Battle of the Bands Review (Or, How to Scare the Children)

Firstly, thanks to everyone who bought tickets and came out to support Jagged Spiral last Sunday in the 2009 Battle of the Bands. We had a great time, and hope you did too.

I just found out the winner of the battle ended up being The Company Don’t trust the songs on their myspace, they put a lot of Energy and Fun into their set.

I got to speak to them at the battle of the bands (as they were tearing down and we were setting up) .

“Thanks alot,” I said wryly. “You guys coulda sucked!”

But Xtna put it into perspective for me. I said, “How can we compete with that? Those guys were great!”

She looked at me sternly and said, “Your job is not to beat them, your job right now is to go up there and Scare the Children.”

So we did. I’d say we decimated all other bands that night on several levels. The Richter Scale would be one of them. A spiritual scale would be another one. I guarantee you some of the fans of The Company are still huddled under the stairs, shivering with fear. And Jagged Spiral drank more than the other bands and their fans combined. (…mostly because they weren’t old enough to drink.)

But we couldn’t beat them in ticket sales. Ah well, like Sun Tzu says; choose your battles.

Thanks to Mark, Tony and Justin from SBI for showing up and supporting the Spiral, and thanks to Kim, Nancy, James, Teresa, Dan, Boog, Fast Eddie, The Fox, Jess, Jenn, Xtna and anyone else who made it or bought a ticket for the show (Saveau reported that he was present at the show in spirit, and from the symptoms he described, no one would have wanted him physically present…)

Conrad Zero LogoYours Darkly,

Conrad Zero

Blog RSS Twitter Facebook MySpace

Jagged Spiral Concert – Sunday March 1 at the Dinkytowner

Some of you may remember the 2008 Battle of the Bands that Jagged Spiral participated in? Well, because of our outstanding turnout and stellar performance last year, we’ve been asked to participate again this year. So here’s your chance to see us live, along with seven other local bands competing for a chance to play the final battle at the Varsity Theatre with a $1000 grand prize!

Sunday March 1 at the Dinkytowner Cafe, the show starts at 4PM, and continues till around 9-ish. The exact start time is to be determined by pre-show ticket sales. The band that sells the most tickets gets to pick their time slot first, and thereafter in descending order of tickets sold. We’re hoping to get an early-to middling time slot, (in the 5-7PM range) but we won’t know for sure until the doors open. The more of you who purchase tickets in advance the better our chances of getting a good time slot!

Ticket sales are counted at 3PM, so please make sure to purchase your tickets in advance, from Josh, Colin or myself, or e-mail booking@jaggedspiral.com

Tickets are $8. We hope to see you there!

Dinkytowner Cafe
412 1/2 14th Ave SE
Minneapolis, MN 55414
(612) 362-0437

Google Map

Conrad Zero LogoYours Darkly,

Conrad Zero

Blog RSS Twitter Facebook MySpace

Jagged Spiral is pulled from bill, but still rocks the house!

Thanks to the blazing-fast response time of the Jagged Spiral Internet E-mail Gig Retraction Service, disaster was averted for many loyal Jagged Spiral fans, when it was announced that their Nov 29th performance at the Terminal Bar was canceled.

Not so much canceled as…well, let’s be honest: we got fucking canceled. My understanding is that because of the (former) booking agent at the Terminal Bar, the show was double-booked (technically octuple-booked), and many bands had to be dropped. SBI and Pygar performed as scheduled, but Jagged Spiral and Gedwik were pulled off the bill to make room for a cover band.

No, I’m serious.

No hard feelings towards SBI or the Terminal Bar, but we do hope that their former booking agent has a 140lb Ampeg 8×10 Bass Cabinet fall on her.

Meanwhile, the number of sound mixers for the show was strangely underbooked. In fact, there were none. Random members of the crowd were pulled out and forced to work the sound board at gunpoint. Josh bravely volunteered himself and myself to mix sound for SBI. (Colin did not make the show, choosing to stay at home instead and get laid.)

So while Jagged Spiral did not actually *play* at the Terminal Bar, we certainly did make the walls shake when Josh managed to turn SBI’s kick drum up to One-Hundred and Eleven.

Props go to my good friend James, who made it to the show because he didn’t get the notice that the show was canceled. His diligence and dedication to the Spiral has awarded James the dubious honor of being at more Jagged Spiral shows than Colin.

We’re trying to get SBI and/or the Terminal Bar to feel sorry enough for us that they offer up a sympathy gig, and we’ll keep you posted on how that works out.

Conrad Zero LogoYours Darkly,

Conrad Zero

Blog RSS Twitter Facebook MySpace

Jagged Spiral Incorporated?

We’re pleased as punch that Jagged Spiral Incorporated has been listed at Hot Frog.  Apparently, our products and services are classified as “Heavy Metals”! Isn’t that nice!

As much as I’d love to thank the brainless meatstick who put this together, its no doubt the work of a scraper site, pulled together by a computer simply to waste space on the internet.

Thankfully, a Google Search for Jagged Spiral still turns up the truth.

Meanwhile a quick search on the owner of Hot Frog turns up a piece of trash called Reed Business Information, providers of Variety Magazine, Asia Food Journal and many other periodicals that kill trees, weigh down your mail-carrier, and clog up your mailbox and recycle bin.

Sorry, Reed Business Information, but our Publicity Policy clearly states that we have to point out Weapons-Grade Fucknuttery when we see it.

