Most of you know Roy Naufal by now. In case you don’t, check this extended interview with him “Interview with Roy Naufal“.

The following is an interview about this year’s National GBOB Competition and all its related details, from preparations to media support and reaching goals.

  • Tell us how did the process of preparing for 7 heats and a final go? What problems did you face? Was something missing?

It was quite tiring but interesting at the same time… Preparations for GBOB began in September 2010, it started in March 2011 (registration began around February), we needed to secure the license to make Lebanon part of it + alot of other details to make it all possible (starting from the dates, to location, equipment, and crew)
Overall, everything was pretty smooth… I believe that more people should be supporting such events. For example, I heard on several occasions “Where’s Summer Fusion? Who cares about GBOB!”; that’s a very selfish thought, we need to aim big and high… Keeping things in our ‘local circle’ means not going forward, our aim is to go forward! One thing at a time, it all goes bigger and it all supports side to side!

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Even-though 29 bands participated in 2011, compared to 14 the last time we did in 2007, and as impressive that is… We still believe more bands should participate, specially the older ones! We felt that some bands who didn’t participate had the “we’re too good for this” attitude, we wish to change that. It’s those bands that we want in GBOB.

As for problems, we didn’t really face any… All the bands were very supportive, the team & crew did an excellent job, and we got alot of attention from media & sponsors this year. We hope that will be a positive thing for the future as we defintely aim to do bigger & better things, and this needs more funds (sponsors).

  • As an evaluation, did the GBOB get enough interest, sponsors and support? Shall we expect to be part of GBOB 2012?

I guess I answered part of that above… It was a great year, we got more bands than expected, and definitely much more media support!
As for sponsor support, it still lacks a bit…but it’s definitely going positive year by year! We set a goal in 2006 and it’s on track, every year concert attendance is increasing by about 10%, and as such we’re being able to produce bigger events, so sponsors get more interested!

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We always set a goal to put the highest budget we can (we don’t aim for profit), and we do that, we just want everyone to enjoy the best events that can be done and give bands the opportunity to play in high scale events, and specially give a chance to all rising bands.

As for 2012, we’ll be doing Summer Fusion in 2012, not sure about GBOB yet. GBOB is a 3 month event, so it kind of takes alot of time & effort and we can’t really concentrate on 2 big events but we’ll see. We think it’s a good idea to skip a year for GBOB (regardless if we do Summer Fusion or not), as it gives the bands more chance to prepare…1 year might be a bit short…would like to hear everyone’s comments on that.

  • Did you notice that our scene lacks bands in certain genres? Do you think our Metal scenes still needs to evolve to involve all genres?

We were quite happy with this year’s outcome… At one point we were expecting too many Metal bands, but we were happy with a well balanced proportion of almost 50/50 Rock vs Metal ratio. There was a good variety of bands of all sorts, and many new interesting genres.
What was mainly lacking were band styles such as Funk, Jazz, Blues, and such…and I think these styles generally lack in Lebanon as a whole.

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  • Now that Passive Standouts where chosen as the winning band to represent Lebanon in GBOB 2011, and you are going along, what are the preparations for that? How does the process continue? Will we be receiving regular updates on the international competition and Our Lebanese band performance in it?

Currently we will be working with the band to try to offer whatever help we can to support the band improve, we try to share own experience with them so they can know better what to work on.
Other than that, it’s mostly logistics preparations…visas, tickets, etc…then comes the big day.
We want to do a package to try to gather up as many Lebanese people to come along with us to the final to support the band + the trip will definitely be a blast. We’ll be sharing all the details each step of the way!

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2011’s final will be in Romania, so it’s generally not too costly for a short vacation there…we’re aiming to do a 1 week package to the World Final. Lots of tourism, followed by a very interesting and unique concert – the World Final has some amazing artists from all over the globe, each have some interesting twist, so it’s a bit different than the usual everyday concert! And the group travelling will definitely be fun, a bunch of Rockers going together, should be quite interesting…more interesting than your everyday trip!
Definitely alot fun…so we hope many would come !

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The 2011 World Final will be in the beginning of Summer 2012, so start saving up!