The Ultimate Showcase

Well, here I am working on The Ultimate Showcase, a competition that as a record lable we run in conjunction with Ultimate Events. If you don't know what The Ultimate Event is then you are missing out on a good one! The Ultimate Event is now in its 13th year and is an annual Christian music event at Alton Towers, the biggest theme park in the UK.

The Ultimate showcase is a competition that invites unsigned Christian artists to battle it our to become the the opening act at the gig. In the case of next years gig they will be supporting the likes of Toby Mac, Delirious and Ayiesha Woods.

So why am I writing about it? Well, because its really doing my head in at the moment. The website that we are running it off is over a month overdue and because of that we can't get the live semi finals sorted. By the end of the day, I want to have venues sorted for both the semis and also the final and know what other acts to get in headlining.

The best thing about this competition is the varitry of acts we have entering, its great to see the talent thats out there and see them come into their own as they play at their best to try and get their place in the finals. Our main vision as a record lable came through running youth events in Worcester with the local churches. Its where we met most of the bands we started working with and also saw te sruggles bands had at getting a big break.

On top of that, we noticed that some of the bands that were absolutely superb couldn't make it because they were Christians. The lable of 'Christian' had such a stigma to it that as soon as they mentioned it, people turned off and didn't want to listen. Where did this stigma come from? Well, personally I think many areas, as a Christian myself I avoid the people shouting on the street about going to hell, I hate it if someone knocks on my door and tries to tell me why I should accept Jesus into my heart, I HATE it when I am given tracks in the street! It really is no wonder that Christians get pigeon holed. The only ones that seem to be out there sharing their faith seem to be doing it in a way that is so irrelivant to our culture that they earn the rest of us a bad name.

So how are we supposed to act? Well, this is open to discussion and I would love to hear other people's thoughts on it so leave some comments! I will put my toughts down on the matter in a few days.

In the meantime, back the the Showcase. This is a great opportunity for bands to get a good gig, get noticed by thousands and build their fan base. Not because they are Christians or because of any message in their music but because they have great music. I would love to see more bands in the charts and on things like MTV. Did you know that Delirious are one of the only bands to have had 5 top 20 hits but not been shown on Top of the Pops (RIP)? Why? Because their lyrics might have offended people? Well, that doesn't seem to apply for a lot of other bands who really do have offensive lyrics. It will be interesting to see how we do, getting Christian bands just as far as we want to get bands that are not Christians on our lable as well. I wonder if we will have more problems?

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