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Posted by Jimmy
on 5/7/2012, 4:10 pm
173.197.44.92
A new edition of Cover wars started on Friday night at Aftershock. The winner gets to open the Rock N Roll Dream Concert at Sandstone/Cricket Wireless Amphitheater. It's basically a show with a bunch of tribute bands. So it may not be a coincidence that 5 of the 10 bands in Cover Wars this weekend were tribute bands.
Things started off at Aftershock with Think floyd, a Pink Floyd tribute. This band was a guitarist, 2 vocalists and a laptop. They weren't to bad. The other tribute band on Friday was Size Matters, a Helmet cover band. I knew one of their songs and another sounded familiar. I thought they were really good. I joked with one of the guitar players afterward that they could probably enter the regular Club Wars and people may not notice that they're a cover band. The other 2 bands were Left 2 Chance and The Next Generation. Left 2 Chance did a solid job playing a set of tunes that could be found in 98.9s playlist. The Next Generation is a 3 piece band of 16 year olds who played a handful of blues tunes and some Jimi Hendrix songs. The Next Generation was the band that advanced.
Sunday nights Cover Wars at VooDoo had 3 tribute bands. Mississippi Girl (Faith Hill), Sabbath Disciples (Black Sabbath) and Facelift (Alice Chains). I kind of thought Facelift was the best band of the night. There was also a couple of bands from Topeka, Swift Kick and Simply Driven. They both kicked out sets of hard rock/metal that included stuff by the likes of Sabbath, AC/DC and Godsmack. The band that advanced was the School Of Rock House band. This band featured 14 teenagers that interchanged on each song of the mostly classic rock set of tunes they played. It was almost like they were a basketball team as band members gave high fives when they moved on and offstage as they switched places between songs.
The 2nd date in the Battle For Freaker's Ball went down on Saturday night at Harley's & Horses. This was my first booking in the place and it all went fairly well. The show started at 9, but things started cooking about 45 minutes beforehand. These two hot looking babes, one of which had very nice looking boobs and was basically wearing a bikini and very short skirt, started dancing together. Or should I say grinding on each other on the dance floor. The opening band Samsara and some of their friends were camped out at a couple of tables around the dance floor. And it wasn't long until a couple of girls with them started grinding away also. Sib Delicious was running sound and he started playing some dance tunes and it almost seemed like we were in a strip club.
The show started and all of the bands did great job and things were moving along smoothly. Then I started counting the ballots as the final band of the evening, Collapse, announced their last song. As they finished the song, I had counted out 26 votes for Collapse, 24 votes each for Untamed and Stoneyard and 23 votes for Samsara. Collapse finished the song and a few shouts for an encore came out from the crowd. I jumped on stage and said they're going to play one more song, turn in your votes if you haven't voted. I collected the judge scores and totaled them up, Collapse was the unanimous selection of the judges. Two bands advance from the first round, the band with the high judge score and the band with the most fan votes. Collapse had both the high judge score and the most fan votes. In that case, the band with the 2nd most fan votes advances. And in the event of a tie, there's no tie breaker, everyone that ties advances. This would mean that all of the bands except Samsara would advance. Collapse finished the song and I saw a girl turning in a ballot. I thought, this vote could determine the outcome. She voted for Collapse. The vote totals were: Collapse 27, Untamed and Stoneyard 24 and Samsara 23. I went and announced the results and then said something to the bands that advanced about the next date. Then I started talking to the guys in Samsara and told them if they wanted to re-enter I could give them another spot. And how they were basically one vote short from advancing. It was at that point when a guy listening in on the conversation stopped me and queried, "They lost by one vote?" I explained how it all worked and that yes, one vote would have made the difference. The guy then goes over to the table were he and his buddies were sitting and brings back a beer soaked ballot with Samsara written on it. He says, "I didn't think it was going to matter so I didn't turn it in." I went ahead and accepted the vote. So everyone advanced. It's not the first time everyone advanced in one of these Wars. But all of the other times when everyone advanced, it was only 2 bands on the bill.
jim@jimkilroy.com181
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