Can someone explain 対バン?

I hope I'm putting this in the right forum...

Can anyone explain to me what exactly 対バン is? I know it's some sort of live (concert) format, and I know what 対 means... so I'm thinking it's some sort of contest or rating event with various bands... does that sound close at all? Also, the romaji reading is 'taiban', right? I thought I'd seen it written as 'amaban' somewhere...

If someone could explain the 対バン format to me and maybe give some kind of concise English translation (if one exists), I'd really appreciate it. Thanks in advance!

Konnichiwa Bekkichan!

Can anyone explain to me what exactly 対バン is?

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Yes, it means "live contest"!
"Tai" is "Taiketsu" originally and means "contest".
"Ban" means "band".

I thinks it is read "Taiban".

NANGI

南木さん、ごめんなさい。ちょっと違うと思うので補足させてください。

対バン(taiban) means the band(s) who play in the same place, at the same night. 対バン may be the abbreviation of "対決(face-off)バンド" or"対戦(match-up)バンド". Taiban means not only the rival bands in contests or rating events, but also the bands in normal concerts (lives, gigs, stages etc), because in every concert there must be a competitive mood like; "Which bands excite the audience most?", "Who is the most skillful guitarist?", "Which song got the loudest applause tonight?", "Who is the sexiest vocalist?"...etc to a greater or lesser extent.

And "amaban" is an another word. That is the abbreviation of "アマチュアバンド - amateur band(s)".

Ahh～ I was thinking it must be something to that effect, but I wanted to be sure. Thanks to both of you for clearing that up!

So I wonder if it'd still make sense to translate it as 'live contest' or something like that, or if just 'live' would be safer... the band member who wrote this thing usually just refers to multiple-band lives as just plain lives, so I figured he must have had something a little different in mind this time since he used 対バン... hmm...