It Could Be You

When the six finalists in the Bacardi Unplugged competition gather together at Dublin s Music Centre on 24th April to slug it out for a prize pool reckoned to be worth well over #14,000, they will indirectly be giving two fingers to a small minority of Irish bands and solo performers who believe that entering a music competition is beneath them and somehow casts doubt on their artistic integrity.
Of course, the real reason for such faint-heartedness and negativity is more likely to be that they are basically bad losers. A cursory glance at certain people s childish tantrums over the outcome of this year s National Song Contest would suggest that they should simply leave formal competitions to grown-ups.
This attitude of self-regarding ignores the undeniable fact that all performers are competing at all times, tussling against each other for gigs, record deals, sales in shops, press space, airplay etc. The fact is that anyone who does not deign to compete won t be in the game at all.
Their head-in-the-sand attitude also shows a remarkable ignorance of pop and rock history which is positively littered with artists, including many major names, who have entered competitions of all kinds and, win or lose, have survived to move on to better things. Losing a competition in any walk of life is not the end of the world, while winning one provides an opportunity to have a good time spending the prize money and using the rest of the prize package as a stepping stone to better things.
Previous Bacardi Unplugged winners Little Sister Sage last month won a major contest in France which guarantees them a headlining spot on a European tour. They could have opted instead to sit in a trendy Temple Bar bistro bemoaning their lot and blaming the media and the record companies for their stalled career. Instead they got out there and did something about it.
We are all familiar by now with U2 s first emergence into the national psyche through winning a competition in Limerick 20 years ago. Didn t prove to be too much of a monkey on their backs, did it? Less well known, perhaps, is that Clannad won a major folk competition in Donegal, while a whole slew of Irish traditional musicians have won medals and whatnots in various feiseanna down the years, although they re probably too shy to tell anyone.
Abba s victory in Eurovision, far from being their Waterloo , set them on the road to world domination, and a similar exercise did no harm to Johnny Logan who is, apparently, still very big in Turkey. Or so he claims. More recently, Suede won a competition organised by GLC Radio in London and it seems not to have hurt them one jot.
But it s not just U2, Suede, Abba and one or two others. How many out there know that Elvis Presley won a talent competition singing Red Foley s Old Shep , a song that later became a fan favourite, while the Jackson Five, including Michael, entered many competitions, eventually topping the poll in Indiana.
Helen Reddy, who enjoyed two massive hits with I Am Women and Angie Baby , won a trip from her native Australia to the USA after winning a talent search in 1966, while Murray Head, of One Night In Bangkok fame, picked up an EMI contract through winning a competition on late lamented Radio Luxembourg. (What do you mean, serves him right?)
Let us not forget that there were regular talent nights at New York s legendary Apollo Theatre, with a roll-call of winners that boasts such luminaries as Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, King Curtis, Ruth Brown, Sarah Vaughan and Pearl Bailey, all of whom later earned their place in the annals of pop, jazz and soul history.
And not even the great Francis Albert Sinatra was above throwing his hat in the ring when the right challenge loomed. As a member of the Hoboken Four he won a competition on a New Jersey radio programme called Major Bowes Amateur Hour. Of course, there is the suspicion that Frank may have had a few well-connected friends who could take care of any recalcitrant judges!
And anything radio could do, television could do too. The ghastly Opportunity Knocks series, the brainchild of Paula Yates late father, Hughie Green, occasionally produced some respectable pop talent, including Mary Hopkin, who later had a chart-topping single on The Beatles Apple label, and Bernie Flint, once a regular visitor to the cabaret circuit in Ireland.
Long before he represented the UK in the Eurovision, Scottish singer Matt Monroe tried out his voice in amateur competitions. His CV now includes a major hit with Lennon-McCartney s Yesterday . It may even be argued that Bob Dylan s sullen demeanour and vocal whine can be traced back to his formative years when he was beaten in a talent competition by Tom Rapp, later leader of the Florida-based sixties band Pearls Before Swine. The vanquished Dylan, once he recovered, did a little better in later life.
Current darling of the American country music scene LeAnn Rimes entered a talent competition at the age of six and won it. Last year she earned a mere $58 million from record sales alone.
One could go on, but the point should be well made by now. Entering a music competition can be as natural for a musician with the right attitude as for a sportsperson. If you win, that s fine. If you don t, you try to learn from it and carry on with the benefit of the extra experience. Neither complaining about the result nor suicide are on the agenda.
So when the six bands contesting the final of the 4th Bacardi Unplugged competition take the stage for, what on past experience is bound to be a night of great music, harmless fun and celebration, maybe you could doff your hat as a mark of respect to those brave enough to risk losing in public. That s the true rock n roll spirit up there on that stage.