News | The Bandulos | Funky NYC Party Band, Cover Band, Wedding Band

On Friday, May 6, four Bandulos backed up our friend Dave Stagno in the WNYC Battle of the Boroughs: Staten Island competition at the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space in SoHo, and our own Nicole performed with our “sister-band,” the Bad Mouth Betties. Our friends the Headlocks, and three other SI acts also competed. It was a fun night, and Staten Island showed the rest of the city our great talent and strong sense of community.

Unfortunately, Dave Stagno didn’t make the first cut, but the Betties and Headlocks did!

Watch their performances and vote today for your favorite to be the Staten Island representative in the Ultimate Battle of the Boroughs on June 17! Online voting ends on Sunday, May 17.

You can also vote via SMS: text “SI5″ for the Betties or “SI6″ for the Headlocks to 69866.

Vote early and often! »

UPDATE: Videos are on YouTube as well. Enjoy!

“The only 1980s-themed band that makes every party awesome…TO THE MAX.”

Weird Science is a Staten Island-based band that plays the best of Prince, Michael Jackson, Huey Lewis, Duran Duran, Madonna, George Michael, Men at Work, Toto, INXS, and lots more.

The band traces its roots back to the fall of 2008, when they performed as the house band for the Cargo Cafe 1984 Prom party. They played the Cargo Prom again in 2009, tastefully billed as the Bathroom Stall Babies, and soon after began playing more regular gigs at local bars.

The lineup changed from gig to gig, members of the Bandulos and Man Down floated in and out, but the constants have been John Lynch and Billy Levay. The current lineup also includes Adam Hecht (guitar), Kevin Jensen (drums), Tina Kenny (keys, vox), and Anne Marie Nacchio (vox). Tina and Anne Marie also perform with the Bandulos’ own Nicole Pignatelli as the Bad Mouth Betties.

You can catch Weird Science at Rhythm & Brews on Friday, March 5.

Here’s a video shot and edited by Steve Corn:

Another video after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in Nov. 2009 we played a stripped-down, low-key set for a book release party held at NYC Arts Cypher and hosted by our friend ON 2 of Fresh Style Rockers. The book is titled Graffiti New York, and it’s available at Amazon.com, among other places.

Legendary graffiti photographers Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant were there, and Martha took a few shots of the band. We hope we can get our hands on them sometime soon. Here’s Martha’s blog post about the event.

The guys who put this book together are also behind the site @149st, and they thanked us in a blog post.

Here’s a photo gallery.

We’ve seen a lot of creative spellings and many interesting pronunciations of our name over the years. Bandulous, Bandolous, Banduloos, ad infinitum. We sort of expected it, having picked such an unusual handle. But this post will (hopefully) set the record straight.

The Bandulos

Our name is a pluralization of “bandulo,” a Jamaican slang word which as a noun means “bandit,” “thief,” or “rude boy,” and as an adjective, “counterfeit,” “fake,” or “stolen.”

We first heard the word as the title of the first track on the classic 1979 Studio One record by Jamaican singer Freddie McGregor, Bobby Bobylon. Give a listen to “Bandulo”:

Freddie McGregor - Bandulo

That’s what you been doin’ all the time:
Playing bandulo on everyone’s mind.
Keep the people in utter darkness,
Don’t want them to see no fullness,
Let them go, make them try,
I’m sure there’s a way they’ve got to survive.

Go down, bandulo man, go down,
Go down, you’ve got to reach the ground.

Bandulo also appears as “bandulu,” which is the name of a North London techno trio. The Bandulus are a reggae outfit from Austin, Texas that came together in the early summer of 2008.

Bandulo, Hungary

Coincidentally, there’s a small town in Hungary called Bándůlő. Billy and Mike Levay have Hungarian roots, and the surname Levay is a fairly popular one in Hungary.

Sayeth the Staten Island Advance. Thanks, Ben Johnson. You’re pretty great too.

The Bandulos have been proud distributors of NYC Condoms since April 2007, and we’re not stopping until this lubricated latex river runs dry.

By my estimation, we’ve handed out over 5,000 free condoms at bars and clubs on Staten Island and beyond. Granted, some of them end up as slippery balloons that the Big Nose Kate’s staff has to clean up at the end of the night, but that’s a pretty damn good number.

And to my knowledge, and according to this Dept. of Health list, we’re one of very few distributors of this important and free public health service on Staten Island.

We bring condoms to nearly every show we play. If you’re at a show and you don’t see them out, just ask! And if you’re interested in distributing, or if you just want a few hundred to give away instead of a few cases (1,000 condoms/case), just drop us a line in the comments section, or via e-mail, and we’ll hook you up.

Get some!

Congratulations to our very own Nicole Pignatelli for being voted Staten Island’s Best Diva in the 2008 AWE Reader’s Poll.

We’ll be doing something special for Nicole soon.

Props to Lucie Terranova of SexPot Scandal for running a close second.

And congrats to our roomies the Avon Junkies for earning the title “Best Original Band.”

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

It’s time for the 2008 AWE Readers’ Poll, and we need your votes to win 12 months worth of Island-wide bragging rights. AWE is the weekly arts and entertainment pullout section of the Staten Island Advance.

You can read about the poll here.

The official rules are as follows:

• Only one pick per category.
• At least half of the ballot must be completed for your votes to count.
• Only one entry per person. All entries must include a full name and contact number or e-mail address.

There are at least two ways to vote:

• For the somewhat tech savvy, you can download the ballot as a Microsoft Word document; type an “X” next to your selection for each category, or write in your choice next to “Other”; save the document; and upload it to AWE here.
• For the ink-and-paper, snail-mail inclined, you can fill out the printed ballot from the Thursday July 10th issue of AWE, or print and complete the Word document, and mail it to:

2008 AWE Readers’ Poll
Staten Island Advance
950 West Fingerboard Road
Staten Island, NY 10305

Now for the most important part!

With all due respect to those nominated, we oh-so-humbly suggest that you cast your ballot for the following choices, and we thank you in advance for your support:

• The Bandulos for “Best Impossible-To-Label Band/Duo”
• We also encourage you to write in “The Bandulos” for “Best Cover Band,” where we’ll go toe-to-toe with our friends The Blue Meanies, Man Down, and other great SI cover bands.
• Our very own Nicole Pignatelli for “Best Diva”
• Our good friend and collaborator, reggae legend Milton Henry for “Best Original Solo Pop/Rock Artist”
• Our good friends and collaborators Dead End Kids for “Best Hip-Hop Act”

Remember, be sure to include at least your name and email address, and fill out at least half of the ballot for it to count.

Legendary b-boy Wayne “Frosty Freeze” Frost died yesterday, April 3rd. We never had the honor of meeting the man, but the Bandulos are proud to be playing at the benefit/tribute for Frosty on Friday April 11th.

The AP obit is here, and the NYTimes obit is here.

We got the opportunity through our friend DJ Skane, to meet the RZA, aka Bobby Digital, aka Abbott, aka Prince Raheem. He came to our rehearsal studio and listened to us jam. When he picked up the mic and started rhyming while we played a version of “No, No, No,” it was pretty surreal.