Islandcom’s Battle of the Bands competition was the event of the summer! The Turtle Cove Marina overflowed with people to the free concert event. Unlike music fest of the past the Islandcom Battle of the bands was a free event with all local bands. It was quite a show! Six bands performed that night for the top 3 spots. At stake was $4,000.00 for 1st place, $2,000.00 for 2nd place, and $1000.00 for third. The bands on the roster for the night were Roots, QBand Links, Justified, V6, Lee and the Force, and Rasta Generation. Each band was equally talented and gave great performances. They delivered their own style of music and performed lots of crowd favourites.
Rasta Generation opened the show with smooth reggae music. They delighted the crowd with a favourite Bob Marley tune everyone sang to. Next up on the stage was Grand Turk’s Roots. They got the crowd going with popular soca songs from back in the days as well as new ones. The third band of the night Justified, delight the crowd with their mellow music. Their set included a song of their own. Fourth group to play was rake and scrape band, V6 also out of Grand Turk. They rocked the crowd with a tribute song to JAGS McCartney that had everyone on their feet. Lee and the Force were a special treat as always; performed a tribute song to Whitney Houston. Q Band Links wowed the crowd with their rendition of Party Rock by LMFAO along with other hit songs.
The winners of the night were determined by a point system that combined scoring from the judges and the number of text message votes from the crowd. The three judges for the night were Joan Astwood, Goddfrey Been, and Ramez Hakoura. The judges scored each band after their individual performances. After all the bands performed the crowd was given 2 minutes to send in their text to the band of their choice. After the numbers were calculated the top three were clearly established. In third place winning $1000.00 was duo Justified. In second place, winning $2000.00 and 6 months of Islandcom service was Qband Links. Taking home the grand prize of $4,000.00, a year of service from Islandcom and Samsung Galaxy S phones was rake and scrape band V6.
Chandra Craigg, of the Islandcom Marketing team talks about the event turn out. “Lee Ingham and I have put a lot into this event and are very happy with everything coming together as planned. We owe a large thanks to many entities on island. The Wine Cellar, of course, as our cosponsors of the event contributed quite a lot to its success. We also couldn’t have done it without the help of Dion Pratt and the Sky Juice Team. They really had us covered! Special thanks also goes out to our host David Bowen for keeping the crowd entertained and informed. Thanks also goes out to the judges for their fair voting. Security company CSS were excellent. They provided us with sea patrol, land patrol, as well as guard dog patrol. Other companies we owe thanks to are Crazy George and the Turtle Cove Marina, TCI Waste, Blue Loos, the TCI Sports Commission, Q’Deano Productions, William John, Silver Blue Productions, EMS, photographer Delphine Hartshorn, our wonderful DJ’s- Liqua Fox and Techno Sounds, and of course the bands.”
