In one of the Brit Rock at the Top shows, Brody organized, sponsored, and put together one of his first shows for Victory Ship at the 400 Bar, in Minneapolis, on January 17, 2009. The other bands on the bills were Sika and Joey Ryan and the Inks, which at the time was one of First Avenue’s Best New Bands of 2009.

I wasn’t covering the show since I was in Winter Hibernation mode, but I did make an effort to show up for support. I only caught two of the band – see my brief original report filing below. I didn’t know much about Twin Cities’ Victory Ship, the band is pretty much all gone or wiped from the internet. At the time, the band were known as The Teeth (but they changed their name due to a Philadelphia band also called The Teeth already). Their debut album was called Before the Fall.

It’s impossible to find any information about Victory Ship (do a Google search and all you get are naval ships). Some details I can give you are the band credits on their CD Before the Fall, which credits bass, guitars, engineer Derek Helland, guitars from Pat Mazurek, with drums and piano from Tom Hilde. Other names on the credits includes masters by Bruce Templeton, flugelhorn player Joe DeLisi, additional guitars from Ben Durrant and additional bass from Paul Grande.

The two key songwriters were Helland and Mazurek, so if you do a search, you can see that Helland died in 2019 at a very young age.

Of all the bands, I believe Sika might be the most successful. They’re two Russian brothers, Aleksey and Sergei, who formed in Minnesota in 2002. Not really sure what happened, but they moved to Los Angeles and their USA Visa expired, so one of them had to return back to Russia. They’ve been pretty much inactive since the pandemic (2019) when they released Standing Before Kings.

Original report from January 2009:

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Also, just quickly, I just wanted to mention I did make it out in the cold-snow-Minneapolis (shock, shock!) to show support for Brody’s show. I caught most of Sika and Victory Ship. I’ll have to say, there was quite a good crowd last night. Not really sure if Sika and Victory Ship should be paired together because they don’t really sound that similar – Sika seems really Muse/Story of the Year and really passionate on stage. Victory Ship came off as sounding very sixties Americana-sounding.

It’s also kind of funny to see the mystery of Brody unveiled in tcdailyplanet.net (direct link no longer available):

Whomever Brody McCoy was, he had reason to be proud. Last night’s show, the first ever presented by Brit Rock at the Top, was a great success. McCoy is a Shoreview native, but as its name suggests his blog celebrates all things British and rockin’; the thread meant to tie the night’s three acts—Joey Ryan and the Inks, Sika, and Victory Ship—was a degree of trans-Atlantic affinity.

I’m sure the success of this show will ensure more shows in the future.

NOTE: All photos courtesy of Brody