Why I don't do competitons, or Battle of the Bands

I saw that Open Mic Uk had posted up a songwriting competition. This apparently was like their regular competition, a kind of X-Factor-lite talent show, but with the onus on the quality of songwriting coming out rather than the overall performance. I approached this cynically as I clicked the link to investigate, and then closed down the web page as soon as I saw that there was a £10 charge to enter. I rarely have a good opinion of these things anyway, and having to pay for the privilege of standing in a queue for eight hours to play two minutes worth of a song only to have the judges tell me to clear off is not something I wanted to be involved in.

It did, however, remind me of how much I don’t like ‘Battle of the Bands’ style competitions and talent shows, and how unlikely I am ever to enter one again. I thought I would share that with you today.

So what is my problem with competitions? Well, even if I could conceivably get a band together that could play its own material good enough to participate in the contest without being laughed off the stage for being fat and old, I don’t like them anyway because of the way they tend to be judged. The competitions I have been involved with in the past almost always decide their winners in one of three ways:

1. Whoever is the youngest girl, (this tends to happen in acoustic singer-songwriter-style settings,)
2. Whoever is playing the most indie,
3. And most commonly, whoever has sold the most tickets.

Now, I’m demonstrably neither young nor a girl. I hate indie.[1] And the only way I can usually get anybody to come to a gig is if I drive them there myself. So, on the basis that this is the standard by which these competitions tend to be judged; I’m knackered before I’ve even applied to take part. There’s very few of them I’ve taken part in that haven’t made me think “What a waste of time.” Judges tend to vote for the bands that have sold the most tickets because the organisers need to be making money. But that doesn’t help me, as my general reward for inviting people to gigs is every version of “I can’t be arsed” under the sun.

And it doesn’t help anyway. The prize for winning tends to be about 4 hours studio time and, if the band is very lucky, some cash - never more than £1000. I was there the night that Junkyard Morning won the Wolverhampton Battle of the Bands in 2008, and where are they now?[2] Even with the high-profile shows like the X-Factor, I couldn’t even name three people who’ve ever won it.

At this point I will give a shout out to a mutual acquaintance Ben Vickers, who runs an open mic at the Copcut Elm in Droitwich. There was a competition held there in 2011 which I took part in, it had a serious panel of judges who were going on the artistic talent of the people involved. The prize for winning that was a slot at a festival later on in the year; there was no pretence, no over-promising. But that was very much the exception, rather than the rule.

The only reason I would take part in a Battle of the Bands now is if I did happen to be in a band that wrote original material good enough to participate in the contest without being laughed off the stage for being fat and old. I would be against it in principle, but if the other guys in the band were intent on putting themselves through this rigmarole under the erroneous belief that something good would come out of it, I wouldn’t ruin it for them by refusing to do it.

I actually entered the Open Mic UK competition in 2011, I think it was. My intention was to do my audition in Birmingham, then drive over to Wolverhampton to play the main stage at Codfest where I had been booked to play. I arrived in plenty of time, and after having waited in an unmoving queue for an hour or so, I decided to get away and play my set at Codfest. As I think I’ve got quite a good working relationship with Sam Draisey, and he’s also a really good friend, I can say with a large amount of confidence that abandoning the talent show and playing my friend’s festival has done more for my career as a musician than not turning up to Codfest and throwing in my lot with a so-called talent contest.

Funnily enough, I have no idea who won Open Mic UK that year, either. I rest my case.

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[1] Or rather, I hate what indie became during the last decade when record deals were being handed out on a silver platter to anybody who could mash the top four strings of a Telecaster.

[2] I actually looked at their Facebook page and it looks like they’ve not been active as a band since about 2010. So, how much did winning BOTB really help them?

November: Rehearsing, Reflecting, Jamming and getting Crashpoint back together

November’s been an interesting one…

Back when I was thinner. Anyone seen the bass player lately?

I’ve been talking to Cj about the possibility of getting Crashpoint back together. I’ve been against this for a while, but we’ve been away long enough for me to not mind too much about my previous misgivings about it. It won’t happen this side of Christmas; I’m committed to gigs almost every weekend up to that point, and with Cj now living in Crewe it would be a logistical nightmare to even get as far as one gig. And it’s unlikely that you’ll see the definitive line-up; we’ve spoken to Emma and she doesn’t think she’ll can do it, and nobody’s seen or heard from Jay since he originally left the band. But it’s on the radar for next year, so we’ll see what happens.

Sam Draisey is producing another Christmas album; it should be on sale soon at his gigs so look out for it. Sadly I’ve made the decision to sit out of it for this year. I remember doing The First Footprint for the Christmas album four years ago in 2010, and I was as surprised as anybody that it was actually quite good. I wrote what I felt the most strongly about Christmas – the entire song could be summed up with “Stop trying so hard to get it right, and actually enjoy it” – and somehow it’s never been as good when I’ve tried to write a Christmas song since then. For the last two years, nothing has come, so rather than force one out for its own sake and it almost certainly being rubbish, I’ll leave the album to the other guys.

 

It’s been a quiet month for gigs with No Questions Asked, but as expected we did manage to use the time to learn some new songs. As ever, most of them are by Queen, but there are some others as well so if you’ve seen us before chances are we’ll be playing something new for you!

We do a number of jam nights around the area; at the Old Bush in Wombourne and the River Rooms in Stourbridge. I usually enjoy these, in fact I reckon it’s at least partly because I turned up to them that I remained on Dave and Richard’s radar long enough to be in the band now. However, the last couple have felt flat in terms of their attendance. No one turned up to the last time we did the Bush and it was basically the band playing to ourselves. The last one at the River Rooms, the only people to turn up to play other than the band was the people depping for various members who will be missing in the coming weeks (myself included) due to other commitments.

I try not to take it too hard; it’s not like we wasted the time. We practiced some of the newer songs and it’s always a pleasure to play with the band. Also this is a very tricky time of year; around Christmas people tend to be so busy that it’s hard to be bothered with things like jam nights when you can just catch the next one. But I remember going to the jam nights at the much-missed Broadway with Jack’s Legacy. We’d get there at 8pm, and often at 10:30 we’d still be waiting to go on because there were so many people there. I know it was nine years ago, but I do wonder what happened to that music scene!

Ending on a positive note, the last gig we did in November at the Lamp Tavern was absolutely brilliant; the best one I think we’ve done with this line-up. A lot of it was because around 40 minutes into it we ignored the set list and just played whatever we thought the night needed. And what that particular night needed was high-energy popular songs. I think we did a fine job of making sure everybody was having a good time, all of the time. This is why I do gigs!

So, some things to learn, some to consider and some to reflect upon. I really hope that both the band and I can build on these experiences and make ourselves better.

I couldn't find a 'definitive line-up' picture with CJ in it
so here he is at our first gig. How young does he look?