8/9/2007 Dead Monroe @ the mobileAct awards

Subject	Dead Monroe @ the mobileAct awards
PostedDate	9/8/2007
	Spent an interesting day/evening at the mobileAct unsigned awards thing at The Scala. Well it was interesting in places, but as anyone who has ever been involved with anything being made for TV can tell you - these things are very boring for a lot of the time... All the bands just got to play one song each, but there were no actual rubbish bands as they had all been selected from hundreds by a combination of fans voting and a few specially chosen by judges on merit. Xfm's Alex Zane was on MC duties to gee the crowd up beforehand and introduce each band. He seemed to have quite a high opinion of himself as he minced around, but he commented on my "nice boots" as he passed on some stairs later so he obviously does have some taste. Although of course he might just have been being sarcastic!  The place was pretty full to start off with, but gradually emptied out as bands played and their fans left after seeing them. The judges were Jo Whiley of Radio 1, Alex James from Blur, Lily Allen, and some music business bloke who nobody had heard of. He was obviously the token 'bad guy' put in the rip the bands to pieces - which he mostly did, although he praised some things I thought were totally unremarkable.  The first couple of bands can only be described as chavs - chav/rap or chav/rock - hoodies and parkas. They were OK at what they did I guess - if you like that sort of thing. Some people obviously do I guess, otherwise they wouldn't have got this far... One chav band had a bass player who stood out like a sore thumb as he looked like he should be a Glasonbury in his beanie hat/scarf/shades. I was amused to note that most of my thoughts on the various bands were echoed by the judges a few minutes later - with some surprising exceptions. Lily Allen commented that the Glasto refugee bassist was a bit 'over the top' - although not surprisingly she like the chav bands. Then there were a couple of more emo bands - I wasn't that keen on them either, but at least things were heading in a more rock direction. One band were sort of emo/ska and had a particulaly good frontman. He was a bit of a Pete Docherty look-a-like and seemed a bit full of himself, but the judges lked him. There was a lot of tedious waiting around between bands - they seemed to be getting through around one band every forty minutes or so. Fortunately, the bar was open...  There was an all girl rock 'n' roll band with an amazing singer - better at fronting a band than the bloke from the emo/ska band in my opinion - great charisma I thought - a real star. The judges hated her, and the song. Lily Allen seemed to hate them more than any other band and said they were terrible. Meeeoooow! I thought they were one of the best bands - well presented and a better than average song. There was a mainly vocal band with a very good singer, but too many other people in the band. I actually agreed with the judges on this - six people in the band (no drummer or bass, but including a human beatbox) but they could have done it with just three people really. It was many hours before Dead Monroe got their turn. I was at the front and got singled out by Alex Zane before he introduced the band - maybe he sussed who I was? He said I was "a scarily sexy man" - which is a bit worrying...  The place had been emptied out and had a largely new and fresh audience by then. It was good to see them on a decent sized stage in a good venue - and playing to a full room as well. I didn't bring my usual camera as I thought they wouldn't allow anything with a flash at a TV production - although a few other people took a chance. I just used my phone camera instead so the results are pretty poor, and mostly ruined by the strong backlighting anyway. The band rose to the occasion well and got a great reception from the crowd. Unfortunately, the judges weren't as keen - Alex James and the music biz bloke (who were both a bit up their own arses in my opinion) made remarks about Spinal Tap! I didn't get that at all myself.  Jo Whiley and Lily Allen both liked the song though, but sadly it wasn't enough. The song the band played was 'You're No Good For Me'. I was expecting them to play their recent (self financed) promo single 'Sweetheart', which I think personally would have done better for them on this occasion as it's more poppy and commercial. Oh well... I stayed on long enough to see a couple more bands before I got too bored and left. They were more straight ahead 'rock' bands, but they didn't really impress me with actually having decent songs -  a failing with most of the bands I saw at this event, although they all played well. I thought the judges were a bit harsh on Dead Monroe, but they got off lightly compared to the last band I stayed to see - they seemed to be locked in a bit of an '80s festival timewarp or something and although he wasn't the frontman I got the strong impression it was the bass player's band as he seemed to be outposing and upstaging everyone else my a mile. Alex James just came straight out with it and said they were a 'shit sandwich!' Amusingly, there were the usual idiots who's phones went off while they were trying to keep things quiet while they recorded the judges comments - prompting Lily Allen to shout out "Turn your fucking phone off!"  There were still a few bands to go, but I really couldn't be arsed to wait around anymore just to hear one song every forty minutes or so - especially as very few had impressed me at all...  Still, it was an interesting event and I'm glad I went.