California Rockers Play First LA Rock Lottery
By DONNA BALANCIA
Mike Watt, Mikal Cronin, Petty Schemel and 22 other top musicians are giving their time to perform Saturday night at the first annual LA Rock Lottery. Pitchfork Mikal Cronin
The show will be at 8 p.m., but it’s the days events that will make or break this exercise.
LA Rock Lottery operates much like the battle of the bands in that teams are drawn in groups of five. They teams have all day to create a new band and new music. With most amateurs it’s a fun time. But with professional musicians of this caliber, well, the public may get some hot new bands out of LA Rock Lottery.
Musicians meet at 10 a.m. at the event’s venue. These musicians who are volunteering their time, are organized into five groups through a lottery-based chance selection.
The five drummers are the captains. The five separate groups are then assigned designated rehearsal spaces near the venue. The musicians have 12 hours to create a band name and three to five songs (with a one cover-song limit). The five new groups then perform what they’ve created that evening in front of a waiting audience beginning at 10 p.m.
Musicians involved this year are:
Tiffany Preston Rainbow Arabia
History of The LA Rock Lottery
Instigated in 1997 by Good/Bad Art Collective music coordinator Chris Weber in Denton, TX, the Rock Lottery has become a highly anticipated music event in the North Texas, Seattle, and Brooklyn areas. Weber first brought Rock Lottery to Seattle in 2004, and six years later, Tierney Stout launched Rock Lottery in Brooklyn in 2010. In its twenty year history the Rock Lottery has featured over 800 individual musicians from some of these area’s most acclaimed acts.
For more information go to www.larocklottery.com