Ali Spagnola

Music fans who consume 60 songs and 60 shots of beer in one hour will wind up really drunk (but musically enlightened), and that’s just the way fast-talking songwriter Ali Spagnola likes it.

To hype The Power Hour Album, Spagnola released the Shot Glass USB party pack, which comes with five dozen short tunes and two plastic cups. The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania musician spent two years designing the product to expand on her audience-participation “drinking game” gigs.

“I wanted to make The Power Hour an object that people would want to physically own so it would be more special than just files to download,” Spagnola said in an email to Wired.com.

As she explains on YouTube, listeners sling a lanyard around their neck and take slugs from the attached cups at the end of each tune.

Spagnola’s booze-themed numbers encompass punk rock, country and peppy pop ditties like “Song in the Key of Empty.” She promises that drinking game participants who blow into empty beer bottles will sound perfectly in tune with the music.

Former Carnegie Mellon University art student Spagnola, who’s firming up SXSW shows in Austin to perform during a break from her day job as a graphic designer, hopes her gimmick becomes a hit among digitally-inclined party animals who can’t resist the Shot Glass USB marketing slogan. “It’s the perfect gift for the binge drinker,” she said. - Wired

It sure has been a banner week for drinking games here at Kotaku! Well… actually I've only posted one other drinking game, but still, two in one week feels somehow indulgent.

You may have heard of musician/inventor/super-genius Ali Spagnola over on our sister site Gizmodo, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't hear about her again. She's put together something she calls The Power Hour Album, which uses a USB shot-glass and an album of her music to get you drunk in the simplest, most directly enjoyable way possible.

You have heard of a "power hour" in drinking, yeah? Each minute of one hour, everyone does one shot of beer. It's a way to pace out your intake while slowly getting yourself super drunk. Spagnola's amazing idea was to record an album containing 60 one-minute songs to accompany you on your hour-long road to inebriation.

The album is being sold in part to offset legal costs that Spagnola has incurred in a battle with another guy who claims that he owns the rights to the term "power hour." And, while I can't speak to the strength of his legal argument, that seems like the work of some villain. Who would do such a thing? Let this amazing thing exist!

She explains the setup in the video above—the shot glass itself comes with a built-in USB minidrive that contains her The Power Hour Album. It's one-stop shopping folks—you get music and the shot glass; all you have to supply is the beer! Well, and the motivation to actually drink that much. - Kotaku

The weekend is finally here, and a lot of us are gearing up for some Friday night drinkin'. Why not get in the mood a little early with this ode to liquor-swilling by Ali Spagnola?

After all, there are so many wonderful words for drunk, it would be nice if we had them all collected in one place; like a boozey thesaurus. But in song form. In only one minute.

Thankfully, Ms. Spagnola has obliged us. And if you like this, check out her entire album dedicated to the finer spirits, Ali Spagnola's Power Hour Album... which also has a drinking game built in, naturally. - The Huffington Post

If you’ve ever been blotto enough to drunk-dial your boss, desecrate a statue or ask a cop to hold your beer, then Ali Spagnola has a song for you. Her new record, “The Power Hour Album,” features 60 one-minute songs that take the listener through the arc of a “power hour” — which, as any college student knows, is a game in which masochistic drinkers down one shot of beer every minute, 60 times in a row.
Spagnola, 27, is a Pittsburgh-based graphic designer and musician who came up with the song cycle in college, where getting friends to attend her acoustic-pop gigs was a chore. “I found it difficult to get people excited about music they never heard,” she says. “I wanted my show to be more of a party.”
She told friends she was developing a live concert/drinking game, solicited song title ideas and kept a notebook of memorable drunken nights that she turned into tunes such as “Drunk Dialing,” “Jesus Loved Power Hours” and “Emotional Black Hole.”
Where alcohol went, stories followed. “I’m Fine Occifer” was inspired by an alumni event where a friend got a cop to unwittingly hold her booze-spiked energy drink.
But rather than featuring 60 random songs, the CD provides a film-like arc for an hour of stumbling fun.
“In the beginning, it’s very high energy to get people going, so there’s more stuff to dance to,” she says. “Then it calms out as you’re finishing your first beer — I let you know when the first beer’s over — then it starts to build again, with everybody jumping around.”
As fans consume more beer and gather empty bottles, she encourages them to play the dead soldiers like percussion instruments and build a “beeramid” [a pyramid made of beer bottles].
In addition to the CD, Spagnola created a shot glass on a string that people can wear around their necks. It’s equipped with a USB drive that holds a digital copy of the album.
But Spagnola emphasizes that while the game is framed for 60 shots, people should drink responsibly and have fun. All she really wants is for people to enjoy the music.
“I’m not encouraging people to binge drink. It’s about having a good time, stopping when you’re supposed to and not pushing it,” she says. “One of my songs is called ‘Everybody Wins.’ If you come and don’t drink anything, you still win.” - The New York Post

Musician Ali Spagnola tours around the country righteously promoting collective binge drinking with her Power Hour Concerts. Then she got sued. Now she's selling Power Hour USB Shot Glasses to pay her legal fees. Will you marry me, Ali? Or can we at least drink together?

