A few weeks back, on a rain swept spring evening, the Lancaster School celebrated its first ever Band Challenge with the participation of 11 Groups connected in one way or another to the Lancaster School.

At around 6pm the first Band was on stage and ready to go. Starting off the event, Yupanki Band did a cover of Clocks by Cold Play. A band of kids of around 9 years of age set the mood for the rest of the evening. Much to my surprise, this band was very steady and very cool on stage. Amazed by this young band’s performance, the crowd was getting a taste of what the rest of the night would be like.

The quality of all bands was above average, with a few outstanding acts including Franco Paolo Ciangherotti’s band - CALDO TLALPEÑO who did a cover of SWEET CHILD OF MINE, in which, in Daniel Gutierrez’s opinion (event organizer, and front man for La Gusana Ciega and Kafka Jones), the vocals were superior even to the older bands – most definitely a star in the making! Incidentally, if anyone videoed this act Franco Paolo’s mother would greatly appreciate a copy as FP managed to record over his mother’s treasured version!!!

There were many noticeable performances during the evening mixing covers with original composition and it was an extremely difficult task for our invited judges to select the winners. However after deliberating intensely over musical interpretation, showmanship and professionalism the judges finally decided on the following results;

1st place: CARA - Hardcore oriented, a very tight creative and powerful trio took over the stage showing the most mature act of the night. Nothing missing, nothing to add, all in all a great performance taking the first place.

2nd place: LA ORQUESTA FELICIDAD - An out of the ordinary duo surprised everybody when they started playing a set of three “percussive trees” then turning it into a drum and base improvisation. Originality and Talent took the second place.

3rd place: REPLICA - Also a well rounded band, did a very solid set with the right mixture of musical sense and showmanship.

These lucky winners will now have the opportunity to record their tracks in a professional recording studio absolutely free of charge and will be automatically invited to participate in any further rock evening or appropriate event.

At the end of the day we were delighted that the evening not only covered its costs but also contributed over $1000 towards the construction of the new site in Diligencias. The School would especially like to thank Daniel Gutierrez for inspiring and leading this initiative and Diego Heero for all his work behind the scenes in preparing the tickets and projected band images.

The Lancaster Band Challenge is largely aimed at inspiring young rock musicians to form sustainable groups with a life beyond the ‘tocada’ and a desire to see their groups as viable entities rather than just short term hobbies. Plans were initially to organise workshops and training opportunities for budding musicians so that they had knowledge of all aspects of band organisation and coordination from original song writing to sound engineering, lighting and promotion. Sadly time was against us this year but these goals and ideals remain and we hope will form the central pillars of next year’s event which will of course be even bigger and better – rock on Lancaster!