Santa Barbara Bands Issue
Saint Anne’s Place, from Lompoc, winners of The 2011 Independent Battle of the Bands.
MAKING MUSIC MATTER: The Santa Barbara Independent’s Aly Comingore (second from left) was baptized by fire as our music editor in 2007, jumping into the job just a couple months before our inaugural Santa Barbara Bands issue.
Five years later, she says, “The youthful energy is stronger than it’s been since I started doing this, and it’s extremely communal, which is great.” Our online listing at independent.com/bands has grown to more than 300 bands, and the annual battle of the bands — which this year was won by Saint Anne’s Place from Lompoc (far left, Jacob Cole; far right, Sam Cole; second from right, Joel Martin) — is now a sold-out affair, thanks in large part to the cosponsoring efforts of the New Noise Music Foundation, whose annual festival and conference go down this weekend.
Comingore credits New Noise’s executive director, Jeff Theimer (center), with fostering an increasingly strong music scene: “What he’s doing with New Noise is basically why we started the bands issue five years ago.”
Read about the bands and New Noise 2011 starts here.
