Sponsored by Payphone Productions, the day-long spectacle of ramps and amps takes off at noon at the Small Empire Skate Park in Flanders where about 20 national, regional and local acts will bust out their showmanship. With built-in, well-deserved bragging rights, pro and semipro skateboarders will execute gravity-defying stunts worthy of a "don't try this at home" disclaimer. (However, for your own boasting rights, you can purchase their cool gear to prove you've been there, seen that.
) Music just comes with skateboarding territory, said Mitch Collins, an avid boarder and member of Vampire for Hire, a pop/rock band with "hints of dance." "I listen to punk music to get pumped up for skating," he said. However, April 21, Collins will trade in his board for his band.
Vampire for Hire is one of 20 performers selected through a highly-contested battle of the bands contest. Mount Olive's P.R.
Y.D.E.
is another. A graduate of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, Rinaldi is the lone New Yorker in the group. The rest of the band hails from the Garden State but due to extensive national touring, no member stays at home base for very long.
The band borrows its name from Edgar Allen Poe's poem "Ligeia." Within the lonesome latter years! In veils, and drowned in tears.
.. "There's no real deep meaning," said Rinaldi.
"Bedlight was from Poe and blue eyes, well they're cool. It had a ring to it." Influenced by Bon Jovi, Goo Goo Dolls and Jimmy Eat World, Bedlight sums up its music as "a cross between Goo-Goo Dolls and your favorite hair metal band," Rinaldi said.
Jimmy Eat World is evidenced in the rhythm of "Waste My Time," a similar beat to "In the Middle," circa 2002. Bedlight for Blue Eyes typically draws the likes of 16-18-year-old girls and 18-year-old guys, he said. "We're hoping to appeal to an older crowd especially with our new CD," he said.
CDs on the horizon: "Life on Life's Terms," due out July 10. A rhyming side effect, Vampire for Hire refers more to their music such as "Don't Cry (over spilt blood)." Bury me with my gravestone cracked in half, with roses painted blue and black, Can't you see I'm drowning?
Lyrics aside, the tune is actually quite upbeat and catchy in terms of guitar-driven rhythms, and emo-saturated vocals.
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