The URI Musician’s Guild held a battle of the bands featuring student bands, including “Steroids,” “Red Flags” and “Car Beers and the Vic”. PHOTO CREDIT: Greg Clark | Staff Photographer
Students were bouncing to the musical stylings of four different groups at the University of Rhode Island’s Musician’s Guild’s “Rock and Swap, Battle of the Bands” competition last Saturday, March 26 in the Memorial Union.
The event, which started at 6 p.m., featured performances from local bands, who only had three days prior to the performances to form groups. The bands, which were primarily rock and roll groups, were largely made up of URI students.
The groups competed in front of a group of judges to win the battle of the bands competition. Winners get to have a “trophy” which is made up of the neck of a guitar. Students gathered into Atrium 2 in the Memorial Union to form a mosh pit in front of the stage and support the bands as they played both covered songs and originals.
The first performance from the band “Steroids,” featured a unique version of Katy Perry’s “California Gurls.” The pop track was performed with a rock tune that made it more upbeat and had the crowd jumping and singing along to the familiar tune.
Alongside “California Gurls,” the group performed three other original songs with the same rock flare as their Katy Perry cover.
The second band, “Red Flags,” also brought familiar songs to the competition, starting out their portion of the night by singing “Everybody Talks” by Neon Trees. They proceeded by singing an original song and then finished off their portion by singing “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen and “Forget You” by CeeLo Green.
The third band, “Car Beers and the Vic” performed more original songs to start off their performance. They had audience members crowd surfing at the beginning of their performance, which had the whole crowd excited and hyped up for the tail end of the night.
Jacob Iacobucci, a sophomore film major and drummer for “Car Beers and the Vic,” said that he thought that their performance went as expected except for a few minor hiccups.
“I think that it’s always interesting when you talk to people in the audience, the audience is usually pumped and think that the performance was great, even if the performers think that they missed a few things,” Iacobucci said.
Jude LaRoche, a jazz performance major and another member of “Car Beers and the Vic” said that he performs his music frequently and was proud of the performance that the group put on at the competition.
“I think we have a real shot at it,” LaRoche said. “I think that the crowd and the judges really enjoyed it and we had a really good time out there too.”
The fourth performance of the night was from the rock group “The Ghost of Liam Past.” The crowd responded well to their performance.
After the judges counted their scores from the performances, “The Ghost of Liam Past” was declared the winner of the musician’s guild’s “Rock and Swap, Battle of the Bands” competition.
The musicians guild puts on three concerts a semester as well as smaller battles of the bands competitions such as this one. For more information on their upcoming events, you can follow them on Instagram @urimusiciansguild.