Last weekend I spent all day Saturday (up until about 2am Sunday morning actually) listening to submissions for a music festival held in Canberra, ACT (for those of you who don’t know, Canberra is the Capital of Australia). I had help, in the form of three friends. Two of these guys have been running the festival for the last 4 years, and prior to that, a very close friend and I had been organising it. The festival, called Indyfest, has been running for about 12 years now. While it is not a moneymaker, it has a lot of industry respect. The industry forum side of it, which started in the last few years, is very popular and well attended by both musicians and industry types.
So, back to my Saturday. We had received about 90 submissions from all around Australia. One of the guys had a spreadsheet on his laptop with all the entries listed and four different categories each of us had to score on, those being performance (did they sound cohesive), songs (well structured etc), live record (how many live shows in the last 12 months) and presentation (had they put any effort into the bio they sent us). It was a long day but an enjoyable process, for the most part.
A lot of the submissions did not include enough information. Why go to the effort of putting yourself or your band out there if you don’t have your shit together. Any decent bio should include a recent photo, contact details, a band bio and the current line-up and, if relevant, reviews of gigs and/or recordings. We had a couple of submissions where we received a demo CD with no information on the disc and very little else. We had a submission of just a demo CD, no cover letter, no return address or phone number, no nothing! Of course, it could have been the best music we heard all day and it wouldn’t have made any difference. It went straight into the rejected pile without a listen.
We also had some fine examples of the way an entry should be made. A number were very good two page bios, complete with recent gig listings and live reviews as well as a photo (any more than two pages, and realistically, those pages will only be skimmed). Bands included bribes such as stickers, posters and even t-shirts, which are always good and accepted wholeheartedly. Website addresses are great but not if you say your bio is there. Most A&R reps, festival or gig bookers and agents wouldn't have the time to check out your site. They want the material in their hands while listening to your disc.
The worst thing I encountered, by far, were demos of bands who quite obviously did not tune their instruments properly. This is unforgivable, as far as I’m concerned. What an absolute waste of time and money. Any band who couldnn’t even achieve this most basic of musical necessities were treated with utter contempt and believe it or not, there were at least a 1/2 dozen who fit into this category.
So if you are in a young band, please follow this advice. Hopefully it will mean you get your foot through an open door and into the anteroom of the music industry. And for fucks sake, if you can’t tune your instrument properly, then at least buy a tuner!