Faculty joins student bands for Jamnesty

Auditions for Amnesty International’s second annual Jamnesty event took place last Wednesday. Jamnesty will be held in May, but no date has been publicized yet.

The event is the club’s main fundraiser of the year and the money raised will be used to pay for postage for the club’s letter writing campaigns.

“It [will be] a night of music and human rights awareness,” club sponsor and social studies teacher Andrew Freeman said.

Jamnesty will feature a concert with student and teacher acts.

Senior Caitlin Greene is hoping to perform at the event this year with her newly formed two-person band named Dibs N’ Dots. Her band mate Chris Diblasi attends Madison High School.

“Its hard to find time to practice,” she said, “but we manage to squeeze in time.”
Sophomore Cati Gurri has different approach to the audition process.

“It will be just me and my guitar,” she said. Gurri will be performing songs that she wrote herself.
“My inspirations were actually a lot of poetry, like Edgar Allen Poe and Robert Frost,” she said.
She is performing because “last year [Jamnesty] got a lot of buzz; it seems like a good way to get your stuff out there.”

Sophomore Derek Han is auditioning with his unnamed band that also includes freshmen Bennett Spitzer and Alex Kang. Han said, “We are trying something new in music.”

The band also hopes to convey “real rock music as it should be,” Han said.

Also on the sign-up sheet were the names of teachers Cindy Blakeley, Daniel Daus and Jeffrey Litz.

“I believe [Jeanene] Sims was playing a joke on me,” Blakeley said via email, adding that while she will not be performing, she will be chaperoning the event.

Litz, however, will be performing, along with teachers Paul Vesilind and Catherine Prosser.

Sophomore Nate Wilkinson and his band, Grand Revival, will also perform at Jamnesty.
Last year’s event included performances from Vesilind and Prosser as well. They performed the Smashing Pumpins hit called “Dishonorable.”

Grand Revival and another band, The Badrats, will play at Jammin’ Java tonight at seven o’clock.