For the second day of the Division Championships we visit Divisions E, F, G and H. These match ups feature 60s and 70s rock and roll in its prime. Listen to the songs here (except for Here Comes the Sun) and vote by commenting below or emailing LTDdotorg@gmail.com by 8pm Friday.
Once again, enjoy the “You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?” feature.
Division E Championship: #5 Here Comes The Sun (The Beatles) vs. #3 Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen)
Here Comes the Sun defeated: Safety Dance (Men Without Hats), Can’t Get Enough of Your Love (Barry White), Won’t Get Fooled Again (Who), Beat It (Michael Jackson).
Bohemian Rhapsody defeated: Losing My Edge (LCD Soundsystem), Graceland (Paul Simon), In My Life (Beatles), Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin).
Division F Championship: #1 The Weight (The Band) vs. #2 Hurt (Johnny Cash)
The Weight defeated: Someday Never Comes (CCR), Wonderwall (Oasis), Come on Eileen (Dexy’s Midnight Runners), Suspicious Minds (Elvis Presley).
Hurt defeated: Deacon Blues (Steely Dan), I Held Her in My Arms (Violent Femmes), Where the Streets Have No Name (U2), Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash).
Division G Championship: #1 All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) vs. #3 Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen)
All Along the Watchtower defeated:Up On the Roof (Drifters), Sulk (Radiohead), Paranoid Android (Radiohead), With or Without You (U2).
Thunder Road defeated: Poison Ivy (Coasters), Today Was A Good Day (Ice Cube), Roll Away Your Stone (Mumford and Sons), Night Moves (Bob Seger).
Division H Championship: #1 Baba O’Riley (The Who) vs. #2 American Girl (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers)
Baba defeated: Idioteque (Radiohead), Bat Out of Hell (Meatloaf), Wonderful World (Sam Cooke), You Can Call Me Al (Paul Simon).
American Girl defeated: Lawyers, Guns and Money (Warren Zevon), Sex Machine (James Brown), Just What I Needed (Cars), Lose Yourself (Eminem).
Living the Dream 
#5 Here Comes The Sun (The Beatles) 2.5
#3 Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) 8.8
Something about the guitar lines at the beginning really struck me the wrong way and the Quartet never recovered. Something was profoundly weird about this version of BR (like the missing words “little low” at the end of the first verse, the fucked up “gallileo” shouts, etc.), but it can’t do much to dim Freddie’s blazing star.
#1 The Weight (The Band) 5.5
#2 Hurt (Johnny Cash) 9.1
I have just not been on the Band-wagon in a couple rounds. Caught the “Night They Drove Ol Dixie Down” in my personal tournament two nights ago, an automatic advance in the early stages for me for years, and it got crushed by a song i put in the tournament by accident. Hurt has been an incredible song for me since I first heard it while playing pong on summer afternoon in 2003, and it absolutely fueled me to a crazy victory run (although I replayed it about 6 times and pissed everyone else off). It’s not slowing down.
#1 All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) 10
#3 Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) 6
These scores are starting to get out of hand and my head is spinning from it, like the first effects of a run of shots….Johnny, Jimi… I need a 3rd wiseman to complete this joke, and Bruce ain’t it. Maybe if Metallica were alive, i’d use James as a stand-in for Jose Cuervo, but it’s not to be. Solid performance by Bruce, just lacking some of the fire that Jimi brings.
#1 Baba O’Riley (The Who) 9.5
#2 American Girl (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers) 6.8
The first couple of minutes of Baba O’Riley were a perfect 10, and frankly even better than Jimi. A little bit of trail off at the end dings it a half point, but still fantastic. American Girl opened like a house of fire, then fell flat after the first verse… up until that brief little funky guitar/bass fill. Really cool riff, wish it lasted longer.
