Coldplay=Duke, The Fray=Holy Corss, Local H=Arkansas, James van Osdel=Billy Packer

WARNING: Not about sports

So Chicago's local alternative music station Q101 (you may remember them from our ill-fated campaign to take sports guy Jim Lynam's job) is currently running a feature called "March Music Madness." You can probably guess how it works. Basically, the station picked 64 popular alternative music acts--both current and classic--and randomly jumbled them throughout an NCAA Tournament-style bracket.

During each "game," a couple songs by each of the two artists are played alternately, at which time listeners can text message their vote as to which artist should advance. It's a pretty good gimmick. Listeners get to hear a good assortment of favorite artists while the station generates incentive for listeners to stay tuned. And since no paticular voting criteria are imposed, it's a pure "choice of the people" affair, and therefore, a "wrong" choice is virtually impossible.

Seems pretty fun and harmless, right? I mean, it would take a total low-life, no-life asshole to quibble with the artist selection or the voting results of an exercise created to gauge simple preference on a topic so benign.

Well, ladies and gentlemen--I am that asshole. Below is the bracket after round one. (Click to enlarge.)

Staind defeats Oasis. I have a good friend who would start hemorraging from every orafice on his body if he saw this result. Now, I'm no British teenager ca. 1996, so I don't believe Oasis was/is the second-coming of the Beatles. But Staind?!?! They are painfully generic and utterly devoid of imagination or musical skill of any sort. Oasis, on the other hand, has put out a nuber of good albums--including one just last year--and a certifiable classic in "What's the Story, Morning Glory."I can only guess some dumbshit devoted Staind fan texted 9,384 times in five minutes; otherwise, this result would have never happened.

Fall Out Boy defeats the Clash. Again--do people have no sense of history or proportion? You aren't known as "the only band that matters" (Granted, it was a self-given title, but it stuck, didn't it?) by being less good than Fallout Boy. Jesus. Fallout Boy is a couple hits, generic style, single genre. The Clash were groundbreaking, meaningful, tons of genres...Ugh! Do I even need to justify this? Friggin' Fallout Boy...you've gotta be kidding me.

Local H defeats Linkin Park. Color me not a Linkin Park fan, so I have no beef with them losing in the first round. But come on--if this station were in any other city, does the name Local H ever even come up? Expand this thing to 256 artists, and I still say no. This is Arkansas to the 4/3 power. If not for local cronies on the selection committee, this one-hit wonder from 1997 is in the D-III March Music Madness. Does "Bound for the Floor" even get airplay outside Chicago? I'd really like to know. Let's not even mention--even though I know this is a shitty criterion to judge a song by--that one "hit" was literally like a single repeating chord and a two-note chorus. I can't believe it's even held up.

311 defeats Coldplay. This could have been almost anyone (well, maybe except for Staind) and I would have been thrilled by this outcome. I won't get too much into it, but I have kind of an ill-conceived disdain for Coldplay. As far as I'm concerned, this is VCU over Duke. Self-important, overhyped powerhouse bites the dust! Oh, and although I don't love them, I do think 311 is pretty cool, so I can dig this result on all counts.

A Perfect Circle defeats the Fray. Umm... Shouldn't this have been the play-in game? ...for the March Music NIT Madness? Why are either of these bands included? And more so, why did they face each other first round? Seriously, this is like pairing Holy Cross and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. I'd say I know a pretty good deal about music. System of a Down, Queens of the Stone Age, Rage Against the Machine--I hadn't the slightest problem picking up on those abbreviations immediately when I saw them. But I had to google "A.P.C." to even know who the fuck they were. We should not be asked to familiarize ourselves with an abbreviation for a band so lame.

Incubus defeats R.E.M. God must have a real sick sense of humor. People who voted this are allowed to hear while Beethoven was not. I mean, come on. Incubus is alright and all, and I'm sure they have a pretty great following or live act or whatver. But it's R. freaking E. fucking M. Ignorant masses! I'm sure most of the people who voted this way will probably say "Losing My Religion" was their first hit. No, you hypothetical stupid clowns! They were around for ten years by then. Sorry--I stowed my music pretentiousness away pretty well until now, but I couldn't let that go.

The Smashing Pumpkins defeat the White Stripes. Holy ridiculousness. You pair the Fray and A.P.C. (as I will coolly refer to them now that I know), and then you pair these two juggernauts in the first round? Worse off, you give the White Stripes, one of the best alternative acts of our generation, absolutely no shot. Remember--this is a Chicago station, and you're pitting them against one of the Chicago area's alltime most popular bands. This would be like sending UCLA to the Verizon Center in D.C. to play Georgetown in the first round, laying down the Wizards floor and calling it a "neutral site." Hold this March Music Madness matchup in Detroit, and you get a 90-10 landslide.

Ramones defeat the Flaming Lips. See above, minus the local bias and less egregious. But still egregious.

Alright, I guess that's enough for round one. I'll probably pick this up again when it's in the championship or over, so you know how it turns out and what else upset me.

(Oh, and by the way, you'd have to be from Chicago and a Q101 listener to know who James van Osdol is. Don't feel dumb for not knowing.)