The Red Stripe Music Award, the UK’s widest search for the best unsigned music talent, reaches its climax on Monday 12 May with four finalists from across the UK battling it out for the Red Stripe crown, playing alongside the headliners, Dirty Pretty Things.
 

After 52 showcase gigs, in 32 different towns and cities, and performances from over 200 bands, Red Stripe reps have scoured the country for the very best of the UK’s undiscovered talent.  And now the line-up has been whittled down to just four bands who will fight it out for the coveted title of winners of the Red Stripe Music Award 2008.

Klaus Says Buy The Record:

This Brighton based songsman is already renowned for his elastic live show, the rousing poet combining the utterly pop with the fantastically theatrical. His Jamie T spliced with Paul Heaton manner is a jocular and whimsically lyrical feast of menacing adolescent excitement with well-nourished flashes of Get Cape Wear Cape Fly.
 

Kiddo:

This Edinburgh four-piece makes music so mischievously charming you’re as carried away on their songs as you would be Good Shoes or dare we say, The Cure. Uber-catchy pop songs, delightfully delivered with a refreshing sense of on-stage cohesion.
 

The Down and Outs:

Like Vampire Weekend, The Down and Outs know how to make a melody that wraps around your life, itching the sun-loving inner Beatles fan with a vocal jumble of lyrical whips so sharp they pierce the British weather with massive beams of musical sunlight.
 

O Fracas:

We’re still not a hundred per cent sure how to pronounce their name, but we do know that they make a different sound to most other bands in the UK. From the outlandish catchiness of their weirdo dark-pop to the undertone of vaudevillian vocals and pianos, they meet the oddball with the custom and make it sound belligerent.
 

High profile industry tastemakers – Stuart Clark from Music Week, Oli Hodgson from Coda and Will Kinsman from The Fly, will be making the final decision on the night, which will see one band being given the opportunity to play at two of the UK’s best new festivals, The Great Escape festival in Brighton (15-17 May) and Lovebox Weekender (19-20 July), and they’ll get their very own tour bus. Plus, there is the ‘money can’t buy’ prize of exposure to some of the biggest names in the music industry.

These four disarming bands have been selected from over 1,000 applicants who applied online for this year’s event, which went on to make the carefully selected 200 performing acts of the competition across 52 nights, starting way back in January 2008. The award was set up to champion real talent at its grass-roots stage and the final 200 were carefully researched by a team of Red Stripe and Barfly music-obsessed aficionados in an extensive A&R process to deliver what we hope should be an incredible night of rock ‘n’ roll.

Jonny Kirkham, one of the guys behind Red Stripe, says: “Any band that is starting out needs as much help as they can get, and as Red Stripe has been working in and around music for nearly 40 years, it is only right that we try to help local scenes develop.”
 

Red Stripe has enjoyed a long and rich history with music. Where there have been guitars and the will to rock n roll, there has been the obligatory can of Red Stripe. From The Clash to Oasis to The View, British bands have worn their association with the Jamaican lager like a badge of honour, flaunting it on magazine covers and even on their own sleeve notes.  Distributed through great live music venues, Red Stripe is name checked by bands like the Kaiser Chiefs and Massive Attack, and is requested at album launches by artists themselves

Jonny adds: “This isn’t some rubbish battle of the bands competition. It’s an award that concludes 52 local showcases and we’re proud to be able to give something back to bands’ fans by putting on a show for the final.”
 

You can register for tickets now by going to www.redstripe.net
 

Or you can apply for FREE tickets via Ticketmaster:

http://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/event/1F00408FDB334D33?camefrom=CFC_UK_MAMA_RSMA_REDSTRIPEWEB
 

Of course its first come, first served as it is with all of the free Red Stripe shows, and as always – we’ll see you down at the front.