{"id":11310,"date":"2012-01-12T10:01:26","date_gmt":"2012-01-12T15:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=11310"},"modified":"2012-01-12T13:39:23","modified_gmt":"2012-01-12T18:39:23","slug":"this-is-your-5th-anniversary-rock-town-hall-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/this-is-your-5th-anniversary-rock-town-hall-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is Your 5th Anniversary, Rock Town Hall Blog!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fRHZr3VlpgE?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nI don&#8217;t know about you, but I feel like dancing! Today, January\u00a012, 2012,\u00a0marks the 5th anniversary of Rock Town Hall&#8217;s life as a thriving, all-access public blog. If you ask me, the past 5 years (and the 4 years before that) have been a\u00a0fun and worthwhile extracurricular pursuit. Not a day goes by that I don&#8217;t appreciate your participation and input in shaping what&#8217;s discussed, how music fans from different backgrounds interact, and so forth. Five years seems a long enough span to look back, see how the Hall has developed, and maybe even peek into the future. Over the next few days, we&#8217;ll take a little time to pay homage to some of our favorite posts and themes to date, culminating on <strong>Monday, January 16<\/strong>, with the <em>debut of a long-awaited Rock Town Hall feature<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So,&#8221; you might be asking yourself, &#8220;should I expect a self-mythologizing exercise&#8230;<em>after the jump<\/em>?&#8221; Certainly! Sisters been doin&#8217; it for themselves all this time;\u00a0why stop now?<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_11387\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/bw-townhall.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11387\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11387\" title=\"bw-townhall\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/bw-townhall.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11387\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An early Townsman ponders the state of rock discourse.<\/p><\/div>\n<h1>Roots<\/h1>\n<p>Rock Town Hall officially opened its doors on\u00a0November 20, 2002,\u00a0as a private YahooGroups listserv to enable a bunch of old music friends (and some newer music friends we&#8217;d met along the way) the chance to carry on the rock chatter we once had hours of free time to conduct face to face. We&#8217;d gotten older, busier, more responsible, and more isolated. We were growing up but not close to grown out of our music-obsessed rock-nerd behaviors. Rock Town Hall was our chance to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=H2qnahml-bc\" target=\"_blank\">reconnect<\/a> and do so in a way that wouldn&#8217;t be half as annoying to our mates and non\u2013music obsessed friends when any number of us did get a chance to mingle in the same room. Our first-ever thread on the old listserv kicked off as such:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #888888;\">Exile on Main Street<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With the exception of Dirty Work, every Stones album since Goat&#8217;s Head Soup or so has been declared by some enthusiastic reviewer as the band&#8217;s &#8220;best work since Exile on Main Street.&#8221; Over the years, this got me thinking: Compared with albums that predated Exile, is that really saying much? I&#8217;ve come to believe that that double album&#8217;s high ranking hangs largely on a quartet of great songs and the cover shots of the boys swilling Jack Daniels around a microphone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Our first-ever response, from <strong>dbuskirk<\/strong>,\u00a0kicked off as such:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #888888;\">Re: Exile on Main Street<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nah, let me be among the first to say you&#8217;re crazy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Perfect! I always wanted to be called an &#8220;ignorant slut.&#8221; Within a couple of months, through the YahooGroups web browser and optional e-mails delivered through the site, it wasn&#8217;t unusual to blow through 25 to 50 soap-box proclamations, quips, and counter-arguments between daily work and life demands. Some days my head felt like it was going to explode as another music-lover&#8217;s jibes rang for hours longer than should be expected in the head of any halfway &#8220;normal&#8221; adult. I had to keep a calm exterior. This wasn&#8217;t the kind of stuff one could share with a non-music nerd. &#8220;Are you kidding me,&#8221; they would probably say, &#8220;you&#8217;re really this worked up over someone&#8217;s opinion of a record?&#8221; These private battles, though, were essentially fun. People did a good job of policing themselves and not resorting to bullying and crude insults. Usually.<!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_11389\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/loureedcans2.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11389\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11389\" title=\"loureedcans2\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/loureedcans2-300x287.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"287\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/loureedcans2-300x287.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/loureedcans2.jpg 350w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11389\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Headphones&#39; worse nightmare.<\/p><\/div>\n<h1>Takin&#8217; it to the Streets<\/h1>\n<p>As you may know, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/hey-man-simply-put-headphones-aren-t-my\/\" target=\"_blank\">headphones\u00a0aren&#8217;t my bag<\/a>. On Wednesday, December 20, 2006, after 4 years of intense, silly\u00a0discussion through headphones, I posted a tongue-half-in-cheek questionnaire on the listserv that first served notice of a plan to expand our reach. My old college pal <strong>sammymaudlin<\/strong> was a bit of lurker through the years on the YahooGroups, or &#8220;Chess,&#8221; version of the Hall, as some would soon refer to it. He came to me in the fall of 2006 with a half-baked idea of taking it to the streets, pulling the curtain back on our private chat group and opening the doors to others, even turning our little world into a show. He worked tirelessly to design the platform and Look of the Hall. We kicked things around and received input from some longtime participants. On January 15, 2007, after the site had been posted and test driven for a few days, I posted notice on the listserv:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Hey Kids,<\/p>\n<p>As some of you know, plans are in motion to expand Rock Town Hall to an independently hosted, public website, or what the kids may refer to as a blog. I feel it&#8217;s time to try to take this venture cutting edge. My goal is to continue to build the Rock Town Hall community on the strength of your input and