The musicians certainly don’t look it, but their song, “Seriously Twisted”, was voted top of the pops for LiC, a band based at Wilmslow High School in Cheshire, in the TES Teacherdbass awards.

The members were presented with their prizes (a dbass school licence worth pound;1,500, a Toshiba laptop computer and Ableton music production software) on the TES stand at the BETT 2005 educational technology show at Olympia, London.

They even had their album, Home Truths, on sale at BETTfor the promotional price of pound;5. Those who missed out can buy it from the store at the LiC website for pound;7. (All major credit cards accepted, or you can use your PayPal account.) Wilmslow High was the only school in the competition where the dbass music station was run by a student, band member Matt Boyd, who is studying for A-levels.

“This Time”, from Belper School’s New Cross Kicks (now The Voids) was voted into second place, winning them Ableton music software and a dbass year-group licence. The band’s line-up is lead vocalist Dan King, lead guitar Tom Maleham, bass Joey Severn, drums Theo Parkin. Their online “publisher” was head of music Mark Fidler, and his site boasts six artists with 16 songs on the playlist.

The school runs lots of music events, including “Stars in their eyes” and “Battle of the Bands”.

“Real World”, by Ignition (based at Lawnswood School, Leeds), earned the band third place and a dbass class licence for 30 pupils. Band members are: Antoin Kaiserman, lead vocals and lead guitar; Alex Kaisermann, keyboards and vocals; Nic Breakspeare, bass; and Alex Kent, drums.

Dbass is an innovative online service which enables young people to publish and share their music. It was created by Synergy TV, a Leeds company that won a BETT Innovation Award last year for its other web service, Radiowaves.

School musicians taking part in our competition uploaded their songs on the site for others to hear. They could even collaborate and communicate about the material online. The three bands won their prizes purely through the popularity of their music - they were clicked into the limelight by their peers online.

www.dbass.org

www.l-i-c.co.uk