I have been a dabbler in web technology for a while now. Over the years I've built things using the different tools that were available. This is the story of how I was inspired to make a website for my band.
Image via: twintone.com
In the late 90s as a university student, I used an application that let you build websites without writing any markup. I had a rock band with some friends and I was determined to make a site! We had a few half finished songs, no gigs and no recordings to speak of. That didn't stop me trying to build an online presence! At the university lab I found Frontpage and started messing around with it. I wasn't too interested in mucking about with markup at the time, and this seemed to deliver the results.
image via: webdesignmuseum.org
I deployed it using the free server space offered for every student. This was probably around 1996. I was excited about making a site for my own band because one of my favourite punk bands, Poster Children had their own site created and maintained by themselves.
In 1993 I saw the web for the very first time at age 18. My Anthropology professor at the community college I to gave everyone in the class a url to view an online image gallery of ancient Mesoamerican art and artifacts as part of the archaeology unit of the course. I was more fascinated by using Yahoo's search engine to find images of my favourite bands. It's funny to think that back then, you could see a comprehensive list of musical acts on the web presented as a bulleted list on Yahoo! that maybe took up 2 pages. Most sites were essentially tributes made by fans and web hobbyists. The exception to this trend was the site belonging to Champaign-Urbana Illinois' The Poster Children. I was only aware of them through seeing a music video of theirs If you see Kay (get it?) that appeared on MTV's late night program 120 Minutes.
In high school I got to see them perform live at a venue in Mesa, Arizona, USA when they toured on their album Tool of the Man . Wow; I was knocked out! This band had an excellent energetic live show, and they turned out to be very cool, approachable people when I spoke to them after the gig. Afterwards, I came to understand that the website was a part of their "Do It Yourself" (DIY) ethic of artistic self-reliance. Poster Children hit the road in their cramped Chevy Econoline van, loaded their own gear, made and sold their own merch and slept on living room floors for weeks playing gigs across the United States.
My favourite part of their site were their tour diary entries that were updated every couple of days from the road. This was plainly not an easy thing back then as it is now what with the widespread convenience of wifi signals. This was before anyone had ever heard of a "blog"! Amazingly, as of 2020, their site still lists entries from their tour diaries posted in the mid-90s.
Rose Marshack (bass/vocals) and Rick Valentin (vocals/guitar) have software engineering backgrounds, which partially explains how their online presence came into being. In addition to pioneering the tour blog, they were creating a podcast and other forms of digital media way before they became common, everyday things. You can check out one of the longest running band websites at: posterchildren.com.