The John Lennon Education Tour Bus

Next Destination: Diablo Valley College

Pleasant Hill, CA

 

Press

Media Coverage

Ready for battle / John Lennon bus on its way to Ogden for final showdown

LINDA EAST BRADY Standard-Examiner staff

The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus rolls into Ogden for the eighth year next week, giving local high school bands the chance to capture one of their original tunes on video and CD like the big guns do.

The Standard-Examiner and other community sponsors are holding the live-music showdown next Friday at Union Station. Music-related prizes are awarded, including the grand prize, a daylong session Feb. 7 on the Lennon bus, a state-of-the-art mobile recording facility.

“The job of the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is to travel the country, promoting music, songwriting and band performance in high school,” said Jennifer Thorpe of the Standard-Examiner promotions department.

“They have been a wonderful part of our battle since the beginning. It’s an amazing opportunity for our area students, and the engineers and people involved with the bus have always been just great to us.”

This year, 16 bands are entered. Many of the schools are holding their own preliminary battles to determine which of their student bands to send to the final. The final band to host a battle is Bountiful High School, which held its competition Thursday night.

The big showdown is hosted this year by Union Station, in the heart of downtown Ogden.

“We felt that, with the history and the very cool atmosphere of the station, that it would be a great venue for the show,” said Thorpe.

The battle features not only the grand prize, decided by an adjudicating panel of area music movers and shakers, but also a secondary winner, chosen by audience participants. The prize package of $700, donated by Music Village, will go to the band with the most audience votes.

Said Thorpe: “We have had the audience choice for a couple years, but want to really promote it this year, because it is so much more fun for everyone if bands bring their friends to cheer them on. We’ll probably set a voting system up through text messaging where you call a certain code to vote, so bring a cell phone along in case we do it that way.”

Music Village will also feature a “Guitar Hero” contest, with preliminaries the night of the band battle. This portion of the evening is open to all comers.

“We thought it would be a fun way to get everyone involved in the contest in their own way, and there are a lot of us who aren’t musicians, but love to play ‘Guitar Hero,’ ” said Thorpe.

As for the talent that has signed up to date, Thorpe said she has been pleasantly surprised.

“In past years, we’ve seen similar bands, but this year is more diverse,” she said. “For instance, we have a singer/songwriter entered, and an acoustic act, and some reggae—I really think the variety this year is better than ever, and will make for a very entertaining battle.”

PREVIEW

l WHAT: Battle of the Bands

l WHEN: 7 p.m. Feb. 6

l WHERE: Union Station, 2501 Wall Ave., Ogden

l TICKETS: $8; $5/with newspaper coupon, at the door. Information, 625-4559 or http://www.standard.net/battleofthebands

Something like this should be parked outside of every school in America.

- Vernon Reid, Living Colour

The Headlines

  • Stanford University “Game Day”

    The Bus will lead its 2nd "Game Day" with Learning Games Network at Stanford University from Feb 11-13, bringing high school students together to develop an iOS app with Stanford undergrads and the JLETB engineers. The Bus will be open to the Stanford community from noon-4pm on Feb 13.

  • Live with Bootsy at NAMM

    Friday night at NAMM the Lennon Bus hosted an event to commemorate the launch of the 2012 tour, capped off with a funktastic performance by Bootsy Collins and Verdine White. The Bus produced a live webstream of the event using our new TriCaster 850 Extreme and TodoCast satellite connection; if you missed it live you can still catch it on the DVR here: lennonbus.org/live. Stay tuned for future live events, happening regularly!

  • JLETB’s 15th Year Anniversary

    The JLETB kicked-off its 15th year of bringing music education to students nationwide, with a special birthday party at the 2012 NAMM Show. The Bus unveiled a new arsenal of equipment for the 2012 year, including Avid® Pro Tools®|HDX, and live streaming capabilities made possible by NewTek and TodoCast that will allow the whole party to be seen live via www.lennonbus.org. Learn more here.

Video aboard the Bus

The increasing accessibility of digital technology has led to an amazing expansion of opportunity in the art of digital storytelling. The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus has been at the forefront of this new media explosion, having produced daily video projects with students since January of 2001. The Lennon Bus puts state-of-the-art digital video equipment into the hands of workshop participants and teaches the entire digital workflow from storyboarding to web publication and DVD burning. Students leave the experience having shot, chopped, scored, and (most importantly) finished an entire digital video production. Using the latest cameras and professional hardware/software solutions including Avid Media Composer and Pro Tools, participants are exposed to the exciting world of digital videography and learn hot techniques of the trade. The accessibility of professional-quality technology is making it possible for millions of new voices to be heard and the John Lennon Bus is putting these tools into the hands of tomorrow's great digital producers. Subscribe to our Youtube channel so you never miss any of the amazing videos produced on the Lennon Bus.