Since 2007, when The Onion moved its Chicago office to our current location, I've been slightly obsessed with utilizing a really strange round room in it. The first thought, of course, was to have bands come and perform inside this odd little cylinder. Fast forward two and a half years, and we're excited to introduce A.V. Undercover, which takes the idea of live performances and gives it a little twist. Or maybe it's a pinch.
We made a list of 25 songs we'd like to see covered, and we're inviting bands into the newly decorated round room (a.k.a. "the hot circle") to cover them. The first band gets to choose from all 25 songs, then that song is crossed off the list. The second band gets to choose from 24 songs. The last band will cover whatever remains. (The bands pick their song well in advance of showing up—we want them to be good, after all.)
The song list is public, but the bands won't be announced until their episode is published. They'll show up every Tuesday for 25 weeks starting next week, March 16. You can see the entire list as well as a teaser video here. Intrepid viewers may be able to figure out who some of the players are. If you're lucky enough to make it to our SXSW day party on March 19, we'll be showing several episodes there, too. The first batch is sponsored by Starbucks, so go buy a venti something, please.