I couldn’t go without saying a few words of support for Created In Birmingham, who did a brief post a few months ago on Surface Unsigned a while back. CiB did a bit more digging and to keep a long story short, and it seems that in order to progress through the competition you need to sell tickets to at least 25 of your fans (friends) at £6 a pop, and in return you get a few guitar strings and the vague promise of peck on the cheek from the music industry.

To back this up, they put up some of the terms so that people could read about how the competition works - which Surface Unsigned weren’t that happy with, and asked CiB to take down the post with a strongly worded letter threatening legal action.

You can follow all this (and get the story much more better-ly explained) on Pete Ashton’s post about Surface Unsigned. The best thing is the re-write of the Surface Unsigned terms and conditions in Lolspeak.

My big thing is that you don’t need battle of the band events (which frequently descend into how-many-cows-have-you-got-yeah-Ive-got-104-friends wrongness) to enjoy music, or even to “make it” if that’s your aim. If you’re not playing with bands that you like, or releasing records, then the best advice I could give to anyone is to give it a go yourself.

It’s never easy, but it’s you trying to make a difference - and if we all did that then I’m fairly certain that events where 25 of your friends are charged £6 to see you play a 20 minute set wouldn’t exist.

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