Conrad Zero LogoYours Darkly,

Conrad Zero

Blog RSS Twitter Facebook MySpace

PS: Thanks to our good friend Saveau for the stellar classification of “Weapons-Grade Fucknuttery”, we’ll be using that one A LOT here at jaggedspiral.com

Musicians Jump on the TorrentWagon

Seems other bands are beginning to realize what Jagged Spiral knew a long time ago: the recording industry is dead, and Do-It-Yourself is the new Black.

Before bands were only seeing their music as a ‘product’ something that they ‘sold’. But not anymore. Bands like Jagged Spiral, NIN, Radiohead, and Atmosphere have broken the paradigm: they front all the costs themselves: engineering, production, mastering, duplication, graphics, packaging, etc…  They have a pro-quality ‘product’, but they give it away for free.

This article on TorrentFreak points out that artists are catching on. They are realizing that the possibility of popularity is more likely than the possibility they can sell one-thousand CDs.  They drop their music on bittorrent and other file-sharing clients in the hopes of publicity (which is free) versus advertising (which costs $$$$).

This is great news for fans of real music. Leave the music industry behind for suckas who will gladly pay $18 for the latest piece of over-hyped, over-processesed, under-talented garbage. Dive into myspace, torrent and band websites to find the real thing . Music that the creators care about, and gatekeepers-be-damned.

What do you think? Is this behavior undercutting the perceived value of music?  Will the internet drown in a deluge of crap-rock? Is this empowering artists to usher in a Renaissance of music? Drop your comments below.

Conrad Zero LogoYours Darkly,

Conrad Zero

Blog RSS Twitter Facebook MySpace

Not Enough Bullets picked by MN Spin!

MNartists.org has a contest called MNSpin. Each week, three songs are picked by members of the local music industry.

I set up a profile on mnartists.org a while ago, and uploaded the tracks “Monsters”, “Not Enough Bullets” and “Let It Out”. I entered the tracks in the MNSpin contest sometime early in 2008. It seems that Dana Raidt, the music director for Radio K has great taste in music, because she chose “Not Enough Bullets” as one of the three winning songs for this week’s MNSPin contest! http://www.mnartists.org/article.do?rid=208156

Here’s more info about MNSpin:

Winning tracks from each contest are selected by panelists from within the music industry. Each week a three-song playlist from the winning submissions will be featured on the mnartists.org and Summit Brewery web sites. Quarterly listening parties at area venues will take place and a compilation CD of music from the yearlong contest will be produced.

Submission Specifications and Entry Process Any and all types of music accepted; only three tracks per musician will be reviewed for possible inclusion on the CD. Tracks can be uploaded to artist pages on mnartists.org, and a URL of the page can then be e-mailed to mnspin@mnartists.org. Submissions must come from mnartists.org members. To sign up for membership, visit www.mnartists.org/join.do?action=join.

mnSPIN is sponsored by mnartists.org, Summit Brewery, Springboard for the Arts, and McNally Smith College of Music.

We’ll keep our fingers crossed that Not Enough Bullets will get picked for inclusion on the yearly CD compilation…although it is quite difficult to play bass with my fingers crossed…

Conrad Zero LogoYours Darkly,

Conrad Zero

Blog RSS Twitter Facebook MySpace

Review From Evil

Thanks to all those who made it out to the “Days From Evil” CD Release Party last Friday. It really means a lot to us to see our Friends and Fans brave the strange weather. Jess informed me that the puce-colored sky was conjured up by the Dark Lord herself, and those of you coming to the show would be spared, and would not perish in a burst of purple lightning.

The party was great fun, and those who missed it…missed it. For the first time ever we had a merch table with real merch on it! (Thanks Xtna!) The hard copy of Days From Evil was there in all its long-awaited, hard-earned, shrink-wrapped glory. (Thanks Tim!) Band buttons too! (Thanks Karrie!)

Fortunately, Jagged Spiral was there too, somehow managing to mix loud music with theatre; both comic and tragic. Colin’s brand-new Gibson Explorer made it’s first public appearance. Josh got into a fight with his own drum set, and I poured a half a pitcher of beer over myself and jumped into the boy’s moshpit with my bass. (Yes, there was a girl’s moshpit too.) Like I said, if you missed it, you missed it.

Josh, Colin and myself would like to publicly thank all the people who made the CD Release party a big success:

  • Uber-Thanks go to Josh at Club Underground (no relation to Josh from Jagged Spiral) for having us out and running the soundboard.
  • Thanks to SBI for taking the “sober slot” and playing first to warm up the room. Thanks for firing up the moshpit, and for the pitcher of beer, some of which I actually got in my mouth….
  • Thanks to Sick Machine for coming down from St Cloud to rock out with us! I picked up their new CD “Ready To Burn” and you should too, check out the single “Black Out Sunday” on their Myspace Page
  • Thanks to Something To Fear for taking the fourth shift and closing out the night with some wicked, double-female-fronted metal! You did a fantastic job, and we look forward to seeing/playing with you again!
  • Special thanks to Xtna for putting together the merch table and sign, and to Jess for helping her keep it running through the event!
  • Thanks to Jeremy for acting as the human “meat shield” between the boys and girls mosh pits! Who knows what might have happened if they had mixed…? Combined with Jagged Spiral’s music, it’s probably better that we didn’t find out, at least until we can look over our liability insurance contract…
  • Finally, thanks to all the people who came to the show: Nancy, Sarah, Jess, Xtna, Jim, Reid, Denise, Karrie, Teresa, Boog, Tara, Dan, Pat, Tim, Jeremy, Lisa, and many more who came out to support the Spiral! You people get the Jagged Spiral Seal of Approval!

Conrad Zero LogoYours Darkly,

Conrad Zero

Blog RSS Twitter Facebook MySpace