Mississippi State University students have the opportunity to view the second annual Plazapalooza Battle of the Bands Friday in the Colvard Student Union Ballroom at 7 p.m. The Battle of the Bands gained recognition across the Starkville community last year, and since then it has become an exciting campus event for students, including raffles and free food from Aspen Heights this year. The winning band will receive a $300 cash prize, as well as the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to open for this year’s Bulldog Bash headliners, The Black Crowes and Chris Young.
Alissa McKinnon, junior communication major and director of Late Night Events for the Student Association, said although last year’s Plazapalooza was a huge success, there will be a few major changes made to this year’s Battle of the Bands.
The largest change will be the diversity among the competition judges. McKinnon said this year the judges are not the guest performers, but are residents of Starkville and MSU employees.
“We are really hoping that it can be a way for MSU to support Starkville’s music scene,” she said. “Bulldog Bash and Battle of the Bands are really important within the community of Starkville and within MSU.”
McKinnon, who co-planned Plazapalooza with Marshall Scruggs, junior accounting major, said she hopes this change will provide all genres of music with an opportunity to perform.
“We really want to keep it as unbiased as possible because I think there’s some great talent, and I think that they deserve to experience the university picking who wins,” she said. “This year we wanted to keep it within the campus, but we are so excited to have Space Capone perform. They’ll be great headliners for the event.”
McKinnon said although there is a $300 grand prize for the winning band, the best part of the experience is the bands’ opportunity to perform for the Starkville community.
“The good thing about Battle of the Bands is that it’s really gained a lot of recognition within the bars and restaurants in Starkville. A lot of people that played last year got picked up by places like Rick’s and Dave’s and Zorba’s,” she said. “This really opens a lot of doors for the bands. Restaurants pay attention to the Battle of the Bands.”
The competitors in this year’s Battle of the Bands represent several varied styles of music. Oxford-based group The Red Thangs, inspired by the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Dirty Projectors and producer/songwriter Max Martin, boasts an indie-rock sound, whereas local band Sipsy Fires plays eclectic funk and soul music. McKinnon said she counts this wide range of genres as one of the competition’s assets.
“There are a lot of really talented artists this year,” she said. “I know whoever wins is going to be awesome because any one of them could get up on the stage and rock it.”
McKinnon also said her favorite part of the event is so many different groups coming together to create music, including those from outside Starkville.
One such group, The Red Thangs, represents the evening’s indie-rock entertainment. The Red Thangs admits it has grown tremendously over the past couple of years.
Charles Adcock, The Red Thangs’s guitarist and lead vocalist, said the band began without specific intentions.
“The Red Thangs met through a series of informal jam sessions. Guitarist Adam Ray and drummer Drew Shetley would spend hours playing blues and rock classics,” he said.
Adcock said he then joined, bringing his own guitar playing, and Blair Bingham, the group’s fourth member, came amost immediately after Ray, Shetley and Adcock met her.
“Blair joined a bit later, once the rest of the band witnessed her obvious talent and asked her to join,” he said.
Since then, The Red Thangs have grown from their humble beginnings to a well-known group across Mississippi university campuses. It is this dedication and passion for music that is so appealing to MSU students, and it is ultimately what brings Plazapalooza back for another year.
