Eleven artists, four hours, a few broken strings and a crowd surfer or two later, three battling bands were chosen Saturday night to perform at this year's Movin' On. Audio Imagery, Scars to Prove and Tailor Made earned coveted side-stage spots at the April 24 music fest.
"I wish we could have taken more than the three bands," said judge Austin Davis, a DJ from WUBZ-FM (105.9), The Buzz. "I was really impressed with the performances, the wide variety of styles. There was a rap act, a '50s-style swing act. It was really cool."
After announcing the Battle of the Bands winners, Movin' On director Jeniece Fairbairn revealed five of the seven main stage acts for Movin' On. VAST (Visual Audio Sensory Theater), the Glengarry Bhoys, The X-ecutioners, Sponge and Oleander will be joined
by a female artist and headliner,
who will be announced when Fair-
bairn gets the go-ahead from the university.
The top three local bands from the battle were chosen based on their crowd involvement, energy, skill and musical variety, Davis and fellow judge Fairbairn (junior-recreation and parks management) said.
"Audio Imagery [a hip-hop group] really got the crowd involved," Fairbairn said. "Every other word wasn't the f-word ... They had everything we liked."
Rock band Scars to Prove, formerly known as last year's Battle of the Bands champion Cloud Nine, appeared to bring its own crowd of fans along for its 12:10 a.m. performance, which was a deciding factor for the judges.
"They're not my favorite kind of music, but they had mosh-pitters and crowd surfers," Fairbairn said. "The music wasn't just the whole screaming thing."
Last but not least of the chosen bands -- and the last act of the night -- is pop-punk band Tailor Made. The band dazzled the judges with the way its musical performance got the dwindling late-night crowd moving.
"They sound like Simple Plan or A New Found Glory, so it was different," Fairbairn said.
This comparison to national acts and the somewhat familiar styles of the other bands in the battle was something of a disappointment for a few crowd members Saturday night, however.
"Some sound like what you could hear on the radio," Penn State employee Cliff Hixson said.
"They said it was going to sound different than what's on the radio," Hixson's concert-mate Lindsey LaBella (senior-animal bioscience) said. "That's why we came."
Other artists, such as rockabilly group The Marauders and jam band The Nightcrawlers, had pretty strong crowd support for their unique styles and impressed the judges but didn't quite make the cut.
"Most of the bands were not really original," Jessica Horton (freshman-division of undergraduate studies) said. "I liked The Nightcrawlers. They were a little different. Some of the other bands were just loud, and every single song sounded the exact same."
"I wasn't impressed," added Becca Filson (freshman-elementary education) as the judges deliberated.
Still, crowd members did note that they were drawn to the night's first-place group, Audio Imagery.
"I thought [the Battle of the Bands lineup] was a disappointment," Max Arnosky (freshman-secondary education) said. "I thought it was going to be better at a school of 40,000 people. I've seen better talent at my high school. But I thought the rappers were good."