Here Comes The Sun (Beatles) 5
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) 10
The Weight (The Band) 8.5
Hurt (Johnny Cash) 7
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) 10
Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) 8.3
Baba O’Riley (The Who) 9.5
American Girl (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) 4
Here Comes The Sun (Beatles) 5
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) 7
The Weight (The Band) 9
Hurt (Johnny Cash) 6
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) 9
Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) 5
Baba O’Riley (The Who) 5
American Girl (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) 9
Here Comes The Sun (Beatles) 6
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) 9.5
Here Comes the Sun is nice, and better than your average pop song, but Bohemian Rhapsody is just a whole nother ballgame.
The Weight (The Band) 9
Hurt (Johnny Cash) 6
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) 2
Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) 7
Baba O’Riley (The Who) 9
American Girl (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) 6.5
Here Comes The Sun (Beatles) 7
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) 9.8
The Weight (The Band) 7.5
Hurt (Johnny Cash) 5
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) 9.5
Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) 9
Baba O’Riley (The Who) 9
American Girl (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) 7
Here Comes The Sun (Beatles) 6
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) 8
The Weight (The Band) 10
Hurt (Johnny Cash) 2.5 [gee, a song that makes me feel completely unstressed and happy or an inferior cover that tries and fails to make me feel all gloom and doom about death? Really?]
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) 3 [maybe this shouldn’t have been playing as I got all anxious and tried to login to see my grades from last quarter. (but the grades turned out fine– no worries)]
Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) 8 [First time this hit all tourney, but it was right on tonight… post script: I just pulled out Born to Run and am listening to it through again]
Baba O’Riley (The Who) 8 [this was tied, but Baba should win. It’s technically the better song, and that synth tone hasn’t aged a day.]
American Girl (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) 7 [if you haven’t seen the Heartbreakers documentary, you absolutely should. Damn the Torpedos was created in a whirlwind of fights with the record company who was constantly about to steal the tapes. Plus the production on this is phenomenal; when you think of how direct and up front the sound is for its time period with the perfect mixdown of all the parts…etc.]
Here Comes The Sun (Beatles) 6.5
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) 5.5
The Weight (The Band) 8
Hurt (Johnny Cash) 5
I think The Weight is fun and it makes me happy. Hurt does not make me happy. Hurt makes me depressed and grouchy and it makes me think of terrible things. I have never been a big fan Cash’s later years — he got wayyyyy too dark for this lady.
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) 7
Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) 5
AATW always reminds me of good times with my dad. Plus, Jimi kicks ass.
Baba O’Riley (The Who) 9
American Girl (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) 7.5
Here Comes The Sun (Beatles) 9.5
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) 8
The Weight (The Band) 6.5
Hurt (Johnny Cash) 10
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) 6.5
Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) 9
Baba O’Riley (The Who) 7
American Girl (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) 9
Each matchup against the current trend… nicely done Danno.
Division E
Bohemian Rhapsody 8 (adrock’s right, this version is sorta f’d. but it still crushes it)
Here Comes The Sun 3.5 (this is where the buck stops for this one)
Division F
The Weight 10 (is it summer yet? anyone want to go find a swimming hole and a radio that plays this song and some microbrews and some friends that like all of these things to come along? ….[that silence is me raising my hand and waiting patiently])
Hurt 5 (not today, johnny.)
Division G
All Along The Watchtower 6.1 (I get sorta bored in the middle)
Thunder Road 10 (no really…is it summer yet?)
potential elegy: If this is Thunder Road’s last stand, I just want to offhandedly mention that there’s this movie from the early 80’s called “Explorers”- it stars Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix as kids that invent a spaceship out of pieces of metal at a junkyard , and name it Thunder Road. Also, I’m paging Janos, Catholic Nick, and anyone else that was at JazzFest in April of 2006 when the Boss performed My City Of Ruins and thousands of people had tears in their eyes. Which isn’t Thunder Road, but is as comparably and representatively epic. Bruce, I’ll always have your back.
