…back to our regularly scheduled programming. You know, the stuff that doesn’t gather 200 comments, schoolyard names, or anger on any level!? That’s the stuff that keeps me coming back every day! Now that the dust has settled a few minutes and we don’t have any multiple votes from the same IP address to delete, I can talk about a few of the lessons learned from our week.

For the minimal amount of time Sean and I took to throw the contest together, I think it went fairly well. Yes, it was totally a promotion vehicle designed to introduce different parties to each other and that mission was accomplished. We had well over 3,000 page loads the final day of the competition. I’d say that’s decent for a site that’s relatively new, wouldn’t you?

It wasn’t one-sided promotion either. When’s the last time any of the bands involved were exposed to thousands of readers? The Final 5 (er, 6) had the pleasure of their bands being heard by several labels, promotion companies, bloggers, and DJs. That’s a positive too, right? Indeed!

A few things that I think will change next time though…

The fan vote will definitely be eliminated until the final voting day. We’ve been at this for 8 months now and until this week, there really was no trash talking on this site. We write about what we like and save the angst for our coworkers and spouses. Please, realize that most of this is tongue-in-cheek and smile for crying out loud!

…breaking down the Final 5:

The Winner: I’m pretty excited about The Moths. While we can’t take credit for introducing the blogoshpere to the band, we can take credit for introducing them to industry types here in the States. I touched base with the boys this morning and gave them the contact information for two promotion companies here that are interested in working with them. We’ll keep you posted as things unfold. In the meantime, enjoy another song from the band:

MP3: The Moths - “Games”

The Runner-up: The Karabal Nightlife received the majority of the label votes. That’s got to be a very encouraging thing to them. Tim Dickinson from The Blue Walrus told me he plans to write about the band on his site and there’s no doubt they’ll be receiving further attention here. Here’s another song from the band to sink your teeth into:

MP3: The Karabal Nightlife - “I Need A Girl”

The One That Got Away: I can’t help but wonder how the voting would’ve unfolded if Bill Schulz would’ve been in the mix?! This songs has been stuck to the roof of my mouth since I heard it. Influences in all the right places is an understatement! He’s a local yocal, so hopefully I’ll be able to snap photos at an upcoming show or two to share. I’m excited to hear more from the album he’s working on and and hope he’s willing to share some of it it with us. Download this and enjoy:

MP3: Bill Schulz - “Future Butterfly”

It was fun, wasn’t it? I’d like to shout out to Sean for stepping up and really making this happen. Even though our wires got crossed from time to time it unfolded nicely in my opinion. Once again, thanks to all the bands and fans that made this week a reality.

- Kip!

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I noticed that things got a wee bit miconstrued between Sean and I last night. My friend’s Mom is in ICU at the moment and I had a surprise visit from him and his fiance. He caught an early morning flight to Boston from the airport here this morning. Not an excuse, but clearly the reasoning I wasn’t around to discuss things properly. The gal Sean announced as the winner didn’t even submit the band, so sorting this one out was easy…a gal named Jacque submitted Femme Fatality earlier. Paige was casting her vote (on the wrong post nonetheless).

Tim Dickinson is the lucky winner of our Filter/Ragged prizepack giveaway!

Tim will be receiving a pack of cds from ALL the Ragged artists in the current issue (including Robbers On High Street, Aqualung, The Cinematics, Midnight Movies, The Colour, Carina Round & Miho Hatori), a RAGGED hoodie and a hard copy of the magazine.

Artwork: Paul Lightfoot

Here’s where the confusion started…Tim is a fellow blogger who writes for The Blue Walrus. Tim was one of the judges on our panel. When he found out that The Moths were advancing, he removed himself from the panel. I told Sean about this and he thought Tim removed himself from the contest…not so.

Another fellow blogger who was on the panel submitted a band that moved forward. I allowed both to remain and vote.

So, yeah…how about thanking Tim for his submission?! I don’t know about you, but I love The Moths.

MP3: The Moths - Valentine (Tim’s Winning Submission)

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I’m rather spaced-out at the moment, what with the constant eye I’ve been trying to keep on this vote and AMC’s Agatha Christie showcase. I finished out Murder on the Orient Express (the one with Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot) and now I’m onto Murder Most Foul with the awesome Margaret Rutherford. It’s so fantastically 60’s I feel like I’m spoiling the mood just by using a computer. That’s got nothing to do with the business at hand, I’m just offering a window into my ever distracted mind. Terrifyingly empty in there, isn’t it?

Onto it then - the votes are in and it appears The Moths are our Judges’ choice and the winners in our Best Unsigned Band Contest! Congrats Moths! By winning the contest you’ll get free use of our top banner to promote your band, a feature/interview on the site and free promotion from Sneak Attack Media! Woohoo!

