La’s New Generation Of Social Entrepreneurs & Bands Compete For Trip To Dublin & Record Deal

June 2, 2008 - PRLog -- Blastbeat, an international award-winning music business and social entrepreneur program and competition for High School students, will be hosting the USA WEST FINAL of the Blastbeat battle of the bands on Saturday, June 7th from 5pm to 10:00 p.m. at Musicians Institute located at 1655 McCadden Place, Hollywood, CA 90028.  Student company exhibitions will be judged from 2:30pm to 4:45pm.
The event is open to the public and is all ages. Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the door.  Contact tori@blastbeat.org to purchase and reserve tickets.

The winning band from the Blastbeat USA West Final competition will receive an all expense paid trip to the Blastbeat World Finals in Dublin, Ireland. There, the winning bands from four continents will compete for a recording contract with Blastspace Records and a world tour.   The second place band will receive full scholarships to Musicians Institute Summer Shot Program.  Third place band will receive $500 scholarships to Musicians Institute Summer Shot Program.  All of the eight competing bands will receive a professional HD video of their performance.  Representatives from the winning student-run Music Multi-media Company (MMC) from the June 7th event will also go to Dublin to compete for a prize of 5,000 EURO (approx $7,500) seed money for their own ongoing social entrepreneurial project.

Blastbeat is a non-profit program that teaches social entrepreneurial business skills, promotes young musicians, and supports youth communities on a local and global level. The student run MMC’s competing are from Animo Film & Theater Arts School, Hamilton Academy of Music, High School for Recording Arts, Long Beach Boys & Girls Club, Malibu High School, New Village Charter High School, Olympic High School, and St. Monica Catholic High School.  Each put on a Battle of the Bands featuring local unsigned bands and acts from their school, neighboring schools, and their community.
Judges will include high level music industry veterans from the Los Angeles area as well as Robert Stephenson, Founder and President of Blastbeat Ltd.  Our Blastbeat USA West Final Sponsor is Musicians Institute.

The bands confirmed to play are Pump House Gang (St. Monica High School’s winner from Palisades High),  The Compass (High School for Recording Arts’ winner from Hamilton Academy of Music),  Rebel Music (Olympic High School’s winner from Olympic High School),  The Leftovers (Malibu High School’s winner from Hamilton Academy of Music), Enemy Frontlines (New Village Charter High School’s winner from Crenshaw High School).  The winner from Long Beach Boys & Girls Club will be chosen May 30th.  The winners from Hamilton Academy of Music and Animo Film & Theater Arts School will both be chosen May 31st.  Our special guest band is last year’s USA West Final winner from Malibu High School, The Michael Craig Band.

The Blastbeat program, which is free to schools and youth organizations, currently operates in Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC, Austin, Ireland, the UK, South Africa, Belgium and Central Europe, and is expanding into Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, New Orleans and Houston in September 2008.

Students, under the supervision of a teacher/advisor and a Blastbeat mentor form a social enterprise Music Multi-media Company and through the Blastbeat program learn how to run a good Battle of the Bands event. The MMC students choose six unsigned acts to compete and showcase. The program has a full suite of business roles from CEO to PR, sales, A&R, marketing, journalism, web, event planning, finance management, and even DVD video filming, editing and production.

“Los Angeles is at the center of the global music industry, and with our program, mission and network we want Los Angeles-based musicians and young entrepreneurs to achieve new outlets and opportunities for success, not only as artists, but also as social entrepreneurs and mentors for young people who want to make a change in the world for the better,” said President and Founder of Blastbeat, Robert Stephenson who will be flying in from Dublin to attend the event as a judge. Stephenson will be presenting the winners with a once-in-a-lifetime career opportunity including a trip to Ireland for the world finals.

The Blastbeat program has been running successfully in Ireland for five years. January 2008 marked the first World Finals attended by MMC’s and bands from Los Angeles, Austin, New York City, South Africa, Belgium and Ireland where they were judged by industry VIP’s from the US and Europe.

For more information on the organization, please see www.blastbeat.org or Blastbeat’s social networking and creative collaboration site www.blastspace.com.

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About Blastbeat:  Blastbeat School Program is the social enterprising aspect of Blastbeat Ltd.  The Blastbeat School Program works with high schools across the world to help students learn ethical business practices and operations through hands on experience.  We do this by setting up a semester long program where students coordinate and run their own Music Multimedia Company (MMC) in order to produce a Battle of the Bands.  The students literally become CEO's, financial managers, marketing managers, graphic designers, production teams, photographers, and so on in order to operate the MMC.  Currently, Blastbeat has programs in Ireland, South Africa, UK, Central Europe, and the US.  There is no cost to the school or students for this program.