| nervous dBlog March 2005 |
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CONTACT: Michelle Sutton, Promotions Manager RaleighRock RadiOnline us@raleighrock.com http://www.RaleighRock.com RaleighRock RadiOnline's Ides of March Launch Brings End To Status Quo Raleigh, NC, 3/14/05 - Local Radio Music Programming is long since dead. Raleigh musical artists have mourned the loss more personally and for longer than anyone else, knowing that even those few radio frequencies that *are* locally owned and operated have to act like their chain-owned competitors to survive their commercial revenue wars. The idea of bands getting on airplay on their own neighborhood radio stations was always difficult. Now, it's as likely as winning the lottery. Worse still, even those few remaining songwriting-oriented bands that manage to eek out an existence don't even know what their compatriots sound like, because they all work on the same nights. After years of discussions and tests, a few of those Raleigh-based bands have devised a way to pool their talents and resources, affecting a positive changes in their own community, while fulfilling the community-building promises of the World Wide Web. March 15th 2005 marks the public debut of www.RaleighRock.com, a free (donation-supported), 24/7 online audio stream of Raleigh-area artists and their songs. It is an collaborative effort of many local bands, spearheaded by multimedia funksters, the-nerve.com, This site is touted as the bands' "labor of love". Co-founder dB Brinson clarifies, "First things I want everyone to realize, is that, in our case, the term "Rock" is used as an adjective, not as a music type. We play *everything* from Hip-Hop to Honky Tonk to Heavy Metal - as long as it 'rawks'. That's the whole point of it all; to be inclusive in a way that mainstream media can't afford to be. We're convinced that there's a big hole for that kind of mindset. We know that, at the very least, working musicians, recovering musicians, and afficionados around here are hungering for a place to hear our friends and neighbors and our rockin' boyhood heroes." RaleighRock RadiOnline's commitment to inclusion and diversity truly shows in the choices of the two services provide; they offer both an "All-Star" and a "Free For All" stream. When asked about the criteria for being a RaleighRock RadiOnline All-Star, Brinson quips, "You have to sell as many records as my badass band (the-nerve). Seriously, you're going to hear stuff you know about on the All-Star stream. And if you've ever enjoyed a live show or two from a Raleigh band, you're likely to find *lots* of stuff you dig. If we missed someone, and you e-mail us about it, we'll get it into rotation quick. For us, it's become like a cool Easter egg hunt, or something. The coolest part of it all, is that most of the time, if you can find a musician from that old-school band that we may have forgotten, they're even more excited than many of the newer up-and-coming bands to send their material. It is so cool to see that the same guys from what we call Raleigh's Golden Age of DIY (Do It Yourself) music, that I put up on such a high pedestal turn out to be the most down-to-Earth accomodating dudes imaginable." On the other hand, "the Free-For-All stream is just that..." as Brinson's bandmate in the-nerve.com, and RaleighRock RadiOnline co-founder, Mark Duncan, continues. "You wants some, then send us some. The "Free For All" is where everybody gets heard." Duncan recalls, "It started with dB's local music collection, which goes as far back as the mid-70's. He's been doing broadcasting and playing rock clubs and stuff for a very very long time. But don't print that, he's touchy about his age. He made a bunch of mixtapes of Raleigh Bands, and eventually, CDs. All that stuff sounded great played back on 'Random'. As a collection, the talent in this area is just amazing." After experimenting with many different web services, dissatisfied with their unreliability, end-user complexity, and other limitations, they settled on a web streaming protocol called "Peercasting". Duncan explains, "You take just a minute to download the little Peercast client, click 'Play' on our webpage, kick back, and enjoy it. Listeners can even decide to 'Relay' our signal, while they're listening, which makes the overall stream even stronger. That technological philosophy was a perfect compliment to our whole approach to this service - everyone giving of themselves in order to ultimately help themselves. It even applies to bandwidth... We put together a couple of servers and tested them until we were convinced that we can keep the services going for as long as we want. Judging from the initial response, we'll going to be around for a while." According to the site's server logs, the barely publicized test webcasts already handle 100's of hits a day, with listeners from as far away as Japan and Taiwan, staying tuned for several hours at a time. Initial reaction to the test stream have been universally applauded in the (non-audio based) online Raleigh Music websites - "The Innocent Bystander (www.TheInnocentBystander.com) is thrilled to have this service available for local, original artists. Broadcasting our excellent homegrown artists to the world is fitting and needed due to the lack of broadcasting options available to many original music performers. We at TIB wish RRR the best of luck." RaleighMusic.com posts, "What a great idea, and an excellent example of how to do something creative to push the local music scene forward!" Raleigh Bands have already stepped up to volunteer their services, on March 25th for a RaleighRock RadiOnline benefit concert at The Berkley Cafe, Downtown. Performing with the-nerve: Sold, Lactose Quervo, and Nathan Davis. In the more distant future, RaleighRock RadiOnline is discussing partnerships with more conventional media outlets, and looking toward expanding their network to include a worldwide collection of similar services that represent any geographical area with a concentration of musical writing and production talent. RaleighRock RadiOnline has come to bury Local Music Radio, not to praise it. RaleighRock RadiOnline, http://www.RaleighRock.com, is sponsored by www.the-nerve.com, a Soul-Funk multimedia collaborative cleverly disguised as a band. They write songs and perform funk remakes of songs you might already know, often presented with visual graphic enhancement screenery. dB Brinson and Mark Duncan are experienced media veterans, that often make for entertaining, compelling interviews. 9 March - The FBI's New Targets: African-American Converts to Islam, and "Disaffected" Americans I suppose, they gave up on trying to find Bin Laden, a 6'+ dude with a cathoder on a camel in the desert. Lower the bar, guys. It works for me. 4 March - Read the Republican Noise Machine by David Brock. Here is a link to an interview with him on NPR in December 04, 2004. You can listen to it. Great, and frighteningly revealing. Then, hopefully my recent "Reich-Wing/Corporate Media Consolidation = Death of Democracy" ramblings will make more sense. Don't I now have the right to atomic gorilla pimp slap any person that utters the phrase "Liberal News Media"? 3 March - Z'ennybody noticed that there haven't been anymore terror "color alerts" since the election? It appears that particular Fear Lever served it's purpose, and is no longer relevant. Maybe it's because Dick Cheney unloaded all his stock holdings in duct tape. 1 March - Life has been downright blissful of late. I can almost feel the glorious return of spring in my blood. the-nerve has added several new arrows in our quiver of Funk. As a band we're as strong and happy with the simple and beautiful act of plugging up together, as I can remember seeing with any band in quite a while. Today, the chemistry we've managed to develop and sustain is palpable, gleeful... contagious. And better still, this weekend, we get to go home. Yup, Saturday night, 3/12, the-nerve fonks up Slim's (Downtown Raleigh) - while I don't actually *own* it, Slim's is my bar - I go there to to drink. We are going to have a fonky-fonky good time. The only thing that might possibly make it better is you. In the meantime, we're in the final testing stage of our Web Radio joint, www.RaleighRock.com. Raleigh-area based music... All of Us - All the Time. You know, everything local radio could have been before it died. While the official launch date is 3/15/05, you can go get you some right now. Let us know what you think. If you had a list of Raleigh best musician/bands of all time, who'd be on it? Yours, -dB- www.the-nerve.com |