Teens:
OKOKOK -- I'm a Rock Star PARENT, remember... so I'm going to tell you this once. If you are a young band, and you think you might play at YMCA's or church basements or local community centers, don't put up swears on your different web pages. Why jeopardize a gig when you can be cool without an out and out swear?
If you are a new band, you can't be too choosy where you play, and being able to say that "they were just too uptight" doesn't do you a bit of good when you are practicing in the garage instead of playing in front of lots of kids.
Furthermore, if you have a My Space page, and all of your friends become your friends, don't you think that a parent or a youth director or a church activities director will be able to find your web page easily? And read it? Read ALL of it? And you are a BAND, remember, you don't want to make your My Space page private just so you can swear indiscriminately!!!
Darn it, some places actually make you print out lyrics of your songs before you can play, and I'm not kidding. Especially YMCA Battle of the Band events.
So there... read the next post about what you SHOULD say about your band when you start a band website. You have lots of space now without all of those swears.
Parents:
OK, you want to teach your kids how to do everything themselves, and they might know how to work online better than you do, but please check out their stuff. Teens are in their own bubble about the words they put online. They think that "only" their friends will see it. Reiterate that:
- anything they put online should be OK to be seen on the front page of the school newspaper
- anything they put online, because of the electronic format, can easily be forwarded, replicated, and they can't control where it goes
- if and when they have a real job (even in they work for a company in the music industry), employers can check their company email, so get used to being professional
- once they are over 18 and out of school then they can discuss "branding" and how "bad" they want to be, but it can seriously jeapordize getting gigs at this stage
I've seen bands with their own urls have a myspace too, and their own url is clean, but the myspace is a sewer. Or their band myspace is OK, but their personal myspace pages, that are linked to off of the band myspace page is a sewer. People follow the links that are there. And if the band has an aol IM profile, check that out too.
Good luck all!
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