Building A Better Spaceship’s success is no longer limited to (planet) Earth
By Farah Minwalla

“Shock, exclamation point! I mean we were like we fucked up and The Ill Figures are going to win, so I took a step back to let them win, but then they called our name, and we won, it was only our first contest,” states Vinn Lombardo, singer for the Los Angeles based band Building A Better Spaceship. The band is composed of drummer Adam Holt, guitarist Rick Johnson, bassist Ross Facundo and vocalist Vinn Lombardo. Fortune struck the band in a big way when they took first place in the 2005 Vegas Battle of the Bands contest on August 20 hosted by Jillian’s and AMPLIFY!! The advice Vinn would give for bands who want to win next year would be to, “Perform your ass off and to have a lot of energy”. For a band that has been on the music scene for only a year, they aren’t off to a rocky start, a quite smooth start to say the least. Connected from two different parts of the US, Vinn from White Plains, New York and the rest of the band from all over Texas, they have successfully reflected rock music from all different backgrounds while still keeping it real. “Our music is regular old rock, in that way we are not in a certain group,” says Vinn. Well, their regular old rock music have landed them a slot at the Vans Warped Tour as a result of their recent triumph at the Battle of the Bands. “All of us usually went as fans to the Vans Warped Tour, but now we are a part of it which is cool. Hopefully we will meet someone and that will lead to another tour, which would be nice,” states Vinn. Until then, the guys have five songs already recorded under their belts and are now in the process of recording another five songs. “We haven’t officially decided what out first single will be, but it might be Novocain,” says Vinn. Around Oct. 1st their first album is to be showcased on www.cdbaby.com , which is now what all the upcoming bands are doing for promotion. But even before cdbaby.com came into play the band got their music across the west coast in a much different way. MySpace. “MySpace is the coolest thing and our break [has] and will be MySpace, after Las Vegas last month we ended up having soo many emails. We just couldn’t keep up,” states Vinn. Along with a name of ‘Building A Better Spaceship’ they are sure to stand out where ever their music follows. The name was made up while the guys were on a road trip to Vegas half awake in the night when drummer, Adam started thinking about aliens and UFO’s. They came up with the band name of ‘Building a Spaceship’ but, then later found out it was the name of a children’s book. As cool as the guys are they just stuck a ‘Better’ into the name and created their now title of ‘Building A Better Spaceship’. Even though the name didn’t roll over well with others the guys stayed true to themselves and stuck with it. The big name rock groups the band favors are U2, The Police and Stone Temple Pilots’ lead singer Scott Weiland. Their favorite bands have achieved major long time staying power in the entertainment industry and that is what Building A Better Spaceship strives for. When asked where Vinn would like to be in a year from now he replied, “I would like to have some sort of recording contract but even more I would like to be touring and opening up for a national act”. At the moment the schedules for Adam, Rick, Ross and Vinn right now are waking up, surfing and rehearsing/writing music. “We all write together, but I write the lyrics and melodies. I have that power, but we all jam out together, pretty much equally,” says Vinn. Even though the band isn’t touring now, Vinn says he was treated better in Vegas compared to L.A. “Las Vegas gave much more of a response to our music than any other crowd we played for hands down, and we sold all our CD’s, which was nice,” claims Vinn “ Also, the people seem cooler, not pretentious”.
Kudos to us. With that in mind, would the guys ever pack their bags and move to Sin City in the nearby future? “Moving to Vegas, why not? I would, the rest of the guys I don’t know about. The band’s favorite place to play at would be Las Vegas, but it would be New York [for me],” says Vinn. When asked what is the best advice Vinn could give to future rockers who want to break into the music world, his answer was straightforward.

“Just stay true to the music you want to do, write what you write, don’t try and sound like anybody else and keep yourself in check,” explains Vinn. They always say that third time is a charm but in the case of Building A Better Spaceship taking a chance in Vegas their second time around have landed them the jackpot.