This past week’s first semi-final round of the Classic Rock-a-Thon at the Old Firehouse in Redmond brought out quite the crowd. With a strong showing from UW students, the audience nearly filled the venue and came ready to show the bands serious energy.

To recap from last week, the Rock-a-Thon is a battle of the bands featuring eight indie rock groups adding their style to a variety of classic rock covers. The semi-finalists in last weeks show were the Rain Dawgs, The Late Night, Alligator Pears and Shotty.

Each group put on energetic and crowd pleasing sets, starting with the Rain Dawgs. Next year a majority of the band will be 21 and older, and therefore unable to compete in the competition again.

It was apparent that Rain Dawgs wanted this to be a set to remember. Beginning a bouncy version of the Clash’s “I Fought the Law and the Law Won,” each member showed stunning proficiency at their instruments, delivering a well-rehearsed product. The vocal harmonies had the girls dancing and swooning in the front row, and their climactic closing number, Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” really brought the house down. While the song may have had some audience members questioning the definition of classic rock, their delivery set things straight.

“We’ll miss playing with bands that are still in braces and told that they need to be home before 10 o’clock, but I guess it will probably be time to move on to bar shows or something next year,” Rain Dawgs member Jesse Willard said.

The second band to take the stage was another UW student group, The Late Night. Featuring members of the UW chapter of the Zeta Psi fraternity, this was their first show and they surprised the audience with a fairly solid set. Having only been given a few days notice prior to being accepted into the battle of the bands, they performed amusing versions of “Space Oddity” by David Bowie and “My Generation” by The Who.

Alligator Pears gave the bands a run for their money when they took to the stage. The members of the garage rock trio were each clad in their own interpretation of ‘70s couture, highlighted by the lead singer’s suggestive open-button red polyester outfit. Performing a duo of Led Zeppelin covers, the group had a tight-knit sound and had clearly put their time into planning and rehearsing the instrumentation in homage of the band.

Robin Fairbanks, manager of Bellingham pop-rock group Straight-A Students, as well as Shotty, had plenty to say about the set.

“Garrett did a fine job on Soul Love! Soul Sacrifice not only brought down the house, but tears to my eyes as well as a few others,” Fairbanks said.

After walking around to get a good vibe of the audience reaction, it seemed that everyone had felt the show was an extremely satisfying event and many hoped to come out in two weeks on April 18 for semi-final round two.

[Reach reporter Guy Keltner at arts@thedaily.washington.edu.]