We might live in a world where Ant and Dec are topping the charts (love this, by the way), Atomic Kitten and Blue have just played Hammersmith Apollo and the Rolling Stones are headlining Glastonbury (YES!) - but it's great to know that there are talented, young, new musicians still breaking through into our music industry and more importantly, that they are being supported.
It was this support that brought Phil Manzanera from Roxy Music and Starsailor frontman James Walsh to join the team at Hard Rock last week, to pick the winner of the Hard Rock Cafe London's Hard Rock Rising Battle of the Bands competition. They made up the panel with judges from Live Nation and Absolute Radio too, and together, picked five-piece band, The Carnabys(thecarnabys.com), as their winner.
The band - made up of London's BRIT school graduates Jack Mercer, Alex Bloomfield, Ben Gittins, Mike Delizo and James Morgan - will now face a public vote (and that's where we come in) against over 90 other local Hard Rock finalists from all over the globe. Their next goal is to make the Top 25, before going up against an incredible judging panel including Steven Van Zandt from Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band - who will help to choose the Grand Prize Winner. If they win, they will bag themselves a world tour arranged by Hard Rock International, including a spot on the bill at London’s Hard Rock Calling Festival in June, a chance to make an album and music video through Hard Rock Records and new music equipment worth $10,000.
So if you have some time, take a listen to The Carnabys and the rest of the Hard Rock Battle of the Bands contenders at hardrock.com Then cast your vote. They'd appreciate it.
