The answer is: vote

Published Dec 06 2006, 11:37 PM by webteam

They're not bored. They're just waiting for you to click this link.

What's the difference between the Main Drag and a Giant Drag? Hope Adam's got a good answer.

Generally speaking, Battles of the Bands are varsity sports for Made victims, Slashdot ~~(ne)~~turds, and Boston-rock-loogie-spitters. And while we wholeheartedly support the democratic fan-polling process, we're annoyed by those shameless jerks who repeatedly spam us about stuffing the ballot box for them in Spare Change's best-avant-coin-jiggle category. But when there's substantial cash involved for local favorites, we're ready rally the troops. So we bid you to hit Salon.com's Audiofile blog, which is presently holding a "Song Search" contest in its final week. The winner gets five-thousand smackers, with one-thousand a piece for two runners-up. The probability of Boston getting some cash-money love is high, since two of the five national finalists are from Boston: Hallelujah the Hills and The Main Drag.

Hallelujah the Hills are the happy-feeling Moog-cello-guitar indie-poppy six-piece remnants of the Stairs. They've made it into the finals on the horn-y bouyance of their homonymous fight song, "Hallelujah the Hills." "It’s sort of this weird little dorky indie-rock circus," head Hallelujah Ryan Walsh says about the Salon poll. And while he confirms they're "excited" about getting this far, he admits that soliciting votes is strange. "The whole process of becoming musician-politicians has been unsettling for us. But thankfully, we won that first round without shilling too much."

Amusingly, the Hills not only had to overcome the "celebrity guest judge" bias of Death Cab's Chris Walla to advance, but beat another Boston dude, that Delta-blues I-tongued-Holly-Golightly kid Eli Reed. Could this be the makings of a Boston-messageboard beatdown?

Two other finalists have Boston ties: Bishop Allen, an ex-Boston band whose lead singer Justin Allen stars in Mutual Appreciation, the most recent release of JP director Andrew Bujalski; and Adam Arrigo (a/k/a the Main Drag's main drag), a '06 Tufts grad who by day scribbles at the Northeast Performer and by night is "sorta in Blanks." The success of his song "A Jagged Gorgeous Winter" -- a three-minute-plus track that's kind of like Caribou's "Yeti" with e-horns instead of e-strings -- has been something of a lark: he doesn't play out much, says his MySpace profile doesn't get much traffic, and "A Jagged Gorgeous Winter" doesn't sound much like his other stuff. "This is the only happy song I’ve ever written," Arrigo says. "The rest of my music is much darker, more experimental, much more production-based."

If Arrigo wins any money, he plans to get his new record pressed. If Hallelujah the Hills wins, Walsh says, "We’re gonna get a tour van. It’ll double as my car because my truck’s about to shit the bed."

The Hills better be careful. Arrigo's got a secret weapon. "I’ve been calling everyone to vote," he confesses. "Even, like, my grandfather, whom I haven’t talked to in years. I patched things up with him. I'm like, 'You have a computer right? You can go on and vote?'"

VOTE: Salon.com's Audiofile blog "Song Search" contest
DOWNLOAD: Hallelujah the Hills, "Hallelujah the Hills"
DOWNLOAD: The Main Drag, "A Jagged Gorgeous Winter"
DOWNLOAD: Bishop Allen, "Like Castanets"

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