MediaTel Band Goes Into Battle
Online media data and intelligence. Its the new rock’n’roll. Or so a few brave and in some cases heavily sequinned members of the MediaTel gang along with some Virtue TV-ers tried to convince an audience of advertising types at the NABS Battle of the Bands at the Hippodrome Leicester Square last night.
And so it was that funked-up rockabilly band Trash Alley’s newest recruits, the backing singer birds, found themselves in a dressing room which single-handedly put the seedy into Soho, wondering why they weren’t safely at their desks a-marketing, a-designing and a-journalisting. Coming to the realisation, with a few hours to showtime, that we’d probably spent more hours trying on potential matching ensembles at Top Shop than practising vocals, we did the only thing backing birds can do- applied large amounts of eyeliner. This provided some protection from the radioactive glow of the boys’ hawaiian shirts and distracted us from the fact that our rider of 307 pimento stuffed olives, 4 bottles of vodka and a packet of refreshers had failed to appear…
While we jittered backstage Mediator’s Ruocco had the dubious honour of performing first out of the five competing bands. Despite performing mostly originals they got the crowd going and we prayed that the tumbleweed wouldn’t start rolling as we hit the scene. As the DJ announced that we were up next we were relieved to judge from the noise that our MediaTel colleagues were in full (and from the sound of it, well-lubricated) voice. The next twenty minutes passed in a flash of glitter, lip gloss and near-perfect dance routines (ahem!). As the crowd roared along to the final chorus of Video Killed The Radio Star (sooo appropriate for a media event, dontcha think?) it was hard to believe it was all over bar the clapometer and you pretty much had to drag our spangly and star-struck butts off the stage.
Post performance, we mingled and listened to the other bands: BHWG Proximity’s Bug, whose crowd pleasers included numbers from Chumbawumba and Blur, Bates’ Frankie Goes To Paddington, which paid homage to the queen of pop herself with a Madonna medley and Craik Jones/Saatchi & Saatchi’s Agent-C, which went for the Commitments approach.
The competition was scary, but as compliments flowed almost as fast as the outrageously priced alcohol, we dared, Matthew, to get stars in our eyes. Could David beat Goliath in this West End music venue? It felt like, as Darius would have put it, there was so much love in the room when we played. There certainly seemed to be the most people dancing and singing along. Alas, the clapometer showed that the cruel hand of fate was not clapping for us. It seems that in this case, size mattered, as well as the number of hands involved. Our (incredibly supportive and very vocal) supporters were outnumbered and therefore outroared by the might of Bates (2nd place) and Craik Jones/Saatchi & Saatchi (winners). We made it into the still pretty impressive 3rd position, and there was a victory on behalf of the little people when Mediator won best original song. But you can’t only sing when you’re winning: sore throats and sore heads may have quietened us down a little today, but we’re already bulk ordering hairspray and gold lamé for next year…
To view the Trash Alley Battle of the Bands 2001 gallery Trash Alley At NABS Battle Of The Bands 2001, The Hippodrome, 4 October