America’s Got Talent brought the auditions for its sixth season to town last week (complete with Nick Cannon wearing a suede lime green blazer) and a local band landed a trip to the next round of the competition in Las Vegas during the two-day taping of the show.
The band, The BGP, won over the judging panel of Sharon Osbourne, Howie Mandel and Piers Morgan at the Paramount Theatre with a cover of Elton John’s “Benny and the Jets.” It was the second time the band auditioned for the show. If their name sounds familiar you may have seen them when they opened for Fitz and the Tantrums at the Crocodile last year.
Overall the judges were impressed by the band after the performance, which earned the group a standing ovation from the crowd, however there was some deliberation over whether The BGP should advance to Las Vegas. At the end of the audition the BGP’s families and toddler children joined the band on the stage to get the verdict from the judges.
All three judges enjoyed the group’s energy and charisma (at one point the song was a call-and-response with the crowd) but Sharon Osbourne wasn’t 100 percent sold. Osbourne criticized the band for emulating Elton John too much and Piers Morgan echoed her comments and knocked the band because of frontman B. Ghorley’s failed jump from his piano bench at the end of the song.
The sixth season of America’s Got Talent airs in the summer. The winner of the nationwide talent search gets $1 million and a show featured at a Las Vegas casino.
