Bands undeterred by meager audience at CJLO’s second annual battle of the bands

Solo acoustic artist Jake Goldsbie. Photos by Sarah Deshaies

Porn Persons took the first place prize. Photo by Sarah Deshaies

With St. Patrick’s Day being last Thursday, I’m sure that many of you don’t remember what you were up to between 8 and 11 p.m. But not all of us were either blackout drunk or paying a visit to the great white telephone. While most of the Concordia population spent the evening crammed into Crescent St.’s many dingy Irish pubs, about 20 spectators gathered in the F.C. Smith Auditorium on Loyola campus for CJLO’s second annual Battle of the Bands.

Out of the 10  or so bands that applied to take part in the competition, six were chosen – gladly trading in a day-long drinking binge for the chance to win a $300 gift card for Ital Melodie, a guest appearance on one of CJLO’s shows, a feature article on the station’s website and a two-day recording session in their studio.

Five judges – Angelica Calcagnile, host of BVST on CJLO, Omar Husain, CJLO Head Music Director and host of Hooked on Sonics, Darcy MacDonald, columnist for the Montreal Mirror, Francis Letendre, Director of production and Marketing Coordinator at Last Gang Records, and myself – hashed it out American Idol-style between performances. However, rest assured that, unlike in the TV show, no feelings were hurt (too severely). While all of the bands were unknown and quite amateurish, there was no denying that there was talent present in the room.

First up was a four-piece called the Ben Cardilli Band. The group’s founder, Ben Cardilli, had a strong pair of vocal chords and the guitar soloing skills to match. Perhaps more so than the group who managed to win the top prize, every member of the band was musically talented.

Rapper Réal gave his first-ever on-stage performance, which proved to be highly energetic and confident in spite of his trying – and failing – to engage the crowd by prompting, “Put ya hands in the sky!” Following was a poetic, thoughtful yet forgettable solo acoustic performance by the Audio Drop-In before an almost hour-long intermission that split the night into two segments.

Solo acoustic artist Jake Goldsbie. Photos by Sarah Deshaies

After people chugged a bunch of $1.50 beers and were summoned back into the venue, the battle resumed with an eccentric, punk-noise-rock freak show by the Porn Persons. Judges seemed to be torn between confusion and endearment, yet the audience had made their mind up as to who would take the cake. Apparently, a band need only dress up in oddly-matched thrift store clothing and shiny costumes to win a musical talent competition. While Porn Persons had the performance aspect of their set down pat, the band could really benefit from diverting some of that energy spent on their costumes to improving the quality of their music.

Jake Goldsbie, another solo acoustic artist, played an emotionally-charged set, with his first song tackling such heavy subject matter as child abuse and incest. Finally, the powerful vocals from eclectic group Fire At Rivky wrapped up what proved to be a surprisingly decent and delightfully entertaining evening.

Keep your radios tuned into CJLO for Porn Persons, who will be appearing on-air in the near future.

4 comments

  1. Who the hell decided to choose St. Patrick’s day for the battle of the bands? If you wanted a lot of people to show up then you need to plan better

    1. Hi There,

      I’m Katie, the Station Manager at CJLO. Thank you for your feedback. “Why on earth did you throw this event on St. Patrick’s Day?” This question has been coming up a lot so I think it best to address it right from the source. Firstly, it is worth noting that there were more like 40-50 people in and out at the show, I’m not sure why this article states there were 20. Otherwise, I cannot speak for our Promotions Director who played a large part in working on this project but this is what I know:

      There are a varying number of reasons why that date was chosen, namely because we obtained funding from the CCSL Special Projects fund to hold the event again this year at Loyola and because that was one of the only dates made available for us for F.C. Smith. We also knew we wanted to hold the event before exams hit and we had several other events happening the following week and the space was not available the week before so that really was the only date we could select. It wasn’t ideal but we did the best we could to work within the parameters that we had. We were also hoping each band would do their part in bringing people out as a large component to the over-all score was audience vote and a good part of that was why Porn Persons won.

      In any case, this was the second year throwing this event and the year before showed an amazing turn out, we hoped for the best, did as much promo as possible and tried to hold the best event that we could. We do these sorts of things all the time and put a lot of planning and effort into them so please do not think that that was not the case. We all had a lot of fun at the event, the bands were great, many made some really good connections and any bit of exposure is a good thing when you’re a band that’s just starting up.

      I’d like to thank Kate for coming out and participating in the event. It is unfortunate that she chose to take the spin on this article that she did (we didn’t even know she would be covering the event) but in any case we hope that she along with those who did join us enjoyed themselves.

      If anyone has any questions about this event or anything else CJLO related, I welcome you to be in touch.

      -Katie Seline
      Station Manager – CJLO 1690 AM
      manager (at) cjlo (dot) com

      1. Dear fellow Concordian readers,

        Let it be known that Porn Persons had a humble (and very loyal) four friends attending that weren’t in the band. Evidently, there was either some a) popularity going on (lord knows why, right), or b) a lot of vote abstaining going on. They appreciate the good publicity they have received from this event.

        Sincerely,
        -Fan

      2. Dear fellow Concordian readers,

        Let it be known that Porn Persons had a humble (and very loyal) four friends attending that weren’t in the band. Evidently, there was either some a) popularity going on (lord knows why, right), or b) a lot of vote abstaining going on. They appreciate the good publicity they have received from this event.

        Sincerely,
        -One of four dedicated fans

Comments are closed.

Related Posts