The First Internet Band

STD...in the flesh!

Kids, it was 1994.
Desert Storm was still fresh on everybody's minds.
The fun Clinton was running the show.
Nirvana was dead and the Spice Girls were just beginning to peek their vacant heads over the horizon.
Oh, and the internet -- most of us were just starting to test out the proverbial e-waters with our digital toes (see what I did there) and just a select few of us were regularly dabbling with a kind of black magic called "email."
Also some guy named Jeff founded a book reselling outfit called Amazon, of all things, but nobody really cared.
Despite the fragile, house-of-cards state of the web at the time, a handful of hippy-engineers from California decided to see just how far they could push this fledgling technology by promoting an event that was likely the first use of the internet to broadcast a live rock-band performance, even though the Rolling Stones would actually do the same thing immediately following it.
Check out the short vid below for a bit of old-school schooling about Severe Tire Damage, the first internet rock-band. Party on, Garth!

VIDEO
HISTORY OF THE INTERNET - SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE

BONUS VIDEO
COMPUTER CHRONICLES INTERNET EPISODE FEATURING SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE - BEGINS AT 3:40


LINK
FOR EVEN MORE INFO VISIT THE OFFICIAL (AND SWEETLY RETRO) SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE WEBSITE AT WWW.STD.ORG BY CLICKING HERE

1970s Stereo Geek

These were called "speaker cabinets." They made noise.

Back before high-school geeks had computers to get all wet over, they fiddled about with what used to be called stereos or hifi sets. These were modular systems designed to play back music and other recorded audio in the comfort of one's home, without all that tedious trekking back and forth to the village bandstand just to catch the latest Sousa march.
So for the sake of historical record, vintage tech-head, Joe Roberts, decided to detail his personal epic-obsession with stereo gear, that began in the 1970s, on his homepage - which is an old fashioned word for "blog." Yup, his page has been up on the information superhighway since way back in 1998, you know, back before it sucked.
So click the link below to take a trip into the ancient world of patch-cord spaghetti and grey-backgrounded web pages and who knows, you might even learn something along the way! Knowledge is power!

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

BONUS VIDEO: A 1970s STEREO STORE COMMERCIAL