The competition for Fight for Fiestas 2016 came to a head Tuesday night when the judges finally announced the winning band.
Five groups, each specializing in a different genre, were given 15 minutes on stage to impress the judges and more importantly, the audience for a spot in Fiestas, a festival held every spring on Johnson Field.
At the end of the night, the judges selected Mountain Head, the indie punk rock pair who drew in the largest audience and the most votes. Members Wyatt Granger and Audrin Baghaie will play as the opening band at the Fiestas concert in April.
Granger said Mountain Head will have 30 minutes to play at Fiestas and they plan to use the extra time to mix up their set list and their style of playing for a new audience.
“(I’m) kind of blown away, because I don’t win things very often,” Granger said. “It’s a good feeling. I’m super excited.”
The competing acts were, respectively, indie rock group Treehouse Basement, punk rock band Crushed!?, indie hip-hop quartet Out This World Ent., electronic dance DJ PVLSE and indie punk rock duo Mountain Head.
Thomas Cooper, a senior management information systems major, performed as PVLSE in Fight For Fiestas. He said he has gone to the last few Fiestas festivals and will go even though he didn’t win the contest.
During the sets, a group of judges scored each performance on a scale of one to 10 based on five aspects of their performance: planning and preparation, audience response, stage presence, originality and quality of performance.
For audience response, the versatility of the bands was present among those in the crowd as well. Moshers rushed to the stage to support Crushed!?’s performance while other audience members danced to the beat of PVLSE’s electric guitar and electronic backing tracks in front of the stage.
While the judges had a say in who won Fight for Fiestas, the biggest factor for selecting the best act was audience voting.
The annual Fiestas event featuring Mountain Head and other musicians will be held on April 16 from noon to 10 p.m. at Johnson Field.
Skylar Griego is a culture reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @TDLBooks.
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*This article has been updated to show that the event in April is Fiestas and not Fiestas de Albuquerque. The place and time of the event has also been corrected. The errors came in reporting.
