I’m not really one to enter competitions. I think the last time I won something was many years ago whilst working at a bookshop. I did a book display for some law books called Nutshells where we filled the window with loads of old monkey nut shells suspended in celophane. The display got entered into a competition and won first prize, for which I received an mp3 player.

Now this was quite a while ago when mp3 players were a bit more limited. It was the size of an iPod but only had enough storage to hold 1 album. Yes, one album. I filled it up with Leftfields Leftism which I spent the next summer listening to on repeat.

Anyway, I digress. So when I saw a competition recently to win a support slot supporting a major artist at a large London venue, I hesistated at first. Then, I remembered my win with the mp3 player all those years ago and thought I might as well give it a go. The only requirement was to record a video of you playing an original song live. Much easier than making an exciting window display of law books.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t selected as one of the finalists. I don’t think this was helped, looking at the webstats for the video by the judges never actually watching it, but never mind. I guess that’s to be expected when you get so many entries to something, you end up listening to the first couple of hundred or so until you’ve found the few that match the requirements.

The other prize was a nice new guitar, but I’ve got one of those anyway :)

More exciting though, I now have a new live video to share with you all…