Business Deal Records’ last compilation followed the format of a top 40 radio show, complete with jingles. Four years later, the Business Deal Band Lotto trumps that idea in terms of inventiveness. The label’s home to countless cross-breeds of Austin bands, so when Chris Lyons of the Carrots had a eureka moment while playing fantasy football online, it all clicked.
“Originally, I was thinking more along the lines of having team captains pick teams,” he relates. “The team captain, or band manager in this case, would have the power to craft a band according to his or her vision and who was available. I have always been fascinated by the pop tradition of having a Svengali who creates the band and the songs, or at least a hit factory approach to song creation.”
Not everyone in the BD camp was thrilled about the idea of picking teams, and someone suggested following in the tradition of Denton’s Rock Lottery.
“It completely gutted what was attractive to me about the original idea, but it had some very attractive components in its own right,” Lyons explains. “The idea of complete randomness running things was pretty appealing. I liked the idea that people could possibly be put in very uncomfortable positions and potentially make some very strange music.”
So 33 names were thrown in a hat and nine bands were formed, some of which contained people who had never played instruments before. Each band came up with two songs, also based on subjects thrown in a hat. The result is a 17-song vortex of booty bass, psych-folk, and experimental weirdness from bands with names like Mystic Chainsaw and Sea Horse Hell. Pataphysics, the Jason & Cari Band, Gayle Gold, and the Preston Dukes Band play the release show Saturday on Emo’s outside stage.
Always forward-thinking, Lyons hopes to have a follow-up lotto with a “genre randomizer.”
This article appears in January 9 • 2009.