It's hard to criticize a competition in which you didn't proceed without it sounding like sour grapes. In reality though, I think if we had gone through to the next round, I would be thinking of withdrawing.
We started off sailing through the audition stage and got our place in the regional final. We were asked to pay a deposit (which we didn't get back incidentally) and we were handed an envelope full of tickets. I have to be honest, I thought at first they were complimentary tickets for friends and family. Hahaha idiot that I am - of course not, they were the pyramid sales element of the show as we now had to sell at least 15 tickets in order to appear at the next round.
Okay - so we sold over the 15 required and we turn up. Had an awful sound-check in which the backing vocal mic was not on - not that the 'sound engineer' cared and then we waited....
I have to be honest, apart from the sound (and not getting my deposit back) things seemed to be fairly well run and professional. Our regional final was at Dingwalls in Camden so it was a cool place to be playing, albeit we had like a four hour gap between turning up to register / sound-check and then playing.
And then - we played. We were lucky in that our friends were sat just behind the judges and could read the feedback that one judge wrote... it said we were good, musically expressive, needed to get tighter (fair enough) and with a good singer (my friend actually photographed the judges screen so it will be interesting to see the feedback for us that is posted on the website and if it matches that which was written by the judge on the day). Most of our friends thought we would be in the top two or three acts on the day and that we'd sail through... but then two things happened and I knew, we weren't going to get through.
First off, my friend who was sitting behind the judges also read the feedback for another band - a kind of new wave / punk rock act that was on before us. The feedback simply said something like..."good act but its too late for them..." referring to the fact that the guys in the band were like fifty years old or something.
I remember thinking that this band were about the best there from my point of view and it was wrong to adjudge them on their age... maybe Live and Unsigned shouldn't have accepted their entrance fee in the first place?
And then - they announced the first person to go through.... it was somebody who was so god awful that they shouldn't have even got through the audition stage let alone the regional final... it was followed by even more talentless dross.... and it went on....and on and on as about seven acts were called up, most of whom were atrocious!
It transpired, that most of the acts that my band mates and I had thought would provide us with the toughest competition (i.e. the three or four good acts on the day) failed to go through, whilst the list of those who did go through even included a rapper who did a cover version of another rap artist's rap... which is kind of like ...rubbish!!!
Our humiliation was completed when we were in the top three artists to win the audience vote and consequently were called up on stage with the other two from the top three, for us to be put through the 'X-factor' style degradation of finding out which of us would be the final act to go through, on stage. To the right of me was a girl who played the electric guitar and sang moody songs, to the left of us was an out-dated, 'pussycat dolls wannabe' act... Hmmm now let me see, which act would cause the best entertainment when it was announced that they would go through....
Would it be shy moody girl with guitar? Would it be cool looking No Thoughts No Gravity who don't really want to be here? Or, would it be six screaming immature teenage girls (they would have to be immature to still be into this girl group thing once past the age of 12!!). Yep you guessed it... scream away girls!
My friends and band mates spent the rest of the day trying to work out how we hadn't gone through... some of them were quite pissed off and would have liked the ticket money refunded.
But eventually we consoled ourselves with the thought that ... did we really want to go through to the next round and compete against some of the awful acts that had gone through.... err ... nope!
I've since done some research on Live and Unsigned and found these links....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-16355713
http://messages.yahoo.com/Music/threadview?m=tm&bn=18941764&tid=2502&mid=2580&tof=1&frt=2
The next link goes off topic for a few posts but keep reading it...
http://www.leedsmusicforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=25026&start=380
Looks suspicious I guess... ultimately I don't really care. I enjoyed the day even though it caused momentary doubt in our music. But then I realized two things that made me feel a hell of a lot better.
First off, it felt bad being judged by music industry 'experts' as not good enough, ... but then I read who they were and to my great relief, I think I have more experience (like legitimate experience... stuff that pays) than most of the judges put together.
Secondly, only six months earlier, Rough Trade records had phoned up to talk after hearing our demo. They were interested and wanted me to get back in touch, with more material and some live dates in six months time (which is about now). Now that is the kind of music industry expertise that I like being judged by!!! Now where did I put that phone number :)
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