Over the weekend I took my boys out with a neighbor and his son to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. We all saw the first one together when that came out, last year or whenever. That night I left the theater thinking I’d be spared sitting through a sequel, that the movie was so inconsequential that not even the dream makers in Hollywood would think it necessitated sequel. I was wrong. Last night, good father that I try to be, I said, “Sure!” to our friend when he called at the last minute and asked if we wanted to join him and his son for the sequel. Personally, I had my reservations.

My wife was a little bummed that she wouldn’t be able to join us on such short notice. I told her that she probably wasn’t missing anything, that the first one, which she didn’t see, was no more satifsfying than eating a single marshmallow. “Yeah,” she said, “but Robert Downey Jr. is usually good.”

I looked her square in the eye and said with too-often-unchecked disdain, “I forget that you actually like that guy.”

My teenage son jumped to her defense, “He’s good! How can you not like Robert Downey Jr.?”

This got me thinking about Townsman E. Pluribus Gergely‘s Six-Pack or Shotgun theory on how we actually assess acting talent. To summarize, if you don’t have the time to go back and read the original thread, Gergely’s legendary late-night pronouncement on the topic should do:

“There’s no such thing as Acting Ability!” he said in typically definitive fashion, slamming his fist for emphasis. “When we watch any any actor in any movie it comes down to one thing: If that actor showed up unannounced at your back door, would you greet him or her with a six-pack or a shotgun?“

Today, let’s see if we can tackle the near-impossible task of applying this theory to related pairs of polarizing musicians. Sure, we’re loaded for bear when it comes to passionate, informed musical opinions, but let’s see if we can leave musical content out of it and investigate whether there is a deeper truth to our feelings on the following pairs of artists.

Your mission is to choose which artist in each pair gets the six-pack and which gets the shotgun. There’s no in-between, no ties, and especially none of this! The only risk you face in participating is the risk of revealing something deep about yourself.

A final reminder: If at all possible, leave your opinions on the artists’ music out of it. To aid in this I have attempted to kick things off with the selection of a few pairs of artists whose music most Townspeople have equal amounts of musical interest in.

When you’re done assigning the six-pack and the shotgun to each of the following sets of related polarizing artists feel free to add your own pair of related polarizing artists for us to ponder.

Let’s get it on…after the jump!