ROCK group Uncle Brian has just been crowned 1999 Battle at the Rock winners - beating Southampton-based Shimmer.

The event, run inconjunction with Subway, Zest TV Productions and 1st Degree Records has been running for the past three months at the Chicago Rock Cafe in Southampton and attracted interest from more than 70 local bands.

Uncle Brian guitarist and lead singer Dan Foot, from Salisbury, was surprised that his band got so far and has been impressed with the competition. He says: "I didn't think that we would get as far as we did, but we have and I'm thrilled."

Uncle Brian will now go into 1st Degree Record's state-of-the-art studio in Southampton and work on tracks which will be included on next year's 1st Degree Records album - which will hopefully see them follow in the footsteps of Southampton band Mainline who have recently signed to a major label.

"I hope the studio work with 1st Degree Records goes really well," adds Dan. "We've had a few labels interested, saying that we were really cool but nothing has ever come of that, so being on a compilation is a better opportunity for us and we're all really happy about it."

Operations manager at 1st Degree Records, Dan Husbands is also looking forward to working with Uncle Brian. He says: "We've seen some pretty good bands and it's been very entertaining throughout. Uncle Brian will now come in with us and record and will be featured on a new album that is out next year.

"With the album we target radio stations throughout the South and the country and we have targeted specific record companies to get bands signed.

"Last month Mainline, who feature on our CD this year, signed up to Fire Records."

Out of the 70 bands that originally sent demo tapes in, eight were shortlisted - Uncle Brian, Shimmer, Deen, Henderson Bluejay, Raindog, The Nurses, Relish and Native Tongue.

The final eight bands were then drawn against each other in a quarter-final situation going head to head. The winning band from each night of the quarter-finals went through to the semi-final, leaving Shimmer and Uncle Brian left in the final.

The entire event was also recorded live by Southampton-based student television company Zest TV Productions, which has an agree-ment with Cable TV to show the competition on The Local Channel/60 later this year.

Zest TV Productions manager James Rostance has put a lot of time and effort into the event, and is pleased with the results. He says: "It's been a hell of a struggle making sure that everything goes okay TV wise.

"Every week we've been coming down here about £80,000 worth of equipment and it's been a struggle making sure everything is safe and working properly. We've all improved leaps and bounds in our ability to film an event and all of us at Zest TV are more qualified to get jobs in TV at the end of our courses."

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.