After four rounds of online balloting from over 1,400 voters, The Midwest Beat and The Selfish Gene have emerged as the 2009 Band to Band Combat finalists. That means they'll perform in front of a live audience at The Frequency on Thursday, November 19 for a bushel of prizes including studio time, gift certificates and CD dubbing services.
Starting two weeks ago with 38 bands, the field was cut in half four times to arrive at the two finalists. Contestants represented most of Madison's pop music genres, including a remarkable number of metal acts.
Now, onto the mailbag!
Kyle from the Lakeshore dorms asks how the finals will work. As you may know, the Frequency has a front bar and a show room. Cover to get into the show room will be an extremely affordable, even in these times of economic uncertainty and pessimism, five dollars. Paid entry entitles each patron to one vote, which they can use to support one of the two bands. If they're close-minded sheep coerced into attending by the friend of someone's brother who went to camp with one of the bass players or something and wouldn't think of voting for the other band, sound unheard, then they can drop their ticket into the ballot box immediately and spend the rest of the night trying to look like they're not having fun.
But if, on the other hand, they're music fans always on the lookout for cool local bands to learn about, they can hold onto that ticket and weigh each band's performance rationally, finally making their choice after the final chord has been struck (strummed?). We'll do a quick tally and announce the winner on the Frequency's stage a little before 1 a.m.
Nichole wonders via Twitter what's so fun about that. Well, Nichole, some people think it's interesting to see a bill including two local bands that, if not for the external forces created by a contest like this one, might never play together. While both of these bands are accomplished and Madison isn't huge, we're not aware of any shows featuring both acts. Thus, we fully expect that a quietly confident dude who just totally digs The Midwest Beat will accidentally on purpose brush the hand of an unconventionally attractive girl who was told she should totally check out The Selfish Gene while leaving a tip at the bar and end up dating her for perhaps as long as three months. It's destiny, but if you choose to sit and text your friends all night instead of actually, you know, living in the city, you'll never know if you're that girl.
