MB – How do you and Owen Day know each other?
AS – We at met at university. I was doing a music and economics course, and Owen was doing a maths, music and Italian course.
MB – When was that?
AS – That was about 4 and a half years ago, something like that. We just got on from then, really. We worked together in Bumper for a bit, lived together for a bit and then just decided to start doing this.
MB – Had you always planned on running a music night?
AS – No, not really. I’m one of the trainee managers in Heebie Jeebies and he’s the assistant manager in Bumper, so we’ve had experience in running nights before. Yam Yam is Owen’s baby really, it came about because he wanted to see this band play in Manchester but he hadn’t enough money so he just decided to see if he could book the band to play Liverpool. So we just booked it!
MB – Do you personally know all the bands you book? They all seem to be coming to contact you on your website?
AS – They are doing that now. Previously it was just sending stuff to agents and that. Owen’s got quite a lot of contacts though. If we want to book a band now, we’ll just send a message to a couple of nationally-known punk bands. It’s not too hard to get bands we like to play gigs, probably because they’re playing punk music. If you tried to do this with a more established indie band then you’re going to get a lot of no replies and stuff.
MB – Have you thought of putting gigs on anywhere else?
AS – We don’t want to be stepping on anyone’s toes really, there’s people already running stuff at the Pilgrim and that but at the moment we just want some regular spots. We’ve booked the Barcelona bar for the next gig. We will do different places as long as it’s promoted as a Yam Yam night.
MB – Have you had any trouble getting venues then?
AS – We have, yeah. We were originally going to use the basement of Heebie Jeebies, because it’s perfect for a night like ours, but one of the shareholders heard about the night on Facebook and he said that they didn’t want to have anyone charging on the door for the gig; company policy thing I think. So we moved it to Bumper. We tried the Static Gallery as well, but their booking fee was too much. We don’t make much money, a little bit of profit for the first night we did but not much.
MB – Do you think there is currently enough going on in Liverpool’s music scene?
AS – There wasn’t for punk music, none at all. Bands were playing in Manchester a lot, that’s why after 3 weeks I would say we are the biggest punk night in Liverpool. It’s because we’re the only ones who are doing this sort of thing.
MB – What other gig nights do you enjoy going to in Liverpool?
AS – There’s a folk night in Bumper which has just started up, I like that. There’s no other nights really I can think of. It just depends what bands are on.
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