Doss the Artist and PGA Tour was named the winning act in Saturday night's battle of the bands, the Brown Concert Agency's annual student band competition. As the winner of the concert, the band will open for Of Montreal's Spring Weekend show.
The competition, which took place at the Underground Bar in Faunce House, lasted from 8:30 p.m. to around 12:30 a.m.
Each of the eight bands played for about 15 minutes and performed three to four songs, only one of which was allowed to be a cover of an already-existing song.
The eight bands represented a broad range of musical genres including ska, acid jazz, funk, metal and alternative rock.
After each band had played for its allotted time, the three judges — Dean of the College and Professor of Music Katherine Bergeron, Mike Delehanty, a booking agent for BCA and Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel, and Scott Poulson-Bryant '08, an Africana Studies professor and co-founder of Vibe magazine — chose the three best bands to perform an encore performance, said Matt Weisberg '12, an organizer for the event.
The top three bands — Platypus, Doss the Artist and PGA Tour and Spank City — preformed one or two original songs each before the judges made their final decision on which band would open for the Spring Weekend show.
The winner of the battle, the hip-hop band Doss the Artist and PGA Tour, is a group of eight musicians — rapper Gabriel Doss '10, drummer Harry Lisabeth '10, bassist Jon Mitchell '09, tenor saxophonist Pete Drinian '11, guitarist Caleb Townsend '11, trumpeter Ross Stackhouse '10, trombonist Erik Duhaime '10 and alto saxophonist Jay Gravel '11.
There was clear support from the audience during each band's performance, but Doss the Artist and PGA Tour elicited more fervent support and enthusiasm than the others.
During the group's encore performance, nearly everyone in the bar was either dancing or listening intently. Chants of "PGA" began after both their first performance and their encore performance.
Weisberg said the bands auditioned in front of him and Dan Wiener '11, another organizer of the event, in order to get into the battle. The judges based their choices "on musicianship, how tightly they played together, their originality and the reaction of the crowd," Weisberg said.
As the winner of the battle, Doss the Artist and PGA Tour will open for the second of the two Spring Weekend concerts on Saturday, April 18th at 1:30 p.m. The concert, headlined by Of Montreal, will also include performances by Santigold and Toubab Krewe.
The battle was free to attend, but space was limited in the Underground — during the performances there was typically a crowd of 15 to 20 people waiting to enter the bar.
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