This weeks edition of, The Blue Banner, UNCAs student newspaper, featured a wonderful article on the successful Music Video Asheville event.  Below are a few excerpts, but be sure and visit the Blue Banner website to read the article by Meredi Wagner-Hoehn in it's entiriety.

Excerpts:

Instead of spending the evening hunched over a computer searching for their favorite bands on Youtube.com, local music fans spent two and a half hours watching homegrown music videos during the first annual Music Video Asheville on Feb. 6.

Future of Asheville Music presented almost 30 music videos in a sold-out MVA showcase at Cinebarre.

FoAM was formed last year when musicians and music lovers discussed how to better the local music scene."We had about 70 bands represented," Greer said of the meeting that started it all. "The whole point is to be diverse. Tonight we had indie rock, jazz, punk, acoustic; just so much."

.........Quetzatl offered a different technique with their techno beats. Music Video Asheville included their video "Meta Tek," consisting of a white background with black shapes, mostly geometric or tribal, which vibrated as the beat of the track got stronger.

The trio of women in cowboy boots and sundresses called The Barrel House Mamas presented yet another message and visual in their song "Die in My Bones."  "Life is an adventure or nothing at all," sang the three brunettes accompanied by their two guitars, banjo and harmonica.

.........."Tonight was fun," said Molly Kummerle, lead vocalist for Ruby Slippers. "It was a good representation of the diversity that we have in this town. Whether people are just making garage videos or whether they're really trying to get something different across, it was really kind of everything."

Vendetta Crème's music video "Cold Cold Christmas," which won the audience's vote for Best Video, took a much more fictional route.    In the video, a cold woman sings to the audience about how cold it is as she attempts to make breakfast for her children that are frozen solid. Then, she goes ice skating with a snowman.

........Grasty and 24-year-old Alex Tray attended the showcase because they already knew and liked one of the bands, Stephanie's Id. After watching all the other music videos, the two UNC Asheville alumni said they intend to check out some of the other bands that were featured, such as SeepeopleS, a band that played cardboard instruments in their music video, "Apocalypse Cow."  "I'm going to go home and Myspace them," Grasty said.

..............Kummerle said it was a useful wake-up call for Asheville music enthusiasts as well.    People think, 'Oh, that's so-and-so, I see them walking down the street every day,' but they don't realize that they're really freaking talented," Kummerle said. "The people that you see behind the bar serving you beer are also the people that you see playing guitar at the Orange Peel."

Click HERE to read the full article at The Blue Banner.

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