have to include any and all songs that have changed since their initial recording, and there's still the trouble of deciding which incarnation to use.

Oh, I wasn't trying to complicate things. I was mostly focusing on how you would be "billing" the winning song, since it could be misleading to call it the favorite song overall. It might be more accurate to call it "Favorite Album Track." That way, it takes into account both the fact that the list was culled from favorites off the specific albums, as well as the omission of other fan favorites (e.g.,there seems to be a lot of love for "Freak Accident" on this board) from the list.