Very strange situation. Having a meal in a pub with the family on saturday night, and I get a text message from a friend asking me if I'll judge a BotB competition the next night at the leisure centre. Being half-cut (drinking with boss and colleagues since 5.30) my ego kicks in and says "fuck yeah, I'm Simon Cowell to the power of 10!" So come 7pm on Saturday night I'm sitting next to Muse's ex-manager and a world-champion windsurfer watching a load of plebs play a Van Halen cover! Fucking magical!
A brief run-down of the five bands;
First up = Idle Crash - Van Halen cover. And a Dire Straits cover as well! Lots of widdly bedroom-heavy metal 80s geetah, aweful, no stage presence, came last (provincial band stereotype n.1).
2nd = Kinetic - 3 12-year-olds who can barely hold instruments who play some fucking weird, largely instrumental jerky grunge-funk-shoegazing stuff (not a provincial band stereotype!).
Third = Intoxia - The Nu-Metal ones who try and incite a riot, have never been in the same room as a melody, and get their mates dad to threaten the judges (provincial band stereotype n.3)!
4th = Pseudo Podium - ironic college 'funk', ie; whiter than white widdly Hendrix-meets-Jamirorquai shite as purveyed by EVERYONE EVER from a band in Devon who's done an A level (Reef, Rootjuice, et al). Covered the Transformers theme, and if they'd just done that they'd have won - it sounded like Geoff Love! (Provincial band stereotype n.3)
5th = 4play - The Oasis/Coldplay one. Sounded more like Bon Jovi doing ballads than Oasis blowing up the 100 Club. Thuggishly sensitive lad rock with NO BASSIST! Very scary audience frenzy for a band who were hideously shit - I'm sure I've seen at least two of them fighting on the lawn in town on a Friday night, and here they are being 'sensitive'?! (Provincial band stereotype n.4)
So who won? The grunge-funk-shoegaze 12-year-olds, that's who! I know the guitarists's older brother (I knew someone in every band except the nu-metal one, one way or another) and I'm gonna offer to manage them to huge international acclaim so they can unite the world Wyld Stallyons stylee! Awesome. Picking them over the Oasis band or the funk band nearly incited a fucking riot, and all the judges made a swift getaway in order to avoid teenage muggers! SUBERB!
― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Monday, 10 March 2003 08:59 (twenty-three years ago)
Dur, the meal was FRIDAY night, the contest the next night.
― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Monday, 10 March 2003 09:01 (twenty-three years ago)