Today was the Award Ceremony for the First Annual ARTISTdirect Online Music Awards. Me and my wife Robin, were flown down by ARTISTdirect and spent two days at the Park Sunset Hotel for the show which was Broadcast over the Web. [See photos from the trip] We were there in order to accept my award for Best Unsigned Artist Site at the House of Blues in Hollywood. We got to meet the other winners, but rather quickly we learned the order of things. None of the Name performers or presenters were with us in our hotel - although some of them may have been at the Hyatt (Riot House) across the street from us - I don't know.

There were actually Four Contests/Awards taking place at once. One set of awards were for Name Artist like Marilyn Manson and Backstreet Boys. Another one called "Born on the World Wide Web" for bands to submit and compete with MP3 files of their songs. I had entered Planet X in that contest, but there was an error in my MP3 file and no time to correct it. (While in LA I spent a lot of time hanging with the winner of the "Hip Hop" category, MonteFisto and the "Pop" winners, Something About Flying. The "Electronic" category winner's Aisth were pretty cool people too. I never saw much of the other two winners, Paige (Alternative) and Punchbuggy (Rock).

(Frankly, to me they all sounded like different variations of Alternative bands - but what's in a label anyway?)

Then there was the contest/award for "Fansites", which normally are sites for name artists created by their fans. (I met spoke several times with Matt who created the Nine Inch Nails site, which won for "Best Alternative Fansite") Lastly were several people who had won a trip to the show simply by voting in the other contests. I was a "Fansite" winner, however, I was in a rather unique position...unlike the other website winners, I was also an artist. Not only did I make the "Fan" website, I'm in the band that the website is made for. So I was something a little more than just a dedicated "Fan" with a lot of free time on my hands. I'm a dedicated "Musician" with a lot of free time on my hands. Not much of a difference I admit, but still - it made things unique from my perspective.

Similarly there was a strict "pecking order" to things which meant that there really weren't provisions made for me to establish a lot of industry contacts like the MP3 Contest winners -- but then, I didn't let that little detail slow me down. I mean, I was there to have fun - which I did, but I was also there to get some exposure, which I did. In order to accomplish this I snooped around quite a bit. Some people thought I was part of the crew as I walked in during The Offspring's soundcheck whereing my UBL.COM T-shirt and scoped the situation out. I wound up listening to the road crew bellyache about being up since 5am that morning and working 12 hours without a break.

I felt your pain, dude.

They almost gave me a voucher for the buffet (which featured shrimp and crab hor's dourves) with the rest of the crew, but I told them i didn't need it. I knew I was gonna eat my shrimp and crab later with the rest of the winners, rather than bogart food from the crew. Those guys deserved a few extra shrimp for all their work.

Interviews for the show were handled by L.A. Radio station Y107's Chris Carter, in between interviews with the MP3 winners, I slipped him a Planet X tape since none of the website winners were gonna be interviewed. (Something I'd discovered via my snooping) During the show I saw Dave Navarro lounging around - so I gave him my card. I caught Kirk Hammet coming offstage and said - "Hey Kirk, wanna card? yeah...yeah...I know it's industry bullshit...but I gotta do what I gotta do. I won the award for Best Unsigned Band Site, and I'm the singer in the band, Planet X". He smiled and took the card. I gave a full promo pack, with bio and a tape to a record exec I ran into a the bar. [He was the guy wearing the suit, so he was easy to spot]

Then finally, after an hour and a half, the time came for them to announce my award. I had spent the last week preparing. I had my hair relaxed (via chemical straightening which had burned my scalp badly) and also had it re-colored a reddish, almost purple-ish brown. All of this so that it would look good and memorable in the lights for the webcast cameras. (Gwen from "No Doubt" had pink hair and a perfectly matching tank-top on, if you can beleive that).

The moment came...they announced the Fansite Categories...my site came up, with a clip from our song "Pay your dues" playing in the background. All of this I unfortunately missed at the time because I was running downstairs to get ready to be onstage.

Then, they announced each of the winners for all the fansite categories, all at once...without bringing a single one of the five of us onstage. "Let's give these kids a round of applause", they said. And that was it.

At this point I was wondering why they bothered to fly us all the way down here. In retrospect, I simply think they couldn't find all of us at the right time. They were looking for me, I know. But when I tried to get onstage to accept my award, they took one look at my red "VIP" pass and said..."Go right back the way you came".

Apparently my "VIP" pass really didn't give me access to anything that someone without a "VIP" pass would get. This is something that me and the one of the other Fansite winners had discovered - our "Virtually Invisible Person" passes were exactly the same as what was given to those people who'd won their trip to the show simply for voting. Having no badge at all - would have been exactly the same for us. The "Born on the Worldwide Web" winners all had a yellow "All Access" pass, but they had been marked "BOW" on the back, which allowed them a brief visit to the stage to accept their award for 5 to 10 seconds, but even they couldn't really get into the "Golden Circle" where the name acts, like Cypress Hill or the record execs like Rick Rubin were hanging out with Darryl Hannah. This I guess made them really "Almost All Access" passes.

None of us got our actually Award during the show. All the winners will get their actual engraved award in the mail later, so they kept passing the same one out onstage just at like the Grammy's. Technically I didn't really miss the perks that the other winners got (other than the $25,000 for recording a demo and a chance to have a taped performace of my band broadcast during the show) ... but I still got my licks in. For one thing I did finally get into the "Golden Circle" when the show was over, only Rick Rubin and the other record execs were already gone. Either way, people who paid attention will have noticed I was there.

About 20 minutes further into the show, Kirk Hammet goes up to the "Golden Circle" that I and my "Very Insigificant Pissant" badge couldn't get to, and he starts being interviewed by Chris Carter. (No, not the X-Files Chris Carter - the one from Y107) During the show various people had called in with questions, so Chris asked the final question..."This is from Melissa in Sacramento for Kirk...what do you have in your pockets right now?".

At first Kirk didn't want to say because he might wind up taking a trip to Iron-Bar-Hilton for contriband...but then he says..."Ok, well, I've got this card from a local band from Sacramento - PLANET X" And he holds it up to the camera. At which point Chris Carter goes..."Hey, that guy gave me a tape yesterday...same guy".

LOL I swear to God, I doubled over and hit my head on the table I was laughing so hard. Vengence is Mine. You can't keep Planet X down, we'll make our presence felt everywhere we go. Ahhahaahahaha.

Overall, I got a bunch a cool T-Shirts, some stickers and promo CD's while I was down there (pictures forthcoming)... some nice shrimp and crab, a killer view of L.A's smog layer, my award statue is in the mail, and I broke through their elaborate security net designed to keep a "kid" like me in my place - meanwhile tommorrow is my 36th birthday.

Life is good.

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