I usually think YouTube promotional videos ooze desperation, but then I saw Ali Spagnola's video for her USB Shot Glasses. It's haphazardly edited, hilarious, and magnificently endearing.

The Power Hour Shot Glass comes with a built-in USB drive that contains Ali Spagnola's 60-track The Power Hour Album. (And yes, she tours the country performing the whole thing.) The concept is pretty straightforward. Each of the sixty tracks on The Power Hour Album is one minute long. You take a shot (usually of beer) every time the song changes. By the end of the hour, everyone is wasted. Spagnola certainly didn't invent the power hour, but her album is really entertaining. The sixty tongue-in-cheek tracks are performed in nearly every conceivable musical style. Many of the tracks call for additional games, like track 27, "Text Someone That's Not Here." I swear Ali Spagnola is psychic. I was going to do that anyway.

Apparently, Spagnola's sunk tons of cash defending herself from some evil jerk who thinks he owns the trademark to the term power hour. I'm no legal scholar, but I hope he's wrong. It pains me to see someone with a good heart kept from her creative pursuits over someone's silly cash grab. If you want to help Ali Spagnola out, the USB shot glass costs $30 or you can just buy the album on iTunes for $12. - Gizmodo

Did you know that someone has literally been fighting for your right to party?

Or for legal use of the term "power hour," anyway. It's commonly known as a drinking game, during which players take one shot of beer every minute for an hour. The term was actually trademarked in 2010 by realtor Steve Roose, who markets a DVD game named "Power Hour."

Musician and party enthusiast Ali Spagnola has spent the past three years battling Roose over use of the term. Spagnola has an album titled Power Hour, that doubles as a drinking game. She developed and manufactured a shot glass USB as a way to distribute it.

In a very lengthy blog post about the entire process, Spagnola writes that she initially signed a contract allowing Roose to manufacture and sell her DVDs on his website and in stores. According to the post, Roose soon after dropped her product to focus on his own and then sent the "first of many" cease and desist letters.

Others using the term for business, such as the website Power Hour HQ and iPowerHour, also received cease and desist letters. Roose successfully had Power Hours taken down from YouTube, websites and software. Spagnola's album was removed from Amazon.

With help from Power Hour HQ founder Pete Berg, the Reddit community responded quickly to support the case. Roose backed down in 2010, but the court did not officially release the trademark until Dec. 31, 2012. Spagnola raised $5,700, but spent more than $30,000 throughout the long process.

To celebrate, Spagnola is planning the Power Hour Freedom Victory Tour. The campaign, launched on Indiegogo, lets donators decide what cities she will tour. The goal is to visit 20 cities, but Spagnola says that it depends on the amount raised.

"If I'm fortunate enough to raise a ridiculous amount over my goal, I have plans to bring a full band with me, go to cities outside the U.S., get a tour bus, lighting, maybe some pyrotechnics and turn the show into an even bigger extravaganza," says Spagnola. - Mashable

You may remember from college a drinking game called a “power hour” – which challenges participants to drink a shot of beer every minute for 60 minutes. While it’s not a game for the faint of heart – or liver – it has been popular enough to spawn a variety of merchandise geared towards playing the game.

Among that was a unique set of songs by independent musician Ali Spagnola. In an effort to make her concerts, in her words, “more like a party” and stand out, she wrote 60 1-minute drinking songs. She plays those songs at her “Power Hour” concerts, where some folks in the crowd play the game by taking a drink every time the song changes. She also has a CD and other merchandise that she sells.

Then her singing career hit a bump in the road when she was slapped with a cease-and-desist order. It seems that a company had trademarked “Power Hour” for a set of DVDs meant to be used when playing the game. Convinced that this was a legal injustice, Spagnola took to the courts (and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office) to fight the claim on the grounds that “Power Hour” was in wide use as a game and so the trademark wasn’t valid. In other words, “Power Hour” isn’t something you could trademark anymore than you could trademark “chess” and then block people from making chess sets.

“Essentially, my argument was that ‘Power Hour’ is not entitled to trademark protection because it is the commonly known name for a drinking game in which one shot of beer is consumed for one minute for a period of one hour,” Spagnola’s attorney, William Lang IV, told me. ”It was commonly used as the name of this game long before the trademark applicant filed his application, as well as before the applicant’s date of first use.”

“Therefore,” he continued. “If ‘Power Hour’ was protected as a trademark, anyone marketing products for playing Power Hour would be unable to use the commonly recognized name of the game for which their goods are utilized.”


After 3 years of wrangling and approximately $30,000 in legal fees for Spagnola, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Appeals Board agreed and found that “Power Hour” was not a legitimate trademark. You can read their decision here.

For her part, Spagnola is elated that her long fight is over, and has been thrilled with the support she’s received. “People have been really responsive. They’ve been tweeting their support and it’s been awesome.” - Forbes