102 Beats.

February 26, 2002 8:49 AM

102 Beats. For its third anniversary, Freaky Trigger is trying out a neat project: You write exactly 102 words about a bit of music. Then someone else will do the same. More inside.
posted by Skot (7 comments total)

From the website's rules:

Here are the steps.

1. You write 102 words about a record you want other people to hear. We're going to be fairly exacting about "102 words", and fairly vague about "about" and "a record". You can choose anything from a box set to an MP3, and you can use your 102 words in whichever way you think gets over the greatness of the record best.

2. You send those 102 words, in text in an e-mail (no attachments please!) to me at [e-mail]. You can use any pseudonym you want, but please also give me an e-mail address that you don't mind being published on the web.

3. I print every contribution I get, with the e-mail address of whoever sent it, in part one of the big birthday feature, which will probably go up in the first week of April.

4. I also print a list of contributors, and the record they have to hear for the second part. Every single contributor will be asked to listen to a record that one of the other contributors wrote about.

5. You find that record - emailing the original writer if you want - and listen to it.

6. You write 102 words about it and send them to me.

7. I print the whole thing again with the second comments now added on.
posted by Skot at 8:52 AM on February 26, 2002

That's pretty cool, but I'd be wary about entering. Let's say that I submit an Iris DeMent record, and in return, I have to procure and listen to the entirety of Gotterdammerung. Or worse yet, 'N Sync.

Nightmare scenarios aside, however, it's tempting.
posted by anapestic at 3:37 PM on February 26, 2002

how about nsync performing gotterdammerung?

it is tempting to play with it a bit, reviewing william shatner's infamous "lucy in the sky with diamonds" or something...
posted by judith at 3:41 PM on February 26, 2002

it is tempting to play with it a bit, reviewing william shatner's infamous "lucy in the sky with diamonds" or something...

Thank you, judith. I heard Mr. Shatner doing that song about four years ago, and I had just managed to suppress the horror from my mind. Until now.

I think the same sort of exchange with books would be cool.
posted by anapestic at 9:31 PM on February 26, 2002

Blimey - thanks for the attention (and the hits heh). The point anapestic is that it's up to the person choosing the record to get a copy to the person who has to write about it - so no shamefaced trips to the record store needed. Not of course that my site in any way condones the unauthorised reproduction of copyrighted music, ahem.
posted by freakytrigger at 7:49 AM on February 27, 2002

That's pretty cool, but I'd be wary about entering. Let's say that I submit an Iris DeMent record, and in return, I have to procure and listen to the entirety of Gotterdammerung. Or worse yet, 'N Sync.

This occurred to me too, but I was struck with the idea that I wouldn't necessarily hate anything too much if I was listening to it while consumed with the notion that I had to critique it in exactly 102 words. To my mind, this is the brilliantly obnoxious thing about the contest. (I mean that in a good way.)

Okay, I might mind the Gotterdammerung. But I came of age in the '80s, so I can listen to anything.
posted by Skot at 8:45 AM on February 27, 2002

~I will be writing about the virtues of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.~
posted by rorschach at 8:45 AM on February 27, 2002