ROCK LOTTERY
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ROCK LOTTERY ★
about
The ROCK LOTTERY concept is simple, but effective. Twenty-five musicians meet at 10:00AM at the evening’s performance venue. These volunteers are organized into five bands through a lottery-based chance selection. The five different groups are then released to practice at different locations. The musicians have twelve hours to create a band name and three to five songs (with a one cover song limit.) The bands then return to the venue by 10:00PM and perform what they have created in front of a waiting audience.
The twenty-five musicians included in this experiment are carefully selected to represent a wide variety of musical styles. This event will bring together many facets of the music community that may seem incompatible, as well as musicians whose interests may conflict. The challenge for these participants is to try and go beyond their personal and musical differences and work together to create a unified group project that contains the personal styles of each of its members.
Worn to a nub, used and abused, the ROCK LOTTERY hat has held the names of the over 1K musicians drawn during the morning selection for every original RL. This old hat has been an integral part of the creation of RL events in Denton, Seattle, NYC, and Los Angeles over the last 30 years.
background
Instigated by Good/Bad Art Collective in 1997, the ROCK LOTTERY has become a highly anticipated music event throughout the United States. In addition to spawning official sister events in Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Seattle, the RL concept has been emulated around the world with events in Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Chicago, Columbus, Louisville, Ottawa ON, San Francisco, Washington DC, Victoria BC and Jeonju, South Korea.
In its thirty year history, the four cities hosting an official ROCK LOTTERY have featured over 1K musicians and raised over 80K for charities as diverse as The Arts Corps, CASA, Daniel's Music Foundation, Denton County African American Museum, DMAC, Feel the Music, Friends of the Family, Harmony Program, KEXP, KUZU, Parkland HealthPlus, Rockaway Renegades: Sandy Relief, Save Fry Street, The Vera Project and more.
Musicians who have volunteered their time and talent over the last thirty years come from a variety of acclaimed national and international acts including Baptist Generals, David Bazan, Bedhead, Bowling for Soup, Brave Combo, Brutal Juice, Built to Spill, centro-matic, Corn Mo, The Dap-Kings, S. English, Father John Misty, Hagfish, Head and The Heart, Lenny Kaye, King Crimson, Lift to Experience, Sarah Jaffe, Damien Jurado, Midlake, Ministry, Mudhoney, Murder City Devils, My Morning Jacket, Oneida, Parquet Courts, Pinkish Black, Polyphonic Spree, Psychedelic Furs, The Rapture, The Roots, Riverboat Gamblers, Slobberbone, THEESatisfaction, Swans, They Might Be Giants, Toadies, True Widow, Mike Watt, Reggie Watts, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs among many others.
For the twenty-five brave musicians involved in each ROCK LOTTERY, plus the event organizers, volunteers, venues and businesses, this busman’s holiday aims to inspire experimentation, collaboration, and community.
Adopting the dumpster located outside their Denton, Texas headquarters as their logo, Good/Bad Art Collective embraced the ephemeral and marginal, with ROCK LOTTERY emerging as the most well-known of the 200+ events created by the hybrid arts group in its 10-year history.
10AM – 25 MUSICIANS ... 10PM – 5 BANDS
