Yeshiva University Observer

Issue date: 11/27/07 Section: Arts and Culture

On the whole, however, this year's crop of musicians knew how to wield a stage, and it showed. The Battle of the Bands has never had problems filling an auditorium-at the event's start the Schottenstein Cultural Center was crammed to the gills with students of all stripes, clogging the aisles and even clumping up behind the partitioning wall which divides the upper seating from the lower-but in past years that crowd has thinned considerably by the halfway mark. Nor have there ever been as many students from other colleges and communities as there seemed to be this time around. Yet Thursday night saw a diverse body of students, many familiar but as many not, shrieking and chilling till the very end, loving every antic, every feigned swoop from the stage.

Well, maybe not every antic. Rock and roll is unpolished and by definition a little hit or miss, but while the emcees had a few solid skits-a woeful acoustic ballad about demanding Stern girls was so popular they trotted it out at least twice-many of their later riffing crossed a line between edgy and uncomfortable. The YU Dance Team fared a little better with their "halftime show," an unbeatably bizarre mix of shapeless yet spirited shuffling and wince-worthy breakdancing to tunes like Weird Al Yankovic's "White and Nerdy," sometimes in Pink Power Ranger guise, and screams resounded long after they bowed their humble good nights.

Of course, as Balderman noted, perhaps the loudest cheers of all went to the free gear he tossed into the crowd between songs, leading him to entreat, "Please, I know you guys are animals, but be civil to the sweatshirts!"

To those about to rock-we salute you.

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