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Thought of an idea for wasting time efficiently, and I thought that maybe Apolyton's denizens might up to the challenge. 
Rules last amended on May 28, 2007
You know the game "six degrees of Kevin Bacon?" The idea being that someone names an actor or an actress, and you have to link them to the actor Kevin Bacon through six or fewer movie-connections.
Well, I thought it'd be fun to try this for musicians/bands.
NOTE: You don't have to have encyclopedic knowledge of music to participate... the Internets will help you! Read the tips for participants below, and join right in!
Here's the rules:
The winner of each round names two artists/bands to connect, and the job of anyone willing to take the challenge is to link these artists together through colaborations or covers, or band assosiations, in six or fewer steps.
When choosing artists/bands, you don't have to know the path yourself, or even whether a path exists - if no path can be found by anyone, then we can decide to start with new names after a while.
To take an example: Starting with Peter Gabriel and ending with Tom Jones:
1. Peter Gabriel collaborated with Sinead O'Connor on the song "Blood of Eden"
2. Sinead O'Connor sung "Nothing Compares to U", a song written by Prince
3. Prince wrote the song "Kiss", which was covered by Tom Jones.
Further, include a YouTube clip for each performance / song along the chain, if at all possible, or alternatively a sample clip, if you can find it on the net. If you don't know how to embed youtube clips, or audio clips onto your posts, read the "Tips to spice things up, and to help participants" below.
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Rules for the choise of bands/artists:
[list=1][*] The artist/band should primarily perform in English[*] The artist/band should have a Wikipedia entry OR an equivalent, easily found, informative article on the net, OTHER than the band's official site, or myspace. [*]If the artist has another carreer (such as acting), the artist must at the very least have published one album, either as a solo artist or as a member of a band. [*]The winner of the round must choose the next two artists within 30 minutes of posting the solution. If no new artists are given within that 30 minutes, then anyone can choose the next two artists, simply by posting their choise first, after the 30 minutes has elapsed.[/list=1]
An added suggestion - extra respect will be earned by managing to link the artists WITHOUT involving The Beatles in the chain.... everybody's covered the beatles! Also, try to avoid Christmas albums if you can - so many people have sung classic Christmas songs that they may make things too easy.
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Tips to spice things up, and to help participants:
1. When you've found a path, do a few searches on YouTube (or alternatively use Youtube searches to find the links!) to see whether they have videos of the relevant songs. On each video, to the right of the video, there's a box titled "Embed" - copy the contents of the box, and paste them to your message, and the vide will appear embedded in the message, as can be seen from my posts below. If you take a moment to do this, it'll nicely add entertainment and make the thread more interesting.
2. If you can't find a relevant youtube clip, do a search at www.last.fm, and see if they've got an audio clip of what you're looking for. Notice that last.fm has an "embed" box under the clip player, just like youtube has for it's videos. Copy and paste that code to the post, and you've got the clip with the player added onto the post.
3. To add a picture of the artists you choose in your message, just do a google search on the artists, click the "images" tab, and pick an image you like. Save that image, and submit it to http://tinypic.com/ - the site doesn't require registration, and with a couple of clicks you get ready copy-paste code that you can use in your post to add the picture on to the forum.
3. Good sources to help you find connections between artists:
So let's try it, being the first poster, as the first artist, I choose.... (The thread started with older version of the rules, where first poster named one artist, and the second poster the artist to link the first artist with)
PJ Harvey :
So... next poster, please pick the artist or band to connect her to!
Rules last amended on May 28, 2007
You know the game "six degrees of Kevin Bacon?" The idea being that someone names an actor or an actress, and you have to link them to the actor Kevin Bacon through six or fewer movie-connections.
Well, I thought it'd be fun to try this for musicians/bands.
NOTE: You don't have to have encyclopedic knowledge of music to participate... the Internets will help you! Read the tips for participants below, and join right in!
Here's the rules:
The winner of each round names two artists/bands to connect, and the job of anyone willing to take the challenge is to link these artists together through colaborations or covers, or band assosiations, in six or fewer steps.
When choosing artists/bands, you don't have to know the path yourself, or even whether a path exists - if no path can be found by anyone, then we can decide to start with new names after a while.
To take an example: Starting with Peter Gabriel and ending with Tom Jones:
1. Peter Gabriel collaborated with Sinead O'Connor on the song "Blood of Eden"
2. Sinead O'Connor sung "Nothing Compares to U", a song written by Prince
3. Prince wrote the song "Kiss", which was covered by Tom Jones.
Further, include a YouTube clip for each performance / song along the chain, if at all possible, or alternatively a sample clip, if you can find it on the net. If you don't know how to embed youtube clips, or audio clips onto your posts, read the "Tips to spice things up, and to help participants" below.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Rules for the choise of bands/artists:
[list=1][*] The artist/band should primarily perform in English[*] The artist/band should have a Wikipedia entry OR an equivalent, easily found, informative article on the net, OTHER than the band's official site, or myspace. [*]If the artist has another carreer (such as acting), the artist must at the very least have published one album, either as a solo artist or as a member of a band. [*]The winner of the round must choose the next two artists within 30 minutes of posting the solution. If no new artists are given within that 30 minutes, then anyone can choose the next two artists, simply by posting their choise first, after the 30 minutes has elapsed.[/list=1]
An added suggestion - extra respect will be earned by managing to link the artists WITHOUT involving The Beatles in the chain.... everybody's covered the beatles! Also, try to avoid Christmas albums if you can - so many people have sung classic Christmas songs that they may make things too easy.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tips to spice things up, and to help participants:
1. When you've found a path, do a few searches on YouTube (or alternatively use Youtube searches to find the links!) to see whether they have videos of the relevant songs. On each video, to the right of the video, there's a box titled "Embed" - copy the contents of the box, and paste them to your message, and the vide will appear embedded in the message, as can be seen from my posts below. If you take a moment to do this, it'll nicely add entertainment and make the thread more interesting.
2. If you can't find a relevant youtube clip, do a search at www.last.fm, and see if they've got an audio clip of what you're looking for. Notice that last.fm has an "embed" box under the clip player, just like youtube has for it's videos. Copy and paste that code to the post, and you've got the clip with the player added onto the post.
3. To add a picture of the artists you choose in your message, just do a google search on the artists, click the "images" tab, and pick an image you like. Save that image, and submit it to http://tinypic.com/ - the site doesn't require registration, and with a couple of clicks you get ready copy-paste code that you can use in your post to add the picture on to the forum.
3. Good sources to help you find connections between artists:
So let's try it, being the first poster, as the first artist, I choose.... (The thread started with older version of the rules, where first poster named one artist, and the second poster the artist to link the first artist with)
PJ Harvey :
So... next poster, please pick the artist or band to connect her to!
I'd think that in the off-topic forum of a strategy game, one would find people quite happy to participate in a cerebral game. 
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