Division H
Baba O’Riley 8
American Girl 9.2 (in the hit or miss world of this whole crazy thing, this hit today)
Bump Baba up to a 9, actually.
Here Comes The Sun (Beatles) [6.5]
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) [7.8]
The Weight (The Band) [7.75]
Hurt (Johnny Cash) [8.5]
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) [4]
Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) [10]
Baba O’Riley (The Who) [9.25]
American Girl (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) [8.75]
Here Comes The Sun (Beatles) 5
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) 10
Here Comes The Sun does what it sets out to, and does it well. Its just not trying to be more than a fun little song to make you feel good in the morning. Bohemian Rhapsody is just incredible though. I had this marked at a 9.something, but on relisten had to give Freddy and Co. credit for making a song that uniquely captures so many different emotions and hits so many different tempos and notes without losing its overall cohesion.
The Weight (The Band) 8.4
Hurt (Johnny Cash) 3
The Weight is a cool-ass song. So is Hurt. They both blew my mind when I first heard them, for different reasons. However, Hurt has lost the novelty of hearing Johnny so angsty, and is a huge downer now. The Weight, on the other hand, gets better with each listen.
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) 10
Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) 1.9
I must have listened to each of these songs 5 or 6 times this morning. They’re remarkably similar, both very asymmetrical and free flowing. No real focus on structure, lots of emotional singing and interesting instrumental improvisations and tempo changes. Great lyrics in both too, capturing the person, time and place around their inception perfectly.
But All Along the Watchtower pulls off all those things incredibly. Its just such a phenomenal song, so powerful, so emotional. Jimi’s guitar practically sings, and his impassioned vocals hearken back to a very intense period in our cultural evolution.
Thunder Road, on the other hand, is a complete mess. The harmonica and piano start off somehow both optimist and wistful, but Bruce starts mumbling something with a whole lot of emotion and little else. Maybe if I knew what he was saying, it’d resonate with me, but it just doesn’t. I can feel the emotion, but the rest is just a garbled jumble.
We’re far along in the tournament, the songs left should be not just nostalgic, but genuinely good. This song is not. Everything Bruce was trying to do, Jimi already did infinitely better.
Baba O’Riley (The Who) 10
American Girl (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) 9
These songs are both what Rock and Roll is all about. I had them pegged at a dead heat, but after a re-listen Baba just jumped ahead and never looked back. American Girls is solid on all levels, but doesn’t sound as fresh. The Who, despite featuring the synth, one of my least favorite instruments, manages to sound as deep, exciting and innovative as anything coming out in 2011.
Here Comes the Sun (6)
Bohemian Rhapsody (8) — totally surprising, I had it in my head that I hated this song! But I don’t! It’s awesome!
The Weight (7)
Hurt (5) although i love the “empire of dirt”
And this one was HARD today:
Watchtower (8)
Thunder Road (8.5) — This is the second time I’ve heard this song in its entirety…and it got me today.
Baba O’Riley (6.5)
American Girl (9) — bliss
Here Comes The Sun (Beatles) 9.75
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) 9.5
The Weight (The Band) 3
Hurt (Johnny Cash) 10
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) 8.5
Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) 6.5
Baba O’Riley (The Who) 9
American Girl (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) 9
Here Comes The Sun (Beatles) 7.8
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) 9
The Weight (The Band) 9
Hurt (Johnny Cash) 6.5
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) 6.3
Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) 10
Baba O’Riley (The Who) 9.2
American Girl (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) 8
Here Comes The Sun (Beatles) 7
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) 9
The Weight (The Band) 6
Hurt (Johnny Cash) 10
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) 8.5
Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) 6.5
Baba O’Riley (The Who) 9.2
American Girl (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) 6.8
Here Comes The Sun (Beatles) 6
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) 9
The Weight (The Band) 8
Hurt (Johnny Cash) 7.6
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) 6
Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) 7
Baba O’Riley (The Who) 8
American Girl (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) 9