Continuing our exploration of the Battle of the Bands competitions, let’s see what’s going on with the Shure and Jansport contests and see which bands are getting ready to rock the regional showdowns and head to the finale at SXSW 2011.
As we mentioned in the first post, the Shure and Jansports BOTB contests both relied on fan votes to pick the best bands, but each contest was structured differently.
That said, one of the reasons we’re keeping on eye both BOTB contests is because the winning bands will get the chance to play live at SXSW 2011 in just a few months.
And we wanted to see how the BOTB experience will impact the band’s live performance and overall career.
We’re curious what sort of impact it would have on their fan base, and whether or not the contest experience will help the artists improve their live show.
What About The Fans?
And beside the bands, we’re also curious to see how the contest experience impacts the fans.
Will the contest allow fans to discover a new favorite band?
Will the fans be surprised at the strength or weaknesses of the bands they voted for when the fans get to see them perform live at the regional showcase or final SXSW big stage performance?
Jansport Bands Still Waiting
The voting stage of Jansport’s contest ended last month and the votes are being tallied with the final winner scheduled to be announced later this month.
Shure Give It Voice Tour Ready for Regional Showdowns
But Shure’s contest rolls on with Regional shows taking place over the next couple of weeks in Chicago, Nashville, Toronto, Los Angeles and Austin.
The 18 regional finalists for the Shure contests rep of variety of genres rooted in a mix of indie-rock, electro-pop, folk, hip hop, blues, metal and Latin rhythms.
Are Bands Telling Their Stories?
As you know, we’ve been following the story of St. Bagu since their very first show, and it was a nice to hear from one of the other artists in the Shure contest too when Nick Edelstein left a comment on our first contest post saying he had discovered our Live Fix community when looking for info about the contest.
I took a peek at Nick’s site and noticed that he’s also shared some of his Shure experience on his blog.
I wondered how the other bands were talking about their Shure experience, so I took a look at a few of the other bands like The Specktators, Daniel Durrett and Mieka Pauley . All of them have blogs and have been talking about the Shure contest in one way or another and hopefully we’ll see some insights before or after the Regional shows?
And after my brief stroll through all their websites and Facebook, Myspace profiles of the bands, I’m a bit surprised more of the bands don’t have a better social media presense or aren’t getting more creative considering our recent exploration into social and live music.
That said, hopefully we’ll get to talk more with Nick and the other 18 Shure finalists to see how the first round of voting was for them, and I hope they’ll tell us a little bit more about what they plan to do to win the next round during the live regional shows.
If you’re in any of the bands or voted during either the Shure or the Jansport contest, drop us a comment and let us know what you did or didn’t like about being in the contests.
Go Check Out the Shows!
That’s it for now. If you’re in Chicago, the regional show is this Thursday January 2oth at Metro. The show is free and starts at 6pm and you can get more info on the other shows on the Shure site.