Battle of the Bands 2024

I think we can agree small venues are vital to the local music scene. This year, as part of my quest to visit the Horn fifty times to celebrate it’s fiftieth birthday, I have been going to more ‘Battle of the Bands’ evenings than ever and I think I have learnt an important lesson. These much derided events, despite some obvious negatives, are actually really good for the local scene and a good way for the venue to fill the building on a usually quiet midweek evening.

One of the big issues with these evenings, is that they are popularity contests. While the final is based on judges votes, for the earlier rounds, the band with the most friends and family, win. Often the best bands go out in the earliest rounds and the most raw bands, featuring kids from the local colleges, win, as their classmates and family turn up to vote for them. These bands often have sets that feature a lot of cover versions and if I’m honest, I don’t usually want any of these bands to go through. I would prefer the bands with their own music to be given more opportunity to play.

But I think I have missed something obvious.

As the rounds progressed, the Horn went from being a third full, to being packed. The four semi-finals and the final were pretty much were sold out. Two hundred, mainly young people, packing out the room. There to listen to their friends, but also hearing the music from other bands who pick up new fans. I forget that a music community is more than the bands. The audience plays an important part. Bands don’t want to play to empty rooms and an audience of young people is an audience most likely to listen to their music, or pick up an instrument and form their own bands.

If I’m honest, if the earlier rounds were based on my the vote, only one of tonight’s band, would have progressed this far. The eventual winners, Safehouse, were the best band in their semi-final. But I wouldn’t have put any of the other three through to the final. I guess if I had put through the bands I wanted to win, the room would have been half empty and the demographic older. There’s the infamous evening the Sex Pistols played Manchester that is claimed spawned numerous influential bands. What the Battle of the Bands is doing for Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire is to inspire kids to create their own bands and it’s taken me all this time to realise I’ve been focusing on the wrong bands to put through.

I have to admit, I had some trepidation about tonight. With some of the earlier rounds featuring so many cover songs, I was afraid tonight would be the same and the result a forgone conclusion. While I felt Safehouse were the most fully formed, playing their own materials. I seemed to remember the other bands featuring quite a few covers. But tonight, the progression of each band was clear and it was much more of a competition than I thought it would be. All bands brought their own material to the final and it was a pleasure to see their progress from the earlier rounds.

I remember hearing a conversation between some parents of one of the bands in an earlier round. They were discussing the Universities their kids were hoping to go to this September. That’s the reality of many of these young bands. It’s a pity that university might cause some of these bands to split up or play infrequently. I guess this is why it’s difficult to build a scene in St Albans. Kids move away for University and don’t always come back and people who do move to St Albans, do so because of the rail links to the City and aren’t the type to pick up guitars. St Albans is never going to have an artistic subculture like Brighton or Bristol. It’s commuter central. In some way, the Horn fosters each new generation of musicians and other music scenes benefit from its hard work.

The opening act Pet Wasp are probably a case in point. They were the rawest band. Their sound was less defined, or maybe it was more that I was hearing some quite different musical voices coming though. One minute indie pop, the next, more complex music that seemed to be influenced by bands like Black Country New Road. The clash of songs styles didn’t work for me. More time will help them create a more cohesive sound. But I think these kids will head off the University and each will end up in vastly different bands to this one.

In the case of Average at Best and The Warning Signs, both are more fully formed. But I’m not sure either had found their own voices yet. Average at Best were wedged in the alt-rock arena. With two different vocalists and some good stage craft and musicianship. They are getting there. Maybe they are trying too hard and at times and this affected their vocals. I think playing off the double vocalist angle is maybe where they will they can find their own sound. The Warning Signs are fun. I’m not an Artic Monkeys fan and for me, they are a bit too Artic Monkey adjacent to sound fresh. But I could hear their own ideas starting to find the way into the music and it will be interesting to see how they progress.

That leaves Safehouse. From the first time I saw them, they looked fully formed. Playing alt-rock, it is clear they’ve played a lot more gigs together. Much tighter than the other three bands, their lead singer has a great alt-rock vocal, with more precise control over her voice than any of the others. While not my type of music, I enjoyed what I heard and I could appreciate what they were doing. Tonight and over the rounds, they were consistently good and for me deserved winners.

I think my clear takeaway from all this, is that I need to be less snobby about who is put through. It was really impressive to see the development of these bands as the competition progressed and great to see a packed venue. Pet Wasp especially, seemed to have improved significantly over the rounds. The fact there were so many young people in the audience, many of whom had played in earlier rounds, was a pleasure to see. It will be interesting to see how these bands progress over the next year and what they bring to 2025’s Battle of the Bands.