So, how did it all begin?
Kyle: We’ve been DJing together for 18 months…it just sort of started as a bit of fun, just mucking around, jamming and stuff and then we got a bit of work out of it and decided we’d put a name and a face on the business and started the Allstar Entertainment Crew…it just started out like a whole bit of fun and a joke and it’s slowly started to get more serious, which is good.
Other than developing a pretty solid name for yourselves, what have you achieved so far under the alias of MB Allstars?
Ben: I think the big one was probably the charity gig, "Watch This Face". That was a big thing for us, and a good thing for us. It was all about the notoriety, really.
Kyle: The best part about that was getting noticed. A lot more people, even setting up the next one that we’re doing, a lot more acts were approaching us to come and play after hearing how good it was, which was good.
"Watch This Face" was aimed at raising money for Palliative Care, correct?
Kyle: The best part about that was getting noticed. A lot more people, even setting up the next one that we’re doing, a lot more acts were approaching us to come and play after hearing how good it was, which was good.
"Watch This Face" was aimed at raising money for Palliative Care, correct?
Kyle:Yeah. We chose palliative care mainly because a friend of mine lost his wife to cancer. In the end we ended up raising $1500 and putting on a sick night and it was all for a good cause. There were 250 people there, which was awesome for our big debut.
Other than obviously personal motives, what else inspired you to run a charity event?
Other than obviously personal motives, what else inspired you to run a charity event?
Kyle: In town, people don’t really like to go places and spend lots of money. You get in everywhere in town on a Friday night for free; they don’t want to go and see on a Saturday night what they can see on a Friday, and have to pay for it. There’s been other guys who’ve put on charity gigs at the Bowls Club; they had bands playing and stuff and the max they’d get in there was 150 or 160 people, and we walked in there the first night and blew it out of the water. It was like... we needed a way that we can raise money and get that exposure, so that was sort of the plan we came up with.
Your public image has obviously grown a lot since Watch This Face, with Westpac Life Saver Rescue Helicopter approaching you to raise money for them in your next big event, Seen This Face?
Kyle: That was the best part about it; we were approached to do that because of what we’d done in Watch This Face. It’s worked well, and the Allstar Entertainment Crew as a whole gained a good reputation from that, which was great. Being approached was sort of a pat on the back.Your public image has obviously grown a lot since Watch This Face, with Westpac Life Saver Rescue Helicopter approaching you to raise money for them in your next big event, Seen This Face?
Ben: Being approached makes it worth it, really. Obviously no one’s going to want to let us do something for charity in the first place if they haven’t seen what we can do. That’s what Watch This Face was all about, getting it out there, showing everyone what we can put on, organise and run.
That must be one of the biggest steps initially - getting that recognition. Ben: I think it helps playing 12-18 months prior to organising that, because we had an idea of the crowd you get in Murwillumbah, what they wanna hear, what they’re more likely to come to rather than just throwing on maybe a massive big band orchestra sort of thing, with no one turning up, so it made it a lot easier to work around that. We pretty much took what we did already and made it bigger.
Kyle: Yeah, we had the experience, and knew what we needed to do to take that idea and throw it in a small town and be able to market it.
Do you expect your next big charity gig, "Seen This Face", to be much bigger?
Do you expect your next big charity gig, "Seen This Face", to be much bigger?
Ben: We’re trying to include other DJs in town so we get more variety and a bigger range of people. We’re 22 and above so we’re not so in touch with the 18-year-olds so to speak, so we’ve only got a limited amount of people that we can involve personally.
Kyle: That’s the better part of getting different acts involved; we’ve got a crowd base that we’ve built, then all these other guys have a crowd base that they’ve built and it’s great getting everyone in there together so they all bring their crowd with them, and then they get to see everyone - not just the same people they see every week. This time we’ve got two really good upcoming DJs and producers from Kingscliff. They produce their own music, which is great. That’ll be featured pretty highly in our set.
So while you’re trying to get your own names out there, you're helping other local DJs at the same time?
Kyle: That’s the better part of getting different acts involved; we’ve got a crowd base that we’ve built, then all these other guys have a crowd base that they’ve built and it’s great getting everyone in there together so they all bring their crowd with them, and then they get to see everyone - not just the same people they see every week. This time we’ve got two really good upcoming DJs and producers from Kingscliff. They produce their own music, which is great. That’ll be featured pretty highly in our set.
So while you’re trying to get your own names out there, you're helping other local DJs at the same time?
Kyle: That was the whole point of the first gig; we also want to give a lot of these other guys some exposure. I mean, we spent 18 months working on getting ourselves exposure and it was a good way for us to get more exposure and to help some of the younger ones as well; there was a couple of big-name promoters who came from the Gold Coast to Watch This Face which was really good - big promoters coming down to check out what was happening.
Looking beyond Seen This Face, how else do you intend to expand the MB Allstars throughout the rest of 2011?
Looking beyond Seen This Face, how else do you intend to expand the MB Allstars throughout the rest of 2011?
Kyle: Four words: get out of Murbah.
