Auditions diaries from the acts #4

Audition diaries from the acts themselves from this year’s Live and Unsigned competition are going online in a bid to be in The List Magazine. A week ago we put a call out on our Facebook page for Scottish acts to tell us their stories from the Live and Unsigned auditions for the chance to be in the popular magazine. We’ve had an incredible response from bands and acts and the diaries of their experiences were just so good, we simply couldn’t choose which act to put forward to The List.

That’s where you - the Live and Unsigned fans and supporters come in, the bands and acts’ stories were so brilliant that we wanted to share them with you.  Each day we’re going to put up an act’s diary for you to join in the fun and read, if you like their tale, vote for them on our Facebook page by pressing the Like button or commenting positively on their work. The act with the most support for their diary by the publishing deadline will appear in The List magazine and be followed through the competition.

The Best of luck to all of our Scottish bands and acts who have shared their stories - get voting for your favourite!

Audition Diary of Switchblade Scream – Glasgow Auditions 5^th February 2011

When we found out that we were invited to the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow for a Live and Unsigned audition the first thing we thought was "we gotta be ready!!"

For the audition, we had to prepare a 2 minute version of one of our own original songs. Now for a band that is used to playing a 30-45 minute set with average song lengths being about 5 minutes, there were many hours spent in our rehearsal studio trying to put together the best 2 minutes to showcase what we are all about.

In the end we decided to do a cut up version of our track “Paint the Picture”. We knew that the track had to sound as if it was meant to be only 2minutes, which of course did result in some “interesting” versions of the song! (The one that had pretty much nothing but guitar solos were binned as we knew the judges didn’t want to see a shred-fest up there!)

On the day of the audition we turned up with ample time to find out what was going on (we pride ourselves on our time keeping!) where we had to sign in etc. After registration we were told to sit and wait for our names to be called which was a fun 2 hours checking out the other acts, seeing people get up when their names were called and wondering if we would find out on the day if we got through.

Finally we heard “Switchblade Scream”!

Up we jumped, grabbed our gear and made our way to the suite where the auditions were being held and were, again, told to get ready and wait and that we didn’t need any guitar leads. Thankfully the wait this time was only a couple of minutes and before we knew it, we were walking into the hall where the judges were sitting waiting on us. After making some brief hellos (and correcting one of the judges that Al, our singer/guitarist, isn’t American but is indeed from Glasgow with an “aye I’m Scottish!” we were asked to start whenever we were ready.

Now we knew that we had 2 minutes to impress the judges, so not only did that mean the song had to be the absolute best it could be, but also we had to perform it as if we were in the middle of a gig playing in front of our fans. As soon as Steve hit the 1 2 3 4 on the hi-hat, it was on!!

We are a VERY active band on stage and like to have a party, not only because we love playing our music but also we treat our shows as if they are big parties, so we want to ensure that everyone that comes to our shows leaves with a smile on their face, so when we were asked to stop after playing for what must of been about 1 minute it took a moment for us to all realise that the other guys in the band had stopped playing!

We were then ushered out and asked to wait AGAIN! More waiting!! This time wasn’t so bad as we made friends with some people, everyone was a bit nervous waiting to find out if they had made it through. Names were called, applause was given for those that made it through. There did not seem to be any order to the names being called so we almost didn’t hear when the announcer said “Switchblade Scream, you guys also made it through!”

After many high 5’s we knew that for the next round we really need to do something special. For the next round we are going to be doing as much press, PR etc as we can. Already we are in talks with putting on benefit gigs, interviews with local radio stations, as well as press in order to get push the PR boat out for not only the band but also the Live and Unsigned event!

Apart from Live and Unsigned we have only been in one other band contest where we won a slot at the 2009 Unsigned stage at the Bloodstock Open Air festival, which is another story in itself!!

So far, and the band has only been together for about 4 years, our most rock n roll moment would have to be the time....oh i don’t think we can tell that, it’s not suitable to be printed in a public newspaper!!"

If you like Switchblade Scream’s tale, you have one week to vote for them on our Facebook page  by pressing the Like button! Watch out in the few days for some more diary entrants from Glasgow & Edinburgh.