YBSA – MIO Interview

MIO article about YBSA
Current mood: excited
Category: Music

Your Band Sucks Ass! ™
Author: Richard Rumney

YBSA (Your Band Sucks Ass) is a Myspace site with a difference. It aims at promoting local SA music, particularly rock and alternative, and shaming those local bands and musicians who essentially suck ass. It’s evolved into quite a popular Myspace site, and has made the leap onto Facebook. MIO spoke to Steve, Claudia and Kez the founders and spokesman (or should I rather say ladies)of the site about the essence of YBSA.

Richard: Explain the concept behind YBSA in a nutshell. You would seem to be an online publication, focused on local bands, providing gig guides, gig reviews, and of course your weekly KICKASS and SUCKASS band profiles, and monthly DIRTY BAND BOY and HOT BAND CHICK profiles. Elaborate on this a bit and tell us how long you’ve been up and running.

STEVE: I was born in January after an unfortunate experience with a “band” called White Rabbit. No one should be subjected to such torture and I felt it my duty to inform as many people as possible – learn from others mistakes and all that. Usually I feel bad crushing a group of white skinny kid’s dreams of playing the big stages, but sometimes the public needs to step in. The more time I spent avoiding White Rabbit, the more I realised that there were other really scary bands out there that should be avoided at all costs…

CLAUDS: YBSA is basically a space where people can openly express their opinions on local and international music. We do try to keep the focus on the local bands as much as possible though, they need the promotion far more than the international acts do.

Reviews are a great way to introduce others to new bands and bands from different areas. We review all the gigs we attend and encourage people to send in their own reviews. We post all the reviews we receive, whether we agree with them or not.

KEZ: When we started reviewing we realised that we had quite a powerful medium and dedicated ourselves to promoting bands that we thought deserved the publicity. We started on the bigger, more commercial bands and then moved towards the more unknown ones. There is so much talent roaming around and felt that if no one else is going to help these bands…we will stand up to the plate.

What makes the site successful is the balance we have between the good (Kickass band, Gig Guide, Give a Rand, Reviews, Dirty Band Boy, Hot Band Chick, etc) and the bad (Wall of Shame, Suckass band, Profile Song, Comments, and of course our pet white rabbit “Suckass”). It is an interactive site where anyone can nominate bands for any of our features and even trade bands off the Wall Of Shame.

Richard: Unlike other online publications you started as a Myspace page, and now have a parallel Facebook group, so you seem to essentially have gone the social networking route as opposed to other online publications that have a hosted website. Aside from the fact that this is a cheaper way to go, what are the advantages to having a social networking based online publication?

STEVE: I like anything that’s free. Bands don’t have money and someone would have to support our online publication in one way or another. Talk about choosing the poorest industry on the planet to promote.

CLAUDS: Since most bands already have Myspace pages it is a lot easier to get them and their fans involved with the page, all we need to do is send out a friend request. If we were a stand alone website it would be much more difficult getting the bands and individuals attention.

KEZ: The page really started as a private joke, this evolved into an email address and then into a MySpace site. The Facebook site is more of a marketing tool as Steve is no fan of the Facebook. Because we do this out of our passion for SA music, we don’t need a certain amount of “friends” or “group members” to keep it going. Page hits have dropped slightly since the whole Facebook boom, but it is still an increasingly popular site – especially among the more unknown bands. These bands now have a chance to show their name on a page visited by their target audience without having to approach recording companies or promoters.

Richard: Explain why you decided to create YBSA. A lot would seem to do with the promotion of SA music.

CLAUDS: The original concept of YOURBANDSUCKSASS was to call out all those awful bands who give SA music a bad name! But it has actually evolved into something very different, although we do still have the wall of shame and the SUCKASS band of the week, more focus is put on promoting the good SA music.

KEZ: Promotion wasn’t actually our initial concept. When we realised how big the site had grown – partly through attention from the bands – we thought it would be a good idea to give back. This wasn’t really a decision we made…things just seemed to move in that direction.

Richard: Tell us a little about the give a rand to help a band project.

STEVE: Most bands are pretty broke, and sometimes stuck living at home with their mommies until they are in their 30′s, I figured this would be a cool way to help them out. Unfortunately this concept hasn’t made a cent, never mind a rand.

KEZ: When you spend as much time as we do waiting for bands to begin their performance, you start discussing things like their looks, styles, bums and outfits. We’re girls – we can’t help it. There are a few bands that, although individually there isn’t always something wrong with what they are wearing, as a band, just aren’t pulling it off. This is where we thought we could help. Being pretty poor and spending all our hard earned cash on gigs, we could only beg on the bands behalf.

CLAUDS: The basic idea is that bands can approach us if there is something they are trying to raise money for (equipment, petrol money, clothes, eyeliner, anything really) and we will then run a campaign of sorts informing people about their plight and asking them to donate money. Hopefully one day we will actually be able to help one of the bands out with something they need…

Richard: Are you open to any genres of SA music? Although your name suggests only bands, would you be open to writing and promoting music such as House and other electronic music?

STEVE: House music sucksass! And electronic music. And White Rabbit.

CLAUDS: We are open to all genres and in actual fact I have recently been approaching people who review artists in other areas of the industry to get a bit more variety on the site. As long as it has to do with music we are happy to promote it.

KEZ: We are BIG rock music fans though, so this will always be the core of the site. The more the site changes, blog updates, ideas, influences there are, the more people get interested and the more the bands get promoted. It’s a win win situation – but we will always go back to what we know.

Richard: Tell us about your favorite Kickass band of the week, one that has made you proud of South African music.

CLAUDS: It’s no secret that we love The Parlotones, they continue to make us, and the rest of SA, very proud.

KEZ: The Parlotones!! I love this band…read all my reviews. Also loving Evolver – the most under rated band in the country – they really are good. (And they have some good-looking boys!)

Richard: And your favorite Suckass band of the week, one that has had your readers in stitches.

STEVE: Steve Hofmyr… I don’t like to share anything, not even my name!

CLAUDS: White Rabbit! After all, it was while they were performing that we came up with the idea for YBSA!

KEZ: Boabab – they’re just lucky we saw White Rabbit first.

Richard: So be warned: If you’re out there and you’re out there playing gigs and you suck, YBSA will put you in your place. But if you’re kicking ass, they’ll let you know you’re doing a good job.

Go to www.myspace.com/makeitstop to check out YBSA

Source: http://www.mio.co.za/article.php?cat=16&id=1052