The votes were as follows:

The Moths - 10
The Karabal Nightlife - 6
The Firing Order - 1
Luke Sneyd - 1
Anything After - 1
Femme Fatality - 0

The Fan Vote went down as a battle between Anything After and Femme Fatality, and by last count it looks like Femme Fatality came out on top (35 to 32).

On behalf of everyone here at Rock Sellout, we want to think the fans, the bands & the judges for their help! We know the contest hasn’t gone as smoothly as we wanted, but hey, it was our first attempt at something like this. It’s a learning experience, and we figure next time we’ll be pros! And really, the purpose of the contest was to turn people on to music they’d have otherwise not heard, and in that sense I think we unquestionably succeeded.

Till next time,
- Sean

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…as you know, we’ve offered an article/interview and a banner on the top of the site to the winning band to help them promote whatever they wish to promote. My friend Marni Wandner from Sneak Attack Media has taken this offer one step further.

Marni has offered the following to today’s winner:

1. Today’s winner will receive an announcement with a link to their site on our Sneak Attack’s MySpace (add them, please) and Sneak Attack’s website.

2. She’s also offered up even more help…the winner will receive a free blog blast from Sneak Attack. Essentially what this means is that Marni is going to tell her people about your band.

Cool enough?!

Here are a few of the bands currently on team Sneak Attack: Land Of Talk, Fields, The Horrors, Fair To Midland, The Cobbs, Dead Child.

Thanks a million Marni!!

A few more gifts from Marni (Fields Remixes)…

“Song for the Fields” (Ewan Pearson Remix)
“If You Fail We All Fail” (SebastiAn Remix)
“If You Fail We All Fail” (Badlands Remix)

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Sorry for being disorganized, but I need to get to bed (it’s 1:13am and I’m up in less than 5 hours) and the link to this area needs to accompany my e-mail to the judges. Sean will edit this properly so it makes sense. G’night kids! Good luck to the Final 6!!

Hi there judges! Sean here…I would have written this post but Kip is some kind of X-Fileian Super Soldier that no longer requires sleep or rest or internet breaks. I guess I need to clarify the fact that there are 6 bands in here instead of 5. Last night’s heat was right down to the wire, and when the dust settled at midnight we had two bands with 58 votes each. I talked to Kip and we felt it was only fair to advance both bands given that info. Thus we have what I like to call the Final Five Plus One!

So far you guys are doing an excellent job already, I think the only rule I would have is to provide some sort of basis for your decisions (which you’ve been doing) while simulataneously avoiding going all P-Fork on the bands’ asses. Constructive criticism is great; saying ‘You sound like my grandmother experiencing a loose stool’ isn’t.

And just a reminder for everyone else, this post is Judges Only. There’s a fan vote section just below this post where you can argue your case for the panel. For a complete listing of our Judges Panel please go here.

Vote away, judges!

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I have always loved The Human League. They were easily one of my favorite bands of the early 80’s. I always thought it was criminal that they get stuck on these ‘One Hit Wonder’ lists because of how massive ‘Do You Want Me’ was. It’s not even their best song people! ‘Sound of the Crowd’, ‘Mirror Man’, ‘Open Your Heart’…I could go on and on really.

Normally I’d hate to open a discussion about a new band by discussing another band, but I think a love of The Human League opened my ears to this gem by newcomers Heads We Dance. THL are clearly a strong influence here as well as Erasure, early Depeche Mode and warm synthpop in general.

The great thing about the track is, it’s not just a cheap recreation á la Electroclash or outright theft á la The Bravery. This song sounds so authentic you’d think it was an original creation of early 80’s electro, right down to the Bryan Ferry/Glenn Gregory-esque lead vocals. My favorite part comes at 2:12 when the song gets a bit more sinister and the band gives a tip of the hat to Michael Jackson, and later, to Olivia Newton John.

So please, open your heart to the sound of the crowd and download ‘Love in the Digital Age’ below!

WEBSITE: myspace.com/headswedance

MP3: Heads We Dance - Love in the Digital Age

- Sean

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While I should’ve shared something from the Redd Kross album Neurotica as well, you’re going to have to forgive me…there’s a small distraction going on that’s making the evening quite entertaining. Speaking of which…have you voted?!

I had the pleasure of seeing Redd Kross a few months ago and was completely blown away. So, when I saw that the band were playing another show (shows are getting fewer and fewer) in Los Angeles July 20, at the Greek Theater with Sonic Youth, I felt obligated to report the news. Screw your Pitchfork Festival kids and get your School of Rock diploma early by taking this advanced learning course. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed!

I apologize if you’re offended that I neglected to praise the brilliance of Sonic Youth…I’ll save that for another day, OK?!

