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Green Man's Green Poll

Adam Walton | 09:52 UK time, Thursday, 13 May 2010

At this time of year, every other Tweet, Facebook message and e-mail that gets flung in my direction is from a band asking me to vote for them to play one festival or another over the coming summer.

The UK's exhaustive (exhausting is probably a better word) array of festivals provides important opportunities for unsigned, self-releasing bands. You can play in front of more people in one set at a festival than you would manage in months of gigging circuit venues. And although the audiences are likely to be ripped to the gills on devil's brew ciders that would be illegal if sold anywhere else, there's a relaxed open-mindedness and hunger for music at most festivals that provides bands with a large, empathetic audience.

It's not jingoism to say that the Green Man Festival is one of the most highly-regarded music festivals in Europe. Its independence from corporate sponsorship; its peerlessly beautiful setting (Glanusk Park in the Brecon Beacons), and its reputation for gathering the world's most fascinating, esoteric artists has established it as the first date British music lovers of a particularly folkish, psychedelic or shimmeringly electronic bent mark on their calendars.

So, a competition for bands or solo artists to play the opening slot at this summer's festival is going to be quite a boon.

Last year's winners, , beat 600 other bands to open the festival and received an amazing reaction - and fillip to their musical aspirations - from the gathered thousands.

Not only does the successful band open the festival, but their name ends up on all of the festival's literature, posters, and pre-event publicity. For an unknown band or artist this is a major step up towards getting your name and your music much more widely known.

And the long-term legacy of sharing a bill with , and - rubbing shoulders with all of the other artists on the bill - could be career-defining. That's artistic career rather than the kind of career that requires biannual appraisals and a mortifying Christmas party.

How, then, do you enter the Green Poll competition? The competition is open to any band or solo artist. Simply visit the , click on the and upload a video of you / your band performing a song and that's it.

Members of the public (ie motivated street teams and fans of the bands in the competition!) then vote for their favourite videos, after another three weeks of voting, the top 10 artists - five determined by the public vote and the other five chosen by respected music website ) go through to another public vote that trims the shortlist to five bands.

Those five bands (are you still with me?) perform at a special gig in the Camden Monarch on 8 July where the ultimate winner will be decided by a very highly-respected panel of music experts and industry insiders.

Ultimately it's an excellent opportunity for an unknown artist to make their name courtesy of Wales' most critically lauded music festival. That's why I'm excited about this. So, over to you... or, if you're not musically inclined but you have a friend who is, tell them about Green Poll and get them to throw me an mp3 at the same time. It'll break up all those requests for votes nicely.

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Comment number 1.
At 13th May 2010, maria wrote:

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