I heard Al Gore talk about the “information superhighway” and I was intrigued. Not a joke. I didn’t even own a computer until I was 30, in 1996 (a Mac Quadra) but I was interested in the idea of putting my xeroxed zine CapSoul Reviews online. A year or so later, I shared an idea with my friend Dan Cook of Gimme Gimme Records (ex-NY, now LA). I thought we should take his rarest records and post them to the internet, promoting his store in the process. Was it mainly a plan to get my hands on some holy grail wax? Probably. He curated the playlists amazingly, maximizing elite record collector interest. I found a piece of code that embedded “Shockwave Audio” (which later evolved into Flash). I just needed to change the file name and it streamed the song and it was smoother and sounded better than other stuff out there (like RealAudio). I digitized some incredible vinyl. I wrote some funny blurbs. Made some primitive web graphics.

I was working at a public relations agency at the time and they had “Bacon’s” books with contacts for every editor in every newspaper and magazine in the US. I began faxing the URL to various tech and music beat writers. I dropped little postcards with the URL at Kim’s Video on St. Marks. The site was written up or mentioned in Details, the Rotterdam Dagblad, USA Today, etc – as well as popular web-based link portals like Suck.com, memepool (which now has a cryptocurrency named after it), and others. The Beastie Boys heard it, through future Grand Royal CEO Ian C Rogers. Grand Royal. RareMusic would eventually become a streaming channel on GrandRoyal.com. I was also approached by the fine people at Word magazine, which was a really cool site, to do a monthly playlist with blurbs for what they called “Junk Radio”

I ended up getting a job as a web producer at Comedy Central and I didn’t feel like coming home at night to work on yet another website. The channel was live on Grand Royal, until they went bankrupt, and that was the end of RareMusic.com. I stored the files on Iomega Zip drives lol. All gone. I do have CDs of the music we posted though. I’ve been making my way through lately, which is why it’s on my mind.