Saturday night was a busy one for the Movin' On crew at the Battle of the Bands.
Most notably, Movin' On Director Ed Fugelsang (senior-information services and technology) announced Los Angeles rockers Say Anything will be headlining the annual outdoor music festival, scheduled to take place on the HUB-Robeson Center lawn on April 26.
"They're getting pretty popular," Fugelsang said. "We felt they'd make a good headliner. People lump them in with the pop-punk genre, but they have a realness to their music that makes you feel what they're writing music for."
Joining Say Anything on the main stage, Fugelsang said, will be East Coast jamband the Blue Method; SPORTS, a turntable project led by Glassjaw lead singer Daryl Palumbo; and the female-fronted pop-rock of Kansas City's Vedera and Tampa Bay's Automatic Loveletter. Details for more acts who will be playing the side stage are expected to be finalized and announced in the next few days.
Along with these national acts, five local bands, each featuring at least one Penn State student, will be playing the side stage, as well, after winning the Movin' On Battle of the Bands on Saturday night at the HUB Alumni Hall. The Warskills, Hopes High, the Slant, Hay Sugar and Some Downtown Avenue -- in no particular order -- took home the honors.
The bands were judged on a rubric of song quality, stage performance, tightness, crowd reaction and how many people they drew, said Movin' On Side Stage Coordinator and Battle of the Bands Judge Ross Di Liddo.
"The guitarist for Hay Sugar was amazing," said Movin' On Side Stage Coordinator and Battle of the Bands Judge Amy Rea.
Hay Sugar guitarist Matt Leech (senior-earth science) said the band's blues-based sound set it apart from the rest of the field. Leech said the band was excited to have another gig to play.
"We're looking forward to playing outside," he said. "We're working on some new songs. It's going to be more of the same."
Rea said she also liked the Slant, a four-piece that draws from the Beatles and Radiohead.
"The acoustic and electric guitar together was really good," she said.
The Slant, which came up short in last year's Battle, pulled out a victory on Saturday. Drummer Zach Dow attributed the win to a new judging system.
"Last year, it was fans who voted, and a lot of the bands just brought a bunch of their friends," Dow said. "An actual judging panel was a good idea."
The Warskills, who sounded like a Billie Joe Armstrong-fronted version of Arctic Monkeys, closed the evening, and the band was "psyched" with its victory, said singer and guitarist Bill Ryan (sophomore-recreation, park and tourism management). Ryan said it was his band's style, which he described in an interview last week as similar to the Strokes' and Arctic Monkeys', that set it apart.
"We're playing more of a bare bones rock 'n' roll," Ryan said. "It's something different from most of the bands that played here."
Some Downtown Avenue was the last band to be announced as winner, and trumpeter Michael Barasch (junior-broadcast journalism) said his band was in agony as it waited.
"We heard the first four bands get announced, and we had a little bit of a sunk stomach for a while," he said. "But then we heard, 'Last but not least, Some Downtown Avenue,' and we all jumped up. We were elated."
