Battle of the Bands Nostalgia Thread

Other unrelated memory: my first high school in Colorado was maybe 40% Latino and had this tiny interesting substratum of metalheads who were basically ignored or reviled by everyone else; about a third of them were really cool in that laid-back nice-guy way that metalheads sometimes are, but they were nevertheless shunned and marginalized -- UNTIL at some performance-type assembly promoting some dance or other on stride three of the Latino metalheads with guitars and then this one tiny little guy who never talked to anyone ever and then BAM suddenly they are just tearing through "Sad But True" but little-guy is going a step further and doing it with the death-metal growl and God that is the sort of hell-yes thing that the suburban Battle of the Bands should be all about.

I so want to see this band.

Yes, that's right, second place - behind (gulp) Shrimp 'n' Grits (and no, the similarities b/w these guys and Crazy Bud and the Whirled Peas don't stop here). I believe they indeed played Steely Dan. I believe they also played Stevie Wonder. And yes, the lead singer/electric piano player - who I'm almost certain had a beard and a Dead shirt - got "funky." It was atrocious, but the judges dug it, and if they had had beers, I'm sure they would have been doing the lifted-beer hippy sway, too.

But still, it was great fun. We were so disappointed that they failed to see we were *clearly* the worthiest and most original and revolutionary band of the night! I'm not sure if it's a dying tradition - I'd say no; there was a BOTB at William and Mary last year, which was great fun. But who knows what's happening (or not happening) elsewhere...

Them halcyon days of 1993, I tell ya.

Revive. (Due to Two Lights apparently having something like this on their resume when they were merely Capital.)

dude, i actually won one. senior year, a weird-ass quasi-emo outfit i played drums for. this was in Delaware so competition was mega thin. but it was still a nice ego boost. it is a pretty weird ritual. the majority rule, lowest common denominator thing probably applies most of the time and any band that was ever worth a damn would probably lose to a DMB tribute. but there's something i like about the oneupsmanship, there's not a competition between live bands these days. just a bunch of boring fucks accepting whoever actually bothers to come to the gig.

― al, Friday, February 22, 2002 8:00 PM (9 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha this is what i was referring to in the Two Lights thread, i forgot i ever posted this or even a lot of the details in this post!

Nearly ten years can change a man. Do you remember the name of the group?

xxxpost spillover from the Two Lights thread.

i was a home guitarist for 7-8 years, never was great, decent rhythm guitarist, but was just downright lazy and used it for recordings and such. was mostly a singer by trade, and senior year, I wanted to play in a band just once, but knew I didn't have anybody I could pull together for the main school's showcase. but our choir teacher put one on instead, and given that we knew this would be lightly attended and just for funsies, my best friend J03(at the time) signed us up...us being him, me, and our other best friend, Br1an.

Two problems -- one, we had no drummer, and didn't know any that weren't already booked. Two, J0e had literally only just gotten his bass a few weeks ago and had no fucking idea how to play it. Add to that that our other 'guitarist' Br1an made the guy from Counting Crows look like a virtuoso, and we had a clusterfuck in the making. I suggested the name O0nglebinky as a complete joke, yet it's the name we used, with surnames Cousin Binky (me), Plinky Binky (Br1an), and Stinky Binky (J0e, which was an in joke cuz he had mad B.O. that year). We later dubbed our eventual drummer Bam Bam Binky.

The original plan was just to play Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters". The logic was easy -- being singers, we could do the vocal harmonies, it was a simple riff and I knew the solo, which is pretty simple, and the bassline was easy enough that i could teach it to J03, and we might get away with not having drums. We spent literal hours daily struggling through it while Br1an, who couldn't fingerpick, decided to strum the chords clumsily alongside my fingerpicking, and sang the song like Eddie Vedder. J0e struggled to keep tempo on bass, though he was making slow progress. The vocal harmonizing was the only thing that went well (of which there aren't many, just at the chorus).