MP3: Redd Kross - “Annie’s Gone”
MP3: Redd Kross - “Lady In The Front Row”
MP3: Redd Kross - “Follow The Leader”

- Kip!

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Ken Stringfellow has a new band. I’ve lost count of how many bands the man is involved with. As if being one of the founding members of The Posies wasn’t enough, Ken had to add touring and recording with both Big Star and R.E.M. to his rock n roll resume. Let’s not forget about the acoustic performances with Jon Auer.

He’s one busy man, no doubt about it.

Photo: Mathieu Zazzo

From the band’s Myspace: The Disciplines came from a fortuitous meeting: the singer of Briskeby, Lise Karlsnes, met the singer of the Posies, Ken Stringfellow, while the latter was entertaining an entire MTV music awards afterparty, taking requests at the piano (Ken was there playing with REM, he is their keyboard player). This was in 2001, just after Stringfellows second solo album, Touched, has been released, and he was pleasantly surprised to find someone requesting one his songs, a request he gladly granted. The two became friends and thru Lise Ken met the rest of Briskeby (Bjørn Bergene, guitarist; Bård Helgeland, bassist; and Claus Heiberg-Larsen; drummer) inviting them to the REM show in Oslo in early 2005. Bonds were solidified in a late night session at Teddys jukebox bar; promises were made and the one that was kept was that they would all do something musical together in the future. Luckily, the other, less noble, promises were forgotten by morning! REM returned to Oslo in the summer of 2005 and in the scant free hours between early morning arrival and the show, Ken went to a studio and fashioned a duet with Lise on what would become Briskeby’s most successful song, “Joe Dallesandro”. A hit song has a way of tying the participants together forever and this prospect was nothing but a great opportunity for making something entirely new out of this crossbred, thoroughbred, hybrid creature: part Norwegian, part American; part Briskeby, part Stringfellow et voila, the Disciplines were formed. They’re still trying to decide what the music can be called. At turns rock, at turns garage, at turns simple, at turns twisted around different styles. Based around the simplicity of the live band Stringfellow sings; Bjørn plays guitar; Bård plays bass, Claus Heiberg-Larsen plays drums. They don’t do overdubs, and they also use the motto famously tucked into the sleeve of all the early Queen albums: no synths! Having played to just a few lucky audiences so far, they present their recordings are a show, done live, in their rehearsal space, with all the tension and ferocity that a band usually thrusts forward towards the audience being jammed into a scant few microphones (god rest their souls). The name implies the band is itself the creation of four disciplined musicians. It certainly has a well-defined, adhered-to aesthetic. However, disciplines are also branches of knowledge and occasionally, a new discipline is formed when something too advanced, too specialized, and too unique to inhabit a previously known category is created by drawing upon previously known fields of science. And thus, we present you, previously unknown to science, philosophy or history: the Disciplines.

A few slices o’ Ken:
MP3: The Posies - “Solar Sister”
MP3: Saltine - “Reveal Love”
MP3: Ken Stringfellow - “Find Yourself Alone”

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Never heard of The Hours? Why don’t we let Jarvis Cocker introduce them?

The Hours are Antony Genn and Martin Slattery. They understand what music is for - it’s for human beings to communicate with other human beings. It’s that simple, it’s that important. Let them into your life. You won’t regret it.

The Sunday Times called their album, ‘Narcissus Road’, a ‘deep, dark disturbing beauty of a debut album, stalked by Scott Walker, Radiohead and Gang of Four’.

Their new single, the rousing underdog anthem ‘Ali In The Jungle’, comes out on July 9. The video is posted above.

Trust us, soon you won’t be able to remember what your life was like before you loved The Hours.

Get a free download of their song ‘Murder or Suicide’ here.

Speaking of Jarvis Cocker…
MP3: Pulp - “Babies”
MP3: Pulp - “Underwear”

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My apologies for once again slipping and letting dust settle on this category shortly after I started it. I hope this makes up for it:

Gang of Four bass player Dave Allen has a music blog called pampelmoose. He’s decided to share a live recording that was anonymously sent to him four years ago…why am I telling you this? I’ll let Dave tell you…

From pampelmoose: In 1979 if memory serves me correctly, Gang of Four was on its second visit to the USA when we played a club in Manhattan called Mothers. I’m no longer sure if the club still exists but the performance we gave that night certainly does. A CD of the live recording arrived in the mail anonymously about 4 years ago just prior to the Gang of Four reunion tours. It’s a patchy recording but it captures the fire and energy of the times, a time when music was still evolving. I’ve decided to make these 12 tracks available for download and today is day 1 of 12 days of offering up the files. Collect the set.

MP3: Gang of Four - “I Found That Essence Rare” (Live @ Mothers, New York City 9/9/79)

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