The atmosphere found in the basement of J&J’s on Friday night January 10th was unlike any other. Beneath the floorboards and under the streets of Denton, Texas took place a gathering comprised of all the local music talent of the Flower Mound area, including several Flower Mound High School students.

More than a hundred onlookers packed the crowd as bands like Spectra, The Oscillators and The Merge performed as part of the local event Subterranean Sounds. The crowd was full of diversity, from the representation of varying social classes to the wide range of ages in attendance. Parents in their late forties cheered for their musically gifted children amongst the many teenagers and young adults making up the rocking crowd.

Flower Mound High School was represented by junior Matt Bach and freshman Landon Berry as members of the band Spectra, as well as senior Ben Mitchell and junior Dax Matlock as part of The Merge.

“There’s a lot of talent around this area, but before Subterranean Sounds, Marcus High School was most represented musically,” Landon said. “We wanted to show that Flower Mound has talent too.”

Spectra, having played at J&J’s before, introduced the idea of Subterranean Sounds to the owner as a simple gathering of no more than forty people and one band. What started off as a small event continued to grow until the final outcome was three bands and more than a hundred people, inevitably breaking fire code in a tiny basement.

“The Twitter promotion of the event was crazy,” both Dax and Landon said. “It got the word out there, and I think that’s what made it so big.”

One of the many tweets from frontman of the Oscillators, Tyler Gammon of Marcus High School, also known by his stage name ‘Sinus’ read “I swear these tweets about #SubterraneanSounds will not stop if people don’t come.”

Sinus and the other band members’ tweets must have been persuasive, because the crowd was packed all the way through, from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.

“It was a great kickstart for our band to expand our fanbase,” Dax said of The Merge.

Being their first show, The Merge opened Subterranean Sounds, followed by Spectra, with 15 to 20 shows under their belt, and closing with The Oscillators, with more than two years of experience.

As for J&J’s, they were booming with business and grateful for the boost in customers. Subterranean Sounds was surprisingly successful in the eyes of the band members as well.

“It was just so much fun; I love getting up there and hogging the stage,” Landon said. “Performing in front of a live audience is such an adrenaline rush. I don’t get why so many rockstars do drugs—the stage itself is a high.”

Currently, the bands are discussing the possibility of making Subterranean Sounds a bi-monthly event to showcase local musicians. The issue of overcrowding has come up, but the bands think they could remedy that by adding a four dollar entrance fee.

“It would limit the amount of people, and the money would be more than enough to cover costs of transportation,” Dax said.

In the meantime, Second Circle Productions is putting out a full recording of the event on DVD for purchase within the next week. The bands will continue playing and planning future events. For now, Spectra is playing an all-ages show with The Oscillators, Paradigm and The Effinays at Hailey’s Bar this Saturday night, January 18th, at 8 p.m.

To stay updated with the bands, follow them on twitter:

Spectra- @thebandspectra

The Merge- @themergeband

The Oscillators- @oscillatorsband