If you just never play to win, like me, doing badly will not affect your enjoyment at all. Every round is a new chance to introduce the host to something they may never have even heard of, I think that's a great concept in itself.
Well, "playing to win" and "quitting like a baby when you don't" aren't the same things. I play to win (even if it doesn't seem like it) but I also have a different pool of music to pull from. The people running the roulettes around here - for the most part - seem to like a certain genre that I am just not versed in. So I opt for an alternate strategy that sometimes works (Kattleox) and most often doesn't, i.e. taking things we already THINK we know, and re-purposing them. I am seriously considering submitting my future offerings scrubbed of band and album information (and I am seriously considering having an "anonymous" round when I have my next roulette). There's a bias here against things that "sell" for some reason, and I don't really understand it. For me, I think it's part of - not all, but part of - the magic when an artist can write something with the best of intentions, and have that work emotionally touch millions of people.
Stadler - for what it's worth, how much it sells has nothing to do with the scoring in my roulette, even though it might seem that way. I love Rush, and they sold quite well. I also like Pearl Jam, who sold incredibly well. And on the flip side, I have no idea if bands like MSG or UFO were all that popular or not. Nonetheless, I like the idea of anonymous submissions; gives it an added dimension.
I don't necessarily mean "sold" literally. I had a friend that was into REM big when Murmur (their first album) came out. Then Reckoning came out and he saw them at a little club (700 people) and was all jazzed, telling me how great they are (Murmur is an amazing record, by the way) and how Peter Buck wore an Iron Maiden shirt during the show ("Oh, and can you throw a couple songs on a cassette for me, please?") and blah blah blah. Then they put out Fables, with their first sort of hit, and then Lifes Rich Pageant, wth "Fall On Me" and all of a sudden, they "sucked" and they were "generic" and ""it all sounded the same". And I'm like, ok.
I get it, taste is taste, but to be in LAST PLACE - and in
two three roulettes, being the very first to leave the roulette - with albums from artists that are either legends or in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (or both)... I just find that hard to fathom. (Not that the RnRHoF is the be all and end all, but it does show a level of success and a level of... connection.)
And this isn't meant to complain, it's meant to explain. I have no beef with any decision or score; it is what it is, and life moves on.