Overlook a few bands on the Showcase ballot, and people start calling for your head

Jeez, man, leave a few bands off the Westword Music Showcase ballot, and suddenly the hordes show up outside your window with pitchforks and torches, calling for your dismemberment.

"I have a question," wrote one especially disgruntled gent in response to a post on the Backbeat blog in which I posed the simple question Who are the acts we missed this year?After the ballot was published last week, it quickly became clear that some worthy bands had been left off. Hey, it happens. This year, though, instead of chalking it up to woulda-shoulda-coulda, as we have in years past, we decided to give those overlooked bands a shot. And so I made an unprecedented offer: The five artists who generated the most comments on our blog by midnight Monday would be added to the ballot, with one guaranteed a slot at the Showcase. Everyone seemed stoked. Well, almost everyone. This guy was still a little miffed.

"Did someone in Boldtype fu** your mother?" he continued. "How is it that everyone of the bands on this list for punk have opened and will continue to open for Boldtype yet they are not on your list. We will be seeing just a few of these bands at Redrocks....oh yeah and Boldtype. I'm going to find out who the dumb mother fu**er that made this list is, and send all the members of Boldtype his/her mothers address so they can give you what I can only imagine being two very stinky middle fingers up u fu**ing douchbag!!

"Oh, and to your boss," he went on. "The person that made this list makes you, the westword, and all of your employes look like the dumbest fu**ing people related to the music industry. From someone that works for a company that advertises with you I am suggesting to not only my boss but to anyone else that I come in contact with to pull all business with you untill I see this morons head on a stick or Boldtype on the list. Peace, dumbas*"

Seeing as how I'm kind of attached to my head — and my job — I'm really pulling for those Boldtype cats to make the cut this time around. We're still tabulating the votes (speaking of bosses, when I saw that we'd received 1,371 comments by the deadline, I asked mine to shoot me in the face the next time I come up with such a brilliant idea), but so far it's looking pretty good for that act and several others. After we've had a chance to sort out repeat posts and the ones coming from the exact same IP address (to the enterprising young lad who cast his lot for the Alan Baird Project a half-dozen times under the names Jesus Christ, Wayne Gretzky, Tiger Woods, The Pope, Jay-Z, Barack Obama and our very favorite, "A Pro Surfer": C'mon, chief, did you really think we'd fall for the old banana in the tailpipe there?), we'll let you know what the additions will be.

Where, you ask? Why, on the Beatbeat blog, of course, where this whole thing started. In the meantime, be sure to vote for your other favorite local acts on the ballot posted on our website — where, by the time you read this, we'll have just announced the addition of Cursive to the bill.