WRITTEN BY LEONARDO BLACUTT
The Grumps are a group that performed at VAAS Music Festival along with other groups such as Malform, Nathemm, The Back Room, and Almighty Alpha X Jalen X Vincent. They were interviewed for The Ssssource to get a behind the scenes perspective on being a band to perform at the VAAS Music Festival. BEFORE VAAS Music Festival The Grumps are run by their lead guitarist and singer Isaac Ramirez who is a 12th grader at VAAS. Isaac says, “We have been a group for 2-3 months, and have been putting in time and effort after long school days to practice and perfect our performance.” They have been putting in work to put on a great show for the attendees of the VAAS Music Festival. “We're not going to have the worst performance, but we definitely won’t have the best. We’re breaking apart after, but it will definitely bring the group closer together as friends. I’m excited to see the other groups/bands because they’re all playing good songs.” When asked about his favorite song, his response was, “‘Break’ by Alex G is my favorite song that we will be performing. I listen to this song every day and I love Alex G. He inspired me to bring this band together and to play music.” AFTER VAAS Music Festival Although the group was brought together for greatness, Isaac says “I see the group breaking apart in the future but I will still be performing and playing at shows with a new group I will be joining and we will be writing our own songs which has always been a dream of mine.” Issac’s self-assessment of his performance was,” I don’t think we had the best performance. The song I think we performed well was “Barely Legal” by The Strokes. We messed up a couple times on multiple songs but we definitely weren’t too bad. I didn’t meet any new people, but VAAS Music Festival allowed me to get closer to my friends that showed up for me.” When asked who performed the best, Issac said, “Overall, I think Malform definitely had the best performance because they are known all around the valley and I enjoyed their performance too. The song I think we performed well was ‘Barely Legal’ by The Strokes.” WRITTEN BY VANESSA DUENAS
Every year our school plans many events for our students, staff, and community to enjoy. On April 28th of this year, VAAS Senior Leadership held the VAAS Music Festival. Committee leaders Joseph Lowman and Angelina Felix had to do a lot of prepping and planning in order to make this amazing event happen. Preparation and planning had to start months in advance for this event. When planning this event, Joseph and Angelina said that the first thing planned was, “the location, time, and maximum attendance because we had to have administrators sign off on the paperwork to even begin planning the rest of it.” According to Joseph, the process of planning this event went very smoothly, with just a bit of a challenge. The hardest aspect of planning was, “...the food trucks because we had to reach out to them and get… insurance [information] for the district.” On the other hand, “The easiest part to plan was the decorations since all we had to do was make a list on Amazon.” As all of you know we have amazing talent here at VAAS and some of that talent was showcased at this year's music festival. “Finding a band was pretty easy…As soon as Joseph and I became the committee leaders we automatically went to Joseph’s band, Mal Form since they played last year at the same event and everyone loved them and they have played at many shows in the past years. One of the teachers here at VAAS, Mr. Chan, is in a band called Anathemma and he reached out to Ms. Peyton about playing so that was a good way to include others instead of just students performing,’’ Angelina Felix told us. For other performers it was a different process. “Then the Backroom and The Grumps found a way to reach out to us too. Some of their band members are from Kennedy so we felt like that was also a good way to bring different communities to our school. Lastly was Almighty Alpha x Jalen x Vincent. They have been coming out with music so they asked us if they [could] perform, we added them in between sets since they only wanted to play 2-3 songs. What they will perform is different music then the bands we have so it’s a good way to include different genres.” Angelina and Joseph had some goals for this year's music festival. Angelina wanted “... to bring the community together and for everyone to have a good time. We are close to the end of this school year and having VAAS Music Festival just lets everyone have fun and take a break from school or work!” And the festival did just that. Everyone was able to enjoy a night of great music while bringing the community together. None of this could've happened without the two amazing committee leaders along with the help of senior leadership. |
EditorZachary Buenaventura Author
Yuliana Altamirano CategoriesArchives
June 2023
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