When it comes to local bands and unsigned artists using the web as a marketing tool to sell their music, promote their gigs, exchange info w/ other artists, find potential venues, and listen to/upload their tunes for all to hear, it is usually a bands website I seek first, all I need is the name of the act and I can most certainly find everything I need to know about the artist, and more with just a few simple clicks.
ourstage.com and sonicbids online press kits are great, facebook is a major social network, myspace is still the preferred vehicle for bands of all genre's to get their music out there to the masses, and even twitter has its value. But there is one website that predates them all and encompasses all of the above. The website is called lowellroclks.com.
The brain child of Rob Breton, Rick "Web Guy" Breslin, and Randy "Big Daddy" Breton. Their idea for a local website created years ago which was originally designed to promote their own musical endeavors has become not only a first option for many Merrimack Valley acts it is also a members driven resource for local musician to have any and all questions answered with regard to the local music scene.
The website came to my attention about a year ago and at that time I clicked on and took the virtual tour, I listened to a handful of songs uploaded by local musicians, I read a few threads from the "classified" and "general discussion" message boards, and I looked at some of the venue rankings best to worse all over the city, and I did all this without creating a member account.
But as the buzz continued, and I became more and more aware of its value from the musicians who use it, I not only decided this might be "Floss" worthy I also choose to create a username (joeg) and a password (xxxxxxxxx) and attempted to become a contributing member of the Lowell rocks glitterati.
My first order of business was to simply establish myself as the new guy, so a brief introduction of sorts took place with a couple of members warmly replying to my greeting with welcoming words. I toured the site again, took a harder look at pages and links, listened to more bands, and even started to post my own messages to the boards.
And then it started... For the next few weeks, every Monday I would aggressively introduce a new subject for discussion by offering up any scenario I could think of revolving around the day to day struggles and issues local bands deal with, booking gigs, working with sound engineers, dealing with club owners, and whatever i could think of that best puts into perspective the daily grind of a local act. by conjuring up examples that I thought would best get everyone's attention while also making sure my stories would relate to the local music scene in an attempt to draw out as many members of Lowellrocks as possible, and gather as much feed back as I could. Let's not call my subjects on the message board "lies", instead let's call them good ole' fashion journalism, undercover work, research.
I played the aggressor and I played the victim, I would criticize club owners and make jokes at the expense of the cover band while I celebrated the original artist. i commented about greedy middle men (booking agents/promoters), and i questioned the exchange of who should be paid and who should stay home on gig night. I was labeled "naive" and "ingenuous" i was thought to be a "mole" an "impostor", i even criticized the lowellrocks website and received angry replies and challenging comments from both the sites creator and it's webmaster when i called them "apathetic" in the upkeep of the sites ranking system (something that has since been updated). but i didn't let up there, on one occasion i was even threatened by another member. at one point the subject of conversation was titled "Is Joeg a Musician" and after a number of reply and comments truth be told, "yes! I am in fact a Musician" but up or down, good or bad, they were all talking about the new guy.
one of my first messages posted to Lowell rocks and the one that pushed me to the point of no return was titled; "Lowell (doesn't really) Rock" and the first words from the first reply had let me know that I got their attention "why sir, where I come from them are fightin words" ........,
what followed on that thread was 51 different members of Lowell rocks all chiming in and commenting back and forth for the next 8 days totaling 178 replies, i even received emails and telephone calls from people wanting me to explain it even deeper, they all offered their opinion, critique, thoughts on the matter, and their witticism both praising and complaining about JoeG (aka the new guy).....it was at that moment when I realized I was onto something. i had not only found a gold mine of local music and musicians to talk to but also stumbled into and became part the lowellrocks.com sub-culture
(more to come)
I was going to do something like this a bit ago, but I just couldn't to complete. it is great learning about your experience.