The First Annual 'Phoenix' Music Awards

In Third Place: “Run Run Run is ‘The One To Follow’”. While the band is presently promoted by a significant firm in Los Angeles, your rockin’ writer had no clue an article on this band would beat out pieces on pretty gals with guitars and sexy songstresses. Well, guess that’s one for the ladies!Fourth Place goes to “The UnderCoverGirls: Girls Rock”. Apparently, the series is a favorite of artists and talent managers. Up-and-coming Indie artists are obviously more favored that more established acts as well. . . And maybe articles on crooning cuties go over well, too.In Fifth Place, readers (and no doubt agents and artists) demonstrated their fondness for the “Girls Rock” series by promoting “Jessica Caylyn: girls rock”. While the series has run weekly for a greater part of its life this was a surprise. After all, the Caylyn piece was published more recently than many earlier editions.View the list »
The First Annual 'Phoenix' Music Awards

Arts & Exhibits newsletter

Recently an indie musician expressed an interest in perusing a piece on your crusty chronicler’s “Best of 2012”. Unfortunately, Examiner.com doesn’t presently show me specific statistics on every article published. Still, the idea certainly had merit.

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It only seemed fair to establish an objective method to establish “the best” of your randy writer’s writings. Hence it was decided to determine the “Top 5” articles based solely on the number of “Likes” on each article. This way the results would more accurately indicate the effort made by readers. (In order to “like” the articles one must at least open the page and click on the “Like” button.)

The Academy folks have their Oscars and now you, the readers, have The Phoenix Music Awards affectionately known as” The Will.i.ams”.

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  • In Fifth Place, readers (and no doubt agents and artists) demonstrated their fondness for the “Girls Rock” series by promoting “Jessica Caylyn: girls rock”. While the series has run weekly for a greater part of its life this was a surprise. After all, the Caylyn piece was published more recently than many earlier editions.
  • Fourth Place goes to “The UnderCoverGirls: Girls Rock”. Apparently, the series is a favorite of artists and talent managers. Up-and-coming Indie artists are obviously more favored that more established acts as well. . . And maybe articles on crooning cuties go over well, too.
  • In Third Place: “Run Run Run is ‘The One To Follow’”. While the band is presently promoted by a significant firm in Los Angeles, your rockin’ writer had no clue an article on this band would beat out pieces on pretty gals with guitars and sexy songstresses. Well, guess that’s one for the ladies!
  • Second Place goes to “’Uganda Sings’ gives country a new voice”. Perhaps there’s hope for world unity and “do-gooders” yet. Your pleasantly perplexed penman was happy to see that at you readers were interested in something beyond our borders and took the time to check this out. Mind you, again there was at least one person particularly promoting this piece but it’s still a proud moment.
  • And . . . in First Place--at the top of the list of this year’s Phoenix Music Awards—is (drum roll please)—“The Cherry Bluestorms are ‘Here’”. Their fan base was obviously effective at making the effort to ensure that folks find out more about their music. Good for you, guys!
  • Now, we come to the presentation of the “Special Category” Phoenix Awards. These awards stand as recognition for different significant performances and/or acts that made the year memorable regardless of “the numbers”. Without these performers the year would have been much less interesting and entertaining.The Special Categories this year include: “Best Work Ethic”, “Fan Favorite”, the “Impressive ‘Who Knew?’”, “Most Interesting Instrumentals” and “Silver Lining”.This year the Will.i.am” for “Best Work Ethic” goes to the group who inspired the creation of the category: The Mighty Cash Cats. The band—consisting of : have quickly become known for being and beginning their performances on time, playing entertainingly solid sets of three hours or more and for obviously being well-educated on and dedicated to their choice of material. It’s called giving people their money’s worth, folks. Bruce Springsteen, The Kinks and Paul McCartney all know about this and so do The Mighty Cash Cats. 
  • Next up, we present the Will.i.am” for “Fan Favorite". This year the award goes to “Stuck in your Head”. As this goes to print, the series will reach at least 32 editions. While other series are also popular, this is the most popular series that was both inspired by and created through the contributions of the readers and is not simply "liked" for promotional reasons. 
  • The Will.i.am” for “Impressive ‘Who Knew?’” goes to the artist who initially inspired the category’s creation: David Widow. This past year Widow performed at The House of Blues backed by a trio of other artists. It was impressive to note that Widow counts among his friends former Chicago member and Grammy winner Bill Champlin. Champlin went out of his way to make sure your rockin’ reviewer knew just how much he thought of Widow and why. To receive high praise from someone who has been so successful is very impressive and says a lot about Widow and his abilities.
  • In the Phoenix Music Awards category for the “Most Interesting Instrumentals”, the Will.i.am” goes to David Vito Gregoli’s Primordial Sonics on Dharmapala Records. It’s the most recent release by multi-instrumentalist and composer David Vito Gregoli. He plays almost all the instruments himself (with but a few noted exceptions such as didjeridu artist Stephen Kent).
  • Last but certainly not least, the lovely Suze-Lanier Bramlett takes the “Will.i.am” for best “Silver Lining”. The attractive actress/singer-songwriter was able to “save the day” last October when an event failed to go off as hoped. Her charm and personality won over your rascally writer and his femme fatale “photog” and helped provide a story that was in the end much more interesting than many other articles written last year despite the unexpected turn of events.Congratulations to all our winners! The Phoenix Music Awards thanks God, the readers, the artists and promoters (especially the one who suggested the name “Will.i.ams”), Examiner.com and all the other folks. You love us! You really love us! (Let’s see who gets that joke.)My name is Phoenix and . . . that's the bottom line. 
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, LA Music Examiner

W. Scott Phoenix, B.A., B.S. was born in Hawaii, raised in Pennsylvania and resides in California. He has been a published writer since 1978. His work has appeared (under various names) in numerous places in print and online including TodaysRecipePro.com. He is a single parent of three children...

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