Battle of the High School Bands: Meet the Judges

Hey, we love your band. Seriously. And we want to share it with the world. That’s why we’re launching Studio 360’s Battle of the High School Bands. Whether you're in high school now or packed up your Stratocaster long ago, our celebrity judges, Andrew W.K. and Thao Nguyen (of Thao & the Get Down Stay Down), want to hear you rock.

Post your band's best track to our SoundCloud page by July 21. Andrew and Thao will choose a winner and perform a cover of the winning song. We’ll also play some of our favorites on the show and put together a killer playlist.

Our judges come battle-tested by the tribulations of high school. Andrew W.K., the self-described “partiest man alive,” played in his Ann Arbor school’s jazz band, as well as bass and drums in several groups outside of school. His greatest success was his biggest failure. “It was a tribute written for this beautiful young lady I had a crush on,” he tells Kurt Andersen. Andrew has a certain way of making a tribute sound like a threat, and “long story short, a juvenile restraining order was put on me. The whole school had made copies of this cassette.”

Thao stayed on the right side of the law, but suffered humiliation of her own as her band placed second at the talent show, behind an all-vibraphone cover of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’.” (Can this be a true story? We’re taking her word for it.) Thao and Andrew are hoping you’ll share your band’s jams, no matter how embarrassing they may be. “I think there’s a looseness that can’t ever be replicated,” Thao says about high school bands. “That’s the energy that makes anything worthwhile.”

Whether you're in school now, or graduated when "Blue Suede Shoes" was on the charts, we want to hear your high school band's best original song. And we're teaming up with Andrew W.K. and Thao Nguyen to share it with the world.

→ Send us your song and hear the other entries

Bonus Track: Andrew W.K.’s “My Destiny”