Affects

Last week, I had the joy of being a judge for the first ever Delta Township District Library Battle of the Bands (say that five times fast). I shared this honor with Lansing-area musician Ryan Knott, and we both had a great time. There were four bands–Alumenium, SOULvation Band, Don’t Ever Tell, and Commodore Cosmos. Ryan and I were tasked with deciding which band won the grand prize–8 hours of recording time at a local recording studio.

The bands ran a very eclectic gauntlet, from latin jazz to indie rock to worship Christian rock. Thankfully, there was an excellent turn out, a bit over 200 people–which was great for a library on a Thursday night. Ryan and I each had score sheets and took notes while each band played, and we were also told to base our choice on crowd reaction (partially, anyway).

After the four sets, we made our choice–Alumenium, the latin jazz band. This was actually a pretty easy choice, because Alumenium just knocked it of the park from the get-go. They were a young group, which I think caused us (at least me) to underestimate them, but they were all great musicians.

My second choice was Commodore Cosmos, because I really enjoyed their lead singer’s presence and lyrics. Don’t Ever Tell was a decent pop-punk band (great drummer) and honestly, they were severely hurt by the lack of a quality sound system for the show (this event was the first of its kind, so that will be handled better if they decide to have another battle of the bands…and given the 200 or so folks that turned out, I think there’s a good chance there will be). I don’t really get worship music/Christan rock at all, so SOULvation Band, while good performers, wasn’t really my thing (although my favorite part of the evening was when the lead singer told the audience to “Get down with your GOOD self!”). And given the amount of fans singing along in the audience, SOULvation Band didn’t look like they were hurting for exposure.

What Ryan and I tried to base our final choice on was, which band would benefit the most from the studio recording time? Alumenium was definitely a band we could see doing some great stuff in the studio–especially since they were all pretty young and would only get better–and the type of layered music they did would work better in studio than live, I think.

This got me thinking: how many big bands/musicans have had a moment like this in their lives? I don’t know if it is me being egotistical or something, but I couldn’t help but wonder what effect I’ve had on the course of music history, for better or for worse. Likewise, say that by coming in second place, Commodore Cosmos decided to hone their chops even more and end up becoming the next big indie rock band (rejection is a great motivator, ask any writer with a stack of rejection letters. Or this other guy).

It makes you wonder (ok, maybe just me).