Battle of the Bands 3: Breathing New Life into Local Music

Caper Radio is hosting the Third Annual Battle of the Bands Saturday. The all ages event aims to breathe new life into the music scene by providing a showcase for new artists. Caper Times spoke with Jules Cameron, Station Manager at the radio.

“We wanted to figure a way how we could encourage the local youth in the CBRM to play in front of their peers as well as form bands and to breathe more life into the music scene here.” Says Cameron. “… we can potentially get young fresh bands into the music scene for many years to come. To encourage kids to come out of their shell to play the music they want.”

“This would be their first formal live performance for some of the artists playing.” Cameron tells us this year has a higher proportion of high-school students performing than the last 2 years.

“This is probably the year with the largest amount of singer-songwriters competing in Battle of the Bands, which is super interesting.” The acts will play mostly original works—with only one cover song allowed per group.

There are 4 full bands headlining the show. Each with “…very different trajectories in music… They’re all alternative forms of music, but at varying levels of loudness.” The bands headlining the show are Low Rentals (Alt-Rock), BrainFog (Doom-Metal), FloodGate (Progressive-Metal and Rock), and Foreign Policy (Crust-Metal). Floodgate returns this year after placing third in last years BotB and Foreign Policy are returning champs from last year.

“We really hope we can keep doing these events because not only are they super fun, but also it gets a lot of interest with the local youth. Some of the kids who went last year are playing this year. They came to see their friends and said “Hey, wanna do this too!”; so, they decided to become part of it as well.”

Doors open at 3pm at Undercurrent Youth Centre in Sydney. Acts play from 3:30 till 6:40 followed by audience voting, awards ceremony and a closing act by local band, Yellow.

Winner of Battle of the Bands will receive a recording package with Smashbox Studios in Dominion. There is a minimum $10 donation at the door. Profits will be split among the local SPCA and Caper Radio.

Caper Radio is a non-profit campus and community radio station located in the Students’ Union Building. You can tune in at 107.3 FM or https://caperradio.weebly.com/ (CBU tech support currently blocks the website, but they are hoping this can be fixed soon). They broadcast locally produced shows along with syndicated Canadian content. Anyone is welcome to volunteer to host and produce their own music or spoken word show.

Edit: Originally we wrote there were 3 bands in the running. We now know returning champs Foreign Policy bring the total to 4 bands and 5 solo acts.