And no matter what y’all think of Peter and Grant and No Depression, I thank them for giving me a place to write.

Thanks for the clarification on “the concept of a poll.”

When Elliott handed me a freshly minted copy of Jalopypaint in November he asked that I hold my review until the album’s official release date in January.

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Elliott released Jalopypaint last month and I four-starred it here in the Jan. 9 issue of Creative Loafing. Other publications have also taken notice. The album ranked No. 16 in the year-end tally of No Depression contributing editor Joe Nick Patoski — but was removed from the final list, probably since the disc officially came out in 2008. Or maybe No Depression founders Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock made an executive decision to ax the selection based on their past experiences with Elliott.
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Or maybe the writer of this article needs to correct his text, because he is completely wrong in his reporting when he says Jalopypaint “was removed from the final list”. Nothing was “removed” from anything whatsoever.

Apparently the writer is unfamiliar with the concept of a poll, in which it takes a certain amount of votes to rank high enough to make the “final list” (in this case, the published Top 50 that appeared in our Jan.-Feb. issue). Patoski was the sole writer among the 44 voters in our poll who listed Jalopypaint on his ballot. (By the way, Patoski ranked Jalopypaint #5 on his ballot, not #16; the “16″ was the number of points awarded for that ranking, based on the 20-19-18-etc. point-system explained at the top of the webpage that was linked above.)

The #50 record in our Top 50 received a total of 41 points from 3 voters who listed it on their ballots. Clearly Jalopyland, with 16 points from 1 voter, was far short of making the list. It was not “removed,” it simply didn’t get enough votes/points to place in the published list.

Nothing wrong with that, as I expect Jalopypaint was good work, something Mr. Elliott has repeatedly proven himself capable of (which is why we’ve reviewed two of his records and also run a short profile on him over the years). It didn’t make our overall Top 50, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t deserving of attention — which is one reason we publish our voters’ individual ballots online, so that records which may not have gained enough consensus in our poll still get a little notice.

(By the way, I also find no evidence that Jalopypaint came out in 2008; at least on Amazon.com it’s listed as a Nov. 13, 2007, release.)