Then...we realized we couldn't just do a 3 minute set and walk off-stage, without being accused of ripping off The Melvins. So J0e and Br1an wanted to do other songs. I struggled to think of 'simple' songs that I could teach J0e on bass that didn't require drums, and was at a loss. I had the idea to do The Misfits "We are 138/Return of the Fly" as a medley, since they were simple tunes, and possibly also "Halloween". We also noodled around with Stone Temple Pilots' "Creep", Pearl Jam's "Nothingman", Alice in Chains' "Sludge Factory", and Metallica's "Jump in the Fire". It was clear "Creep", "Sludge Factory", and "Jump in the Fire" were lost causes, and we ran out of time for "Halloween", so we were just going to keep it "Nothing Else Matters", "Misfits Medley", "Nothingman".

For whatever stupid reason, I decided to bring "Jump in the Fire" back, despite never practicing it with Br1an, who was in California for a week before the show. This despite A. not having a drummer, B. having nobody to play the lead guitar parts, and C. Br1an barely knowing the song and being expected to sing it. We got to show night still not having a drummer and only a general idea. From practices, we knew the guitarist from the other band dabbled (quite well, actually) in drums, and sat in with us on "Nothing Else Matters". We offered him the drumming job 2-3 hours before the show and he accepted, and practiced with us once on all songs but "Nothingman".

Show starts, we get through a competent but rather uninspired sounding "Misfits Medley", after which the choir teacher reportedly turned to my friend (who was in the audience) and asked if we were going to play any songs that had more than one phrase in them.
I announced "Jump in the Fire", while Br1an looked at me panicked, and shouted "I DON'T KNOW THE WORDS" at me twice. I dismissed him, and after one false start, we jumped into the tune. Br1an wasn't kidding. He didn't know the words, and lol...no internet on cell phones in 1999, he just starts screaming "YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" over and over again throughout the entire song. On the video, you can actually see three audience members (of a whopping 15) get up and leave at that point.

in true Spinal Tap fashion, a Metallica fan in the audience who knows the words jumps on stage to help, and he starts singing verse 3...unfortunately, we're playing the bridge at this point, and we're all lost. I'm laughing so hard I start royally screwing up the riff, and then I suddenly have the realization that we have no fucking idea how to end the song because we've never practiced the entire thing in a band setting before, so I give a weird headjerk that was supposed to be teh signal to end and fortunately, we all manage to end without sounding too goofy.

We then played "Nothingman", which J0e didn't really know, so he turned off his bass and 'pretended' to play, while Br1an and I actually did a pretty good job of harmonizing/trading off vocals. "Nothing Else Matters" actually went quite well (and it was the one we rehearsed the most), other than some minor tuning issues with Br1an's guitar. He'd been fired from rhythm duty during the verse due to how bad he was, so he was now just strumming the chorus. Overall, we had fun.

Immediately after the show, we broke up.

Nearly ten years can change a man. Do you remember the name of the group?

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, January 29, 2012 2:07 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

of course but i'm not spilling that in the google era!!

googleproof it or type it in some code that you email ILX the key to.

not long after that 2002 post, i played w/ a band in college that did some kind of on-campus event at my bandmates' school, but i can't remember if it was a battle of the bands or just some kind of low rent talent show/open mic deal in the cafeteria. not as much fun.

A friend was press-ganged into judging what was meant to be an "indie answer to X Factor" battle of the bands event. It was supposed to have an expert panel, although he was suspicious as they'd invited him to take part and 'expert' would be stretching the truth to breaking point.

All the bands were terrible, the organiser had oversold the sponsorship so they had a 2500 capacity venue with about 200 audience members (all related to, or friends of, the bands) and the panel was him, two label interns and a member of The Ch@rl@t@ns who had been tricked into turning up.

They didn't have anything to judge as the prize was awarded on the basis of a text vote held before the event. The band that won got ten times as many votes as the one in second place. All from the same five numbers.

I'm still kicking myself for missing it.

haha that sounds like an episode of 'daria'

xpost -- Indeed, how else could you have been there to see the Maccabees' first step towards fame.

1. yes

2. totally, both

3. we won! and so we got to record our goth-metal full-length in a small town studio. or maybe that studio time was for our cassingle, before the LP? who knows.

4. i don't think so...there were two here that i know of this year, one that was all high school emo/punk/whatever they call it now bands, and another with real grown-up bands. battle of the bands are the worst, unless it's on the street: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pE1RAnqZ5w