Sounding the 805
The battle begins, VC bands rock the boat, and new tunes from The Pat Salisbury Band
By Chris Mastrovito 02/25/2010
An army of more than 100 metal fans filed into Rock City Studios in Camarillo last Friday night for some face-melting metal and hardcore for round 1 of Rock City’s 2010 Battle of the Bands. The victor of the metal/hardcore genre (chosen by a panel of three local “celeb” judges that somehow included me) was Thousand Oaks’ Sudo, a blend of progressive hardcore, metal and hard rock, displaying complex song structure, heavy riffs and supreme showmanship, narrowly outscoring Trancit, Camarillo’s youthful thrash metal shredders.
The preliminaries are divided into genres, with punk rock competing Friday, Feb. 26, indie on March 5 and pop-punk on March 12. The final showdown takes place April 3, when the winners of each of the four genres compete for first place and a free, five-song, live demo recording. I do not envy that final panel. Judging different bands within one broad genre was difficult enough, but judging different bands across genres? That’s not comparing apples and oranges.
That’s comparing apples and, say, Nilla Wafers.
A few of Ventura County’s bands will be rocking the boat, literally, when they perform March 5 and 6 with hundreds of Southern California bands on the Queen Mary in Long Beach for the first round of The Skinnie magazine’s Top 100 Bands Festival. Among the local bands invited to compete are Aces High, Carnal Deity, Trancit and 11-piece punk/ska outfit The Grittys. They will play one of 10 stages on three floors of the ship, in one of the largest competitions of the year for So Cal bands, where the top 100 bands in the SoCal scene will be chosen at the end of three rounds taking place throughout March and April. If you’ve got the energy and gas money, pack your pockets full of Dramamine and make the trip to the historic ship to support the scene and check out bands, vendors, food and possibly a ghost from the 1930s.
The Pat Salisbury Band, the indie rock band fronted by former Bad Judgment guitarist Pat Salisbury, is at long last releasing Wednesday Morning Heartache, the follow-up to 2005’s daydreamy debut album, Moonlit Trip. Performing an acoustic set at the Dirty Vinyl in Ventura last Thursday, Salisbury and second guitarist Steve Davidson played a stripped-down preview of the new record, a decidedly more rock approach to similar romantic themes and the desperate-yet-upbeat aesthetic that framed Moonlit Trip’s more relaxed sound. The change appears to be attributed to principal songwriter/singer/guitarist Pat Salisbury’s desire to move back toward the rock dynamic of Bad Judgment and away from the often pretentious solo songwriter identity suggested by a band named after oneself. Salisbury says he has been trying to get away from the band name for years, but his friends and fans continue to insist it should stick.
Sorry, Pat. Looks like The Pat Salisbury Band it is. Wednesday Morning Heartache became available for download on iTunes Feb. 19, and The Pat Salisbury Band will officially release the CD at J.J. Brewsky’s in Camarillo, March 13, with good friends Franklin for Short and March 20, with the return of late-’90s-era Camarillo band Duckbutter.
Sounding the 805 is Ventura County’s only biweekly local music column. If you have a tip, a suggestion, a complaint, some dish or just a kind word, shoot Chris Mastrovito an e-mail.
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