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?

Hardly A Lonely Night at the Copcut Elm, 9/6/2013

So after a long break that I made no secret about, I decided to make the first night I played live for myself again at the Open Mic Night at the Copcut Elm. I've been to the place before and did a 'battle of the acoustic artists' style gig there, I didn't get through but it's probably the fairest I've ever had one decided. That was a couple of years ago. Quite why I felt I had to go all the way to Droitwich to start gigging again was a matter of timing rather than design, but it was a largely unfamiliar crowd - I'd only met the promoter Ben Vickers before - so it was a good a place as any to see how it got on. The people were a bit thin on the ground to begin with, but by the time I went on there were about 40 people in the room so that was good.

The setlist (quite long for an open mic!) was:

• Boys of Summer
• Get Out Of My Head
• Bitterness
• Never Forget You
• A Lonely Night

However that was not the original plan. I had wanted to go down there and play three songs I've never played live before, all covers. I spent the entire car journey singing all three songs to practice them, but I hadn't even got halfway through the first verse to the first song when I forgot the words. More practice needed on that one, I think!

I played the rest of the songs well though, and pulled it back. One or two people were singing along to Boys of Summer, which is always a nice feeling. I'm still in debate about whether or not to sing the first verse of Get Out Of My Head without the guitar, tonight I chose to do exactly that and it was quite an experience when I got to near enough the end of the verse and the entire bar had fallen silent listening to me. That's what I've missed about playing live!

Other highlights? Getting to play A Lonely Night was a welcome but unexpected bonus, and someone out one of the other bands that was on after me told me that she thought Bitterness was hilarious. I told the story before I played the song about the profile I found on the dating site which inspired the song, and I think giving it a bit of context helps, though I should be careful how often I do this. I'll only get away with it as long as people are listening to me.

It's a balance, thinking about it. On one hand, when I have the audience engaged, it can really work to give my songs context, to give the audience some idea of what I'm singing about. On the other hand if I do it too many times I'll deprive the set and therefore the audience of any momentum, so I should probably do it only once every couple of songs. It would be worth planning in advance what I'm going to say about what song, and at what point in the set they are going to come up.

Anyway, after a shaky start, that was not a bad return at all, and I am going to check out a new Open Mic at the Pied Piper in Cannock on Friday so we'll see how that goes down.

See you all there!

Matt

3/7/2011: The Copcut Elm Music Competition

Well, I'd asked Ben Vickers if I could do the competition at Copcut a few weeks before, but as I've never been to the place before (their open night usually falls on the night I have Aki Maera practice) I had no idea what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised as Ben appeared to be running a very tight operation. He'd asked everybody to get there for 7.30, and everybody was there for 7.30. The show was scheduled to start at 8.30, and by all the Gods, it started at 8.30. The changeovers were slick, all the acts were consistently good, and the sound quality was absolutely brilliant for a venue this size. Compare that to, say, one or two places I've played in Walsall, where they ask us to get there at 6.30 and absolutely nothing happens whatsoever until 9.00 at the very earliest, and I've ended up walking out halfway through the show at the time it was supposed to have ended - even though the last two bands had yet to go on because they'd taken far too long faffing around with the sound - and you'll appreciate how significant I find all of this. Not only that but there were some serious and professional judges for the event, one of which was Kiki O'Connel I'd seen at Katies a while back, and at the Sence Bar in Birmingham as well now that I think about it.

So, how did I get on? Well, one thing I didn't know until about 10 minutes before I was supposed to go on was how many songs I was going to get, and when it turned out to be 2, I had to pick and choose carefully. I was always going to play Bitterness, however. I always do if it's a new gig to exploit the "Rock Star With An Acoustic Guitar" thing I have going on and since nobody there had ever seen me play before, this seemed the ideal choice. This actually went down very well indeed, I saw quite a few people in the audience (which, by the way, numbered in their hundreds,) dancing to this and I was told later that it struck a chord with at least one member of the audience who had recently split up from his wife. I decided to do the thing where I talk to the audience in the 'quiet' bit, this was a bit of a mistake in retrospect. It works when the crowd know me, but as Kiki pointed out to me afterwards, it looked like I was completely lost in the song up until that point and so was everybody else until I'd started talking, and it lost momentum. In front of a more familiar crowd it would probably have worked a little better but in this sort of environment I'd have been better off letting the song itself do the talking. Other than that, I played it very well, with the blood-curdling shriek I've been putting at the end of it feeling less and less welcome - and therefore more likely to occur - every time I do it.

My other song was We Will Survive. 'What?' you say, 'you played Bitterness without following it up with Get Out Of My Head?' Actually yes I did, and there was a reason for that - I've been trying to develop an awareness of what works better in front of certain audiences. There's a lot of factors in this and I still haven't got it down to a precise art, but quite a good thing for me to keep in mind is this: The younger audience tend to prefer my fast rock songs, and the older audiences tend to prefer my slower, arty songs. Most of the time both the audience and my set include a mix of the two split straight down the middle, however tonight there seemed to be quite a lot of younger people in the audience who I thought would appreciate We Will Survive better. I wasn't wrong in that respect as I could visibly see a lot of them enjoying themselves. It didn't do me much good in terms of the competition though, as I'd put my two pounding rock songs right next to each other and the lack of variety cost me; I would have done better with Get Out Of My Head or Storm From The North. That being said, this is probably the first time I've ever got through a set without making any mistakes at all, which shouldn't have taken a year and a half to achieve but I got there in the end!

I didn't get through to the final in the end, but honestly I don't mind. I have no doubt that the judging was done on the quality of the music, which was the first time this has ever happened as far as I'm aware.* The other acts on - and there were 8 - were all very good; obviously some better than others but none of them were rubbish, and there wasn't a single act among them who I didn't think had a chance. The guys and girls who did get through thoroughly deserved it and best of luck to all of them in the next round; I don't envy the responsibility of the judges for having to pick between those guys! Best of luck to all of you and I'm sure we'll see you again...

*Every other substantial competition I've played that hasn't been judged by a drunk has come down to how many tickets each individual band has sold. The organisers can say what they like about it being about the music but at the end of the day the venue has to make money so they'll invite back the people who draw the larger crowds. The Copcut competition was a refreshing change from this!