If you’re starting a band and looking for gigs you should know that there are plenty of “promoters” out there waiting to take advantage of you. This is not to say that all Battle of the Bands are scams… Well, I’ll share some of my personal experiences, you can form your own opinions.
The first Battle of the Band I ever participated in was in college, with my band, The Swanky Modes. (I think we officially took 6th place). This was organized by students and was basically a popularity contest, meaning that the winning band was chosen based on crowd turnout and response, versus a panel of judges forming their opinions on a set base of criteria, such as whether or not the music was actually any good. This is what I would consider the “purest” form of a Battle of the Bands. Whether or not a band is actually any good, at least the bands that worked hardest on getting their fans out were rewarded for their effort and subsequent popularity.
I played a couple of Battle of the Bands with a band called the Groove Monster about ten years later, in the Bay Area. The first one was hosted by Rooster’s Roadhouse, in Alameda. We brought a good crowd for the first round, put on a good show and were declared the “front-runners”. We didn’t get as many people out for the final round, thus we lost our “front-runner” status going in and took third. I personally won some guitar accessories, and even better, we traded our prize (recording time) with the second place winner (a month’s free rent at our rehearsal studio), which was worth about $600 to us. Sweet!
The other battle with the Groove Monster took place at The Pound, in San Francisco. I believe this was a one night “pay to play” deal, meaning that we were given a stack of tickets to pre-sell for the show; i.e., number of tix sold = place in contest. At the end of the night we were clearly the winners based on our crowd response: we won over the majority crowd that had showed up for another band, which sucked and played covers. The promoters called for a final round of applause from the crowd for our band and the other band to determine the winner, since apparently the results at that point were in limbo. We clearly go the loudest response, and lost. Why? Because we didn’t sell as many tickets as the other band.
My current band, Sybil, participated in the Bodog Battle of the Bands a couple years ago, which was a national competition, with (I believe) the ultimate prize being a recording contract and performances at big venues; if we had won our region (Houston) we would have played the Verizon Center in Houston. (Sweet!) We won the first round and thus advanced to round two, which took place on the big stage at The Meridian, Houston. We thought it was strange that there were no judges present after our first round win, considering that it was these judges’ (three of them) decision that was supposed to have propelled us to the next round.
In the second round we dressed up (it was Halloween) and put on a typical high-energy, quality Sybil set. It was a few hours until final judgment, so our drummer, Ryan, and I went out for awhile. On returning, we eagerly awaited the final decision. They announced third place (out of six bands), not us. Second, not us. Were we going to be first?! Nope. Nothing. We went to check with the judges, but again, they had gone home early. Seems a little suspicious, doesn’t it? A couple of weeks later we went back to Houston to play the Jet Lounge and a woman there, who happened to be a lawyer, filled me in on how the Bodog competitions were completely rigged, with the winners picked before they even performed.
So that is my experience with battles of the band. If you enter one, decide before hand on what you expect to get out of it. Do a little research into how they will be judged so that you can assess your chances of winning something. Earlier in this article I mentioned “pay to play”. This is when a venue gives you a stack of tickets (usually 100) to sell before your show, a certain amount per ticket then being due to the club when you return to play your show. This is called pay to play because bands often choose to “buy” all the tickets they cannot sell and give them away, thus assuring that the club will view them favorably. This might be a good strategy if you are playing the Sunset Strip and know that the crowd is going to be full of record execs dying to sign your band. However, here in reality, this is a bad deal and I would encourage you not to exploit yourself like this. I would recommend reading some of my other blogs about promoting your band, and such books as “Guerilla PR”, etc.
Bottom line: have some self respect.
If you believe in your band and work hard on your shows you will enjoy some success. There is never a reason to allow yourself to be exploited by anyone!
