World Famous In San Francisco

Big Blue Whale need to chill
Six months ago my band was entered along with Big Blue Whale (pictured above) in The Deli Magazine SF's band of the month competition.

My band, The Passionistas, decided to make a series of YouTube videos to promote the contest called "Haterz Beware." We made the videos because that's what our favorite band would have done if put in the similar situation. At the time I was obsessed with Chris Crocker of the recent "leave Britney alone" fame. I was astonished by his popularity and decided to mock his style of hater themed video monologues.

Pretty much everyone got the joke, except some of the bands we were competing against. My initial hope was that our videos would inspire these other normally pretentious and humorless bands into making fun videos too. Well, none of them did. What ended up happening is some took it as seriously as humanly possible. Here is a comment Ashley from Big Blue Whale left on The Deli today (six months after the fact):  

I think it was your band, the Passionistas, who erroneously told the SF Chronicle that your band was victorious in the Deli's monthly poll, when we actually bested you friendly folks by about 300 votes. I shouldn't even mention all of the hate messages you sent the other bands throughout the contest.

Kanye West loves to storm award shows and claim victory even when he doesn't win. To me, it was so obvious that we were copying Kanye West. I hate the idea that "inde" has all these manners that completely prevent staged drama or conflict. What people fail to realize is that this drama motivates people to listen, pay attention and buy records. Maybe I'd rather be in a soap opera than a jam band. Or maybe I'm more at home at the top of the pops than in this scene.

You can read some recent banter over at the Deli if you wish.