Ben: Haha...it's not so much that being here's a bad thing, but there’s only really so far you can go in Murwillumbah, and because everyone has their own little niche, we’ve only got a select few that we play to…so it’s basically getting out of Murwillumbah - to Coolangatta, Byron Bay, and you know, playing to people who haven’t heard what we’ve done before. Kyle:We worked hard on developing our sound, what we wanted to play but at the same time what people wanted to hear…so instead of being just the commercial guys who play around town...that just play the top 40 commercial stuff, and whatever, we’ve worked hard on creating our sound and it’s what we want to play, but it’s still what people want to hear. It’s not just go in there and play nothing but whatever’s on the top 40 charts all night; that's not what we want to do. We want to be able to pick our style of music and be able to play it, so that’s our plan.
You’re both obviously very big on collaboration with other DJs?
Ben: Haha...it's not so much that being here's a bad thing, but there’s only really so far you can go in Murwillumbah, and because everyone has their own little niche, we’ve only got a select few that we play to…so it’s basically getting out of Murwillumbah - to Coolangatta, Byron Bay, and you know, playing to people who haven’t heard what we’ve done before. Kyle:We worked hard on developing our sound, what we wanted to play but at the same time what people wanted to hear…so instead of being just the commercial guys who play around town...that just play the top 40 commercial stuff, and whatever, we’ve worked hard on creating our sound and it’s what we want to play, but it’s still what people want to hear. It’s not just go in there and play nothing but whatever’s on the top 40 charts all night; that's not what we want to do. We want to be able to pick our style of music and be able to play it, so that’s our plan.
You’re both obviously very big on collaboration with other DJs?
Kyle: The thing with what me and Ben have as the Allstar Entertainment Crew stems from Ant [Antony Jackson] who’s the guy from the coast who comes down and plays with us a lot; he plays under the alias Fiend or Foe. He used to run a promotion company called For Love of Promotions. That was 2 or 3 years ago now and the whole idea of that was to be able to go out and have fun, and listen to the music that we wanted to listen to at the time. He used to promote DJs at clubs and we would get who we wanted to play - instead of going out and just listening to what the club thinks is their little brand. He was putting on his own night - and was killing it - so that was part of it. Back then he threw me a few gigs and he’s been a bedroom DJ for a good 2 years now, and so we thought you know, why not give him a hand, throw him some gigs like he’s done for us. It’s worked out tenfold. People pick up on what he plays and now we’ve got a good collective going with the three of us.
Ben: It’s better working collaboratively due to the fact there’s more input from people for starters, rather than just me and Kyle just saying “Oh yeah this’ll be good, let’s do that” - if we get input from obviously Ant and the other people in Murwillumbah, see they know what people want to hear as well, so it’s kind of a win-win situation really.
Kyle: The best part about having the three of us play is that everyone has a different style of music they like the most; Ben’s more into the RnB and hip hop sort of stuff, I’m more into the house style and Ant’s into the real electro stuff…so when you come and see all three of us play in one setting, you get everything. You get absolutely everything. There’s something there to please everyone.
So while it’s a pretty competitive industry, it’s really good at the same time…you’re all friends and you all help each other out?
Kyle: The best part about having the three of us play is that everyone has a different style of music they like the most; Ben’s more into the RnB and hip hop sort of stuff, I’m more into the house style and Ant’s into the real electro stuff…so when you come and see all three of us play in one setting, you get everything. You get absolutely everything. There’s something there to please everyone.
So while it’s a pretty competitive industry, it’s really good at the same time…you’re all friends and you all help each other out?
Ben: Yeah, there’s no point being angry at other people because it’s not going to work.
Kyle: Everyone in the industry’s like that. It’s like, you may as well make as many friends as you can because it’s not what you know, it's who you know. Just 'cause you’re getting gigs doesn't mean you’re good.
What direction does the future of MB Allstars look to be heading in?
Kyle: Everyone in the industry’s like that. It’s like, you may as well make as many friends as you can because it’s not what you know, it's who you know. Just 'cause you’re getting gigs doesn't mean you’re good.
What direction does the future of MB Allstars look to be heading in?
Kyle: Just up in general. There’s no point doing something if you don’t aspire to be something better.
Ben: When we play the pubs in town some people come to listen to the music, others come just to drink…so we’re hoping to get somewhere where they pretty much have people who come there just for the music. You can tell the difference between those types of people, they actually I respect what we’re playing which is what we’re there for.
Kyle: There’s no point just playing the same place every week and just being happy with what you’re doing. It’s always about getting better, perfecting what you do and what you play and your playing style…you may as well keep working on that and always keep looking for something bigger, and that’s the point right now; we’ve been in town DJing for 18 months now so it’s about time we try to take it to the next level. Get a bigger venue, a better venue, anything really, more people. Be able to take MB Allstars to a bigger market - that’s the ultimate plan.
Ben: When we play the pubs in town some people come to listen to the music, others come just to drink…so we’re hoping to get somewhere where they pretty much have people who come there just for the music. You can tell the difference between those types of people, they actually I respect what we’re playing which is what we’re there for.
Kyle: There’s no point just playing the same place every week and just being happy with what you’re doing. It’s always about getting better, perfecting what you do and what you play and your playing style…you may as well keep working on that and always keep looking for something bigger, and that’s the point right now; we’ve been in town DJing for 18 months now so it’s about time we try to take it to the next level. Get a bigger venue, a better venue, anything really, more people. Be able to take MB Allstars to a bigger market - that’s the ultimate plan.
