Last Sunday afternoon the organizers for Vancouver’s Music Waste Festival invited me to come join their annual Listening Party. This is exactly what it sounds like. A bunch of the coordinators sit around and go through every single band submission narrowing the 300-plus nation-wide contenders down to the 80 who will play the festival.After the long and tedious Listening Party, I have a lot of respect for festival organizers; even though they act like a bunch of elite cheerleaders.The process went like this: one guy would read the band’s biography they had penned, while another played the band’s song and the rest of the members either gave the band a thumbs up, a maybe or a thumbs down. As everyone topped up their coffees with even more alcohol, someone ignited the cheers and yelled, “To every ska application!” I immediately realized I was at the cheerleading squad headquarters of “cool music”. (After all, this festival did originate 18 years ago as a “fuck you” to the industry-heavy New Music West Festival.) The world “ska” sent everyone laughing. One thing music snobs and cheerleader have in common? No dreads allowed.I do not blame any of the festival heads for being elitist. They have to be. If they didn’t they would end up with a seven-week joke of a festival where everyone and their Grandma could get up and try a song. No one wants to pay money to see that. Just like the cheerleading squad, festival coordinators have to be choosey.
The more the coordinators drank, the less tolerance they had. The estimated time it took for them to decide if a band was in or out was about 23 seconds. After 53 submissions and only one smoke break, they were cutting bands off at 14 seconds. People argued. There was a lot of back and forth screaming. Most judgments started with statements like, “Well, I’m not pissed off yet, this is okay.” But then, the vocals would kick in and the room would be a sea of downwards pointing thumbs and cringing faces. There were a lot of bands with dinosaur names. I think someone briefly considered the concept of Dino Waste but that dream was crushed and thrown away like an empty beer can. Of course, there were the “popular kids”. Bands who already had clout and draw in our city and were making relevant records. When a band submitted a music video to go along with their songs, it was like Double Jeopardy. Everyone got really excited, really quiet and huddled around the computer to watch the magic (or total crap) unfold.It was rare that a band would be liked by everyone and yet, no one knew one of the members or had heard them before. These special gems were diamonds in the rough and they were so, so exciting. There was this one girl-fronted group called Cascadia that sounded like Mazzy Star on Adderall. Watch out.
I was yelled at for voicing my opinion. I couldn’t help it. I got into it. It was fun to be on the deciding side. Maybe my opinion wasn’t necessary, but when a band seemed too weird to be real, the festival heads had no problem letting me call the band and question them about their legality. (Side Note: Skins of Our Fathers, Why didn’t you call back? I wanted to know if your promise of “boners all around” was real? Can I emailed you back at totallysexual@gmail.com or were you just fucking with us with your big, massive dicks?)So, what did I learn? Well….5 THINGS BANDS SHOULD NEVER DO WHEN SUBMITTING TO FESTIVALS:Do not write your lyrics out: Oh my God. I can’t stress this one enough. Do you know that every time someone sends a Bandcamp page with lyrics it is read out loud? Even if you are the next Leonard Cohen, there is no way your lyrics are going to sound good written down because, guess what? You are not Leonard Cohen. Let there be some mystery, guys.Do not link to MySpace: You might as well fax your song in.Do not make up genres for your band: If the type of music you play doesn’t have a genre or you just don’t care enough to state it, just leave it up to the listener to decide. You never need to make up some fancy boy genre for your brand of hippy-doodle-dumb-pop-punk or whatever.Do not send unnecessary press photos: If they didn’t ask, they don’t want to know.Do not send in cover songs: There is a reason that karaoke is always free. Submitting an ironic Spice Girls cover is as good as farting on your final cartwheel.I only made it to submission 85 and that took nearly 3 hours out of my life. I was drunk and tired and late for Easter Dinner. Bottom line is that I’m a big supporter of Music Waste, even if it is organized by a bunch of drunken elitists. Just kidding. No one who runs this festival is actually a jerk. In fact, these people are amazing for volunteering their time to put together an underground relevant focused on promoting new and talented bands. The whole point of this festival is to focus on bands within the city not big, out-of-towners. Local talent! But, sorry the key word here is relevant so, better luck next year to any conscious blast-tramp-rap groups (whatever that is) and ironic country acts. You didn’t make the squad and you probably never will. Go join the circus.
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