Unholy Alliance Leads to Bloody Battle Royal

Or, we are pitting locals bands against each other for sport.

by Patrick Rapa

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Published: Mar 4, 2008

THUMBS UP: (L-R) CP's Patrick Rapa and Brian Howard, Y-Rock's Josh T. Landow and Jim McGuinn, vying for the first pick. Michael T. Regan

There's a sort of battle of the bands going on right now. Until very recently this was a surprise to the bands doing the battling.

Hopefully they're out there right now, though, e-mailing everybody they know and instructing them to go to citypaper.net/shootout. Vote for us, your favorite band, they are saying. Do not vote for those other bands. They suck.

But why are these otherwise amiable artists snipping and snapping at each other like a bunch of supermarket lobsters?

Well, a few weeks ago, a City Paper away team ventured up to WXPN HQ to summit with representatives from Y-Rock and hatched a secret and nefarious plot. A whiteboard was filled with local band names. A draft was held. CP and Y-Rock each took turns choosing, one side sometimes using its own pick to thwart the plans of the other, and then instantly regretting it. When the markers finally settled, each side had assembled an Elite Eight. This is Round One, an online clickularity contest to determine which band will proceed to next week's head-to-head battle.

What's at stake? The winning band will be invited to play a couple of high-profile gigs: a showcase at the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Convention (City Paper's hosting it this summer) and a Y-Rock festival to be determined.

More terrifiyling: If Y-Rock's finalist band beats out CP's, we'll be forced to deliver a full page from our music section (in an issue to be determined) into the grubby hands of that little (mostly extra-terrestrial) radio station. We're not talking ad space — they'll be providing actual editorial content. If CP's band wins, this little (mostly pornographic) alt-weekly will get to run the station for an hour — one of those Radio Takeover deals.

Look to these pages next week (March 13) for the results of the 8-on-8 competition. Or listen to Y-Rock On XPN the day before when I'll be stopping by (with some measuring tape) to hype the whole thing on the air.

(pat@citypaper.net)

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