Hall of Flame-2019

Since 2019 was wrapping up. That is how long I had been ~meaning~ to listen to my “2019 Hall of Fame Candidates” playlist. My intentions were to give myself a leg up on the voting so that I wouldn’t be stressed out over the rush of getting my ballot in on time. I kept putting off the task, saying to myself “oh, I’ll get to that.” As I was clicking play on the list of two hundred fifty eight jams for the first time on August 1st (votes were due August 14th), I was kicking myself for not listening to the good intention that I had before. It’s the thought that counts, right? At least that’s what I told myself as I was writing my story of how I picked ten out of 258 jams in fourteen days.

I had gone on a beach vacation in late July and the last excuse I gave myself was that I would start listening to the playlist when I got back home. Lucky me, they announced that the voting had begun on the second-to-last day of my trip. I had anticipated this happening. I knew that I needed to get started before they announced the voting because I knew I would fall behind. Sounds like I know myself pretty well, huh? To make myself feel better I thought, “at least I have all the jams in one place, I don’t have to go looking for them!” Well, there was one problem with that thought because apparently, I thought that all the jams were good jams. I mean, I had almost two hundred sixty jams on that list. That’s probably every song they jammed out throughout the whole year. It was quite the chore to decipher between jams not only because of the amount of songs but there also was so much juice to squeeze from the year. It should have been easy, sifting through all those jams and weeding out the weaker ones. But as this process progressed, I realized that it was not fucking easy.

My process for casting the proper vote was forced to be a little different this year. Since I was compelled to choose so quickly, I had to throw most of my usual tactics out the window. I was pretty much listening to Umphrey’s day and night. I suffered (via faults of my own) through five round of elimination because I couldn’t dwindle my list down to a reasonable number. I eventually started listening to just the jam part of the song and cutting out the melodic part. If I knew I wanted to give the song a second listen, it went on to the next round, but I would listen to the jam’s entirety if I wasn’t completely sold on it right away. I finally got my list down to a manageable number (just under seventy jams), so I started going through the multiples of songs that I had. I think I had six “Utopian Firs” at one point. I would listen to them all and then try to cut it down to just one. But there were a couple tunes where two versions were outstanding. It helped to eliminate jams that way, but it still was not an easy task.

I finally made it down to forty jams and I had almost two days left to cast my votes. I was starting to approach the issue of the length of the jam. It was difficult because, even the small jams, or the “McJam’s,” were crammed with oozy goodness, so it was hard to eliminate the jam based on the shortness of it. Personally, I don’t think that length matters, but it does in the world of the other voters. I definitely voted for the nine minute “Push the Pig” from Milwaukee because it was just too tasty to pass up. That is the kind of jam that I wish they would jam out just a little longer and see where they could go with it. Some of the hottest jams can come from that nine to thirteen-minute time frame. And those jams are unfortunately looked over by many umphreaks because it was simply not long enough.

I finally got the list down to twenty-two and there was no time to relisten to any of them before midnight hit. It was August 13th and the BJ (Brendan and Jake) show was about to start. Shit was getting real. I sort of remembered what the jams sounded like because I had listened to them so many times throughout the process. And I couldn’t listen to any more jams. I was all jammed out. So, while the boys played, I sat down and chose my final ten. Buutttt I also had ten honorable mentions that were worthy of a ballot themselves. So, I took a page out of Sara Jachimiak’s book and casted my OG votes under my regular name and then made a second ballot through the blogs email with the name “Shooter McGavin.” I don’t know why, I’m not a die-hard “Happy Gilmore” fan, but that was the first name that popped into my brain. Yes, I cheated a little and was able to vote twice this year. But the fact that we only got one round of voting this year made me feel better about doing that. A huge, 258 jam lb weight lifted off my shoulders when I pressed submit and I finally took a breath. Hall of Fame has always been super fun to do but this year was just a bit more stressful for me than others.

What did I learn through all this mess you may ask? I would say that I learned to not put things off like this but unfortunately this is not the first time that something like this has happened to me. I did learn to be more preemptive about getting a project this big done. I will never again take hall of fame voting for granted. It makes me feel better that I wasn’t the only one who had trouble voting this year. 2019 might have been the hardest year for me yet. Granted I only started paying attention to Umphrey’s Hall of Fame in 2016!

On the upside, I had a blast rediscovering some old flames from last year. Relisting to the highlights of an amazing year like 2019 lifted my spirits up out of the COVID depression. I was reminded that even through all this mayhem that is going on in the world, we can still look to Umphrey’s for reassurance. It reminded me that even though I haven’t seen a live show in six months, I still got what it takes to decipher a good jam from an even better jam. It reminded me that my favorite band just keeps getting better and we have yet to ever witness their best.

My Hall of Fame votes are pictured below 😊

Mulche Obliged's best show picks of 2019:

1/25/19

3/21/19

3/29/19

4/3/19

8/15/19

8/30/19, 8/31/19

9/20/19

10/17/19

11/2/19