Published at 13:13, Thursday, 24 January 2013

A LOCAL band are set to battle it out against the region’s best in the final of a prestigious music competition this weekend.

No Idea: From left to right, Russ Herbert, Darren Green, Rob Logan, Sharan Stewart and Shaun Davidson

No Idea have won through to the final of Soundwave – the biggest music competition in the North East – and will be one of 12 finalists to perform in front of a capacity crowd at Newcastle’s O2 Academy on Saturday.

The prize for the winners is a day in a prominent Newcastle recording studio to produce copies of their CD, in addition to numerous high-profile media opportunities.

The band is vocalist Sharan Stewart from Whitehaven, guitarists Russell Herbert from Egremont, Darren Green and Shaun Davidson from Workington, and drummer Rob Logan from Maryport.

“To win would be fantastic, but we are just looking forward to playing in such a great venue, and we’ll see what happens,” says Russell.

The band have been honing their performance at recent gigs, and are keeping the 15-minute setlist for the final close to their chest. However, it’s sure to be one of their unique cover version concoctions; their successful semi-final audition saw them perform Gay Crazy Video – a combo of Gay Bar (Electric Six), Crazy Train (Ozzy Osbourne) and Video Killed the Radio Star (Buggles).

The winners will be decided by a mix of judges’ votes (made up of industry experts), crowd votes and ticket sales.

Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk