Reflecting Nehemiah... my life at Calvin College

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Battle of the Bands

hanging out backstage

young life and red bull sponsored a battle of the bands at the intersection, and bands from all over the city competed over studio time (courtesy of big bin studios) and press kits. i was drumming for one of the bands, AM Bandits, a three-piece punk outfit created just in time for the show, and my band was amongst 7 or 8 other talented groups. during down times after my set, i managed to snap a few photos and write a bit for this blog. read on to come backstage with me!

chris, my guitarist, touting his backstage pass

one of my friends, drew, setting up for his opening set.

drew’s band soundchecks while we watch from the VIP booth

I’m sitting in the VIP booth watching the last band setup for their gig. DJ JRose is pumping tunes during the changeover, and lots of people are swinging by the booth grabbing free red bulls. Red Bull is co-sponsoring the event with young life, so there’s plenty of red bull floating around. I haven’t touched any of it though because I hear caffiene can be bad for you in large quantities. I think red bull embodies the phrase “caffiene in large quantities.” I’ve gotta stay healthy if I wanna keep drumming. Then again, the secondhand smoke filling this building probably doesn’t help. Looks like blessed ambrosia is about to start their set. Will write later!

hanging out with other bands in the booth

the opener rocks the crowd

I was just hanging out with Charlie, the owner and lead producer of big bin studios, during the blessed ambrosia set. Big bin studios is generously giving away studio time to the winner of this battle of the bands. Charilie and I spent most of the set raving about peter, the lead guitarist for blessed ambrosia. I haven’t seen such a talented guitarist live in a very long time. He’s only a freshman at ferris state university, and he shreds through epic metal solos like how tiger woods pounds through masters tournaments. Looks like blessed ambrosia also has a bit of a following, so we’ll see how the voting turns out. The crowd vote is a large part of each band’s final score. Speaking of voting, one of the judges goes to my church, mars hill. I bumped into him earlier at the merch booth and he represents beardcore. If you don’t know what beardcore is, you should definitely look it up on wikipedia.

a band tunes up before their set