This Band Could Save Your Life, But Only If The Last Band That Saved Your Life Was Velvet Revolver

Brian Raftery | June 12, 2007 11:05 am
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The new issue of Spin features a lengthy profile of Uncrowned, a fair-to-middling guitar-rock band that spent the most recent SXSW trying to get anybody and everybody to listen to them. While at the festival, they met with the guy who wrote Hinder’s “Lips Of An Angel,” got mildly dissed by an A&R guy, and did whatever they can to get people to see shows:

Tonight, [the] strategy is to take Polaroids with potential fans and write the band’s show info on the back. Then the Polaroid can be used as a free ticket…

The group is suddenly confronted by one of the festival’s most familiar sights — a street teamer hawking free Trojans. A late-20s brunette wearing a tennis shirt and slacks, she hands out samples and enthusiastically asks, “Are you a band?” The guys nod, give a perfunctory run-through of the Polaroid routine, and are quickly back on the move. I think she really wanted to come to the show, I say to [Guitarist Jack Andrad]. Didn’t you think she was cute?

“I don’t do cute. I do hot,” he announces, grinning.

Don’t you wanna get any guys to come?

“I was always told that in order to be a rock star, you needed two things: The girls wanna have sex with you, and the guys wanna be you. If we get the girls, the guys will come.” Is that what you really think, or are you just bullshitting?

“That’s your job to figure out,” he replies, still grinning.

The story has a few other moments of such mild-jackassery, but it’s really about the music-industry middle class–those acts that have too much commercial potential to be satisfied in the indie-fame ghetto, but can’t get enough radio or label support to go multi-platinum. Judging by the band’s MySpace page, a song like “Devil In My Hand” could play alongside the likes of Hinder and Nickelback, and we’re guessing that someone, somewhere will eventually pick these guys up, if only because America’s gyms always need a new background-noise work-out jam.

The Art of Hustle [Spin.com] Uncrowned [MySpace]