interaction, both in terms of starting daily threads through contributed posts to the main page as well as through the Comments section. There will be a learning curve and a need to register in order to post comments (and help keep spammers out), and not everything will work EXACTLY the same&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Not everything would work the same and not everyone would be happy with the change. My close personal friend and cofounder in the initial Rock Town experience,\u00a0<strong>E. Pluribus Gergely<\/strong>, known as The Accuser on the listserv, was especially put out, posing the doomsday Chess- vs RCA-era Chuck Berry scenario. Along with some nasty public flame wars, EPG and I got into a veiled, highly\u00a0flammable war of words through the guise of a bizzare thread on the private list entitled <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LfJeWEStGU8\" target=\"_blank\">Smokefest vs Thai Stick Symposium<\/a><\/em>. At least I think the switch to the blog format was what we were slamming each other over. Surely some other scabs were being picked raw.<\/p>\n<p>In the middle of all this\u00a0<strong>Mwall<\/strong> asked a good set of follow-up questions that may forever lead to an answer in progress:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;is the goal of the blog just to play around as we already do on this list, but in a different, more public forum? Or is it an attempt to consolidate the genuine insight of RTH in a format more conducive to a public presentation of what members of the list truly think they know?<\/p>\n<p>That said, I know the two go hand in hand on this list, and imagine they would also do so on the blog. I&#8217;m sure humor would continue to be crucial, and a series of humorous Afghani Smokefest vs. Thai Stick Tea Room throwdowns would be a great feature.<\/p>\n<p>Still, is the main goal of the blog to tell the public what we know, or just to fuck around? I&#8217;m not insisting on one or the other, but I&#8217;d like to know.<\/p>\n<p>Show of hands: who on this list thinks they have something real to contribute to rock criticism, and who would just prefer to be a fanboy?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--nextpage--><\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NhccWAxohBo?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><h1>Yes<\/h1>\n<p>Five years later I guess my answer is <em>Yes, to all of the above<\/em>. I wanted to bring the life of the list to a larger stage\u2014and more than the life of the list, the life of the people involved in our daily discussions. I wanted to share that and see how it could grow, free from the intense focus of headphones, without <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=L6Wa_15_3js\" target=\"_blank\">safe boundaries<\/a>. This group of people meant (and means) a lot to me. I&#8217;m proud of you, proud to count you among my collective thinkers. What would happen if we unfurled our freak flag? Who else we might <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GEhfs1fMcmU\" target=\"_blank\">attract<\/a>? I was probably insensitive to it then (and I probably am to this day, as a person who still needs to control himself from ripping the headphones off complete strangers), but my McMurphy-like desire to take us out for a deep-sea fishing trip wasn&#8217;t shared by all, as one longtime participant, known here\u00a0as\u00a0<strong>The Great 48<\/strong>,\u00a0would so eloquently put it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I may not be the only person here who&#8217;s less than enamored of the idea of moving RTH to a blog format. This is partially because personally I like the insularity of the list &#8212; it&#8217;s kind of like that one late-night restaurant in Chinatown where the city&#8217;s kitchen staffs go after work to unwind and talk shop &#8212; but also because I can&#8217;t imagine that many people outside of this group being at all interested in what goes on here. I mean&#8230;who cares?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, I did and I still do. In a world where a no-talent, gossip-column hound like <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4f0ZfmVDIaM\" target=\"_blank\">Sienna Miller<\/a><\/strong> and her pregancy are considered worthy of publication, why shouldn&#8217;t the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LfJeWEStGU8\" target=\"_blank\">crap<\/a> we kick around share the same media space? What&#8217;s any less ridiculous about anything one of us gets on a soapbox about than <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/cdn.thegloss.com\/files\/2012\/01\/santorum.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Rick Santorum<\/a><\/strong>&#8216;s public proclamations involving gay marriage and bestiality? And honestly, what&#8217;s <em>healthier<\/em> for people to read, should they so choose to read either: news on Sienna Miller and Rick Santorum&#8217;s love puppy or a group of music lovers fighting over the merits of the <strong>Love<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Forever Changes<\/em> album?\u00a0More honestly, what we talk about is fun and important to us. We care.\u00a0Every couple of weeks someone else does too.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XUaPPJi8zyk\" target=\"_blank\">Perfectly cool people<\/a> are out there, wishing they could get in on those late-night discussions among kitchen staffers. Our doors are open. A level of self-perceived, possibly deluded\u00a0coolness is assumed.<\/p>\n<p>With the chance to breathe and see the light of day, maybe stuff we care about will turn someone else&#8217;s head. I spend New Year&#8217;s Eve content in the company of my oldest friends. There&#8217;s no other way I&#8217;d rather spend it, but the other 364 days of the year I&#8217;m happy to run into as many people who share similar concerns and similar means for discourse as possible. When the race to elect <strong>alexmagic<\/strong>&#8216;s long-discussed President of Rock is held I want to know there&#8217;s a bloc of voters out there willing to sort the wheat from the chaff. And capable of having fun doing so.<\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/users\/sammymaudlin\/rockbook.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"107\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p>Populism and public discourse have their hurdles. Over the years the participation of some vets, sadly, dropped off. A few dropped out altogether. Many new voices, however,\u00a0have since joined the fray, posted comments, and took on the responsibility\u2014and yes, as was feared by many, that word <em>responsibility<\/em> connotes an element of W-O-R-K involved in crafting\u00a0threads for public digestion\u2014of developing new content for discussion, new quips and insults to resonate longer in our heads than would be expected in the head of a &#8220;normal&#8221; person.<\/p>\n<p>This place still brightens my day, leaves me with a laugh, teaches me something new, and\u00a0brings a cool mix of music lovers together. I wanted to wrap this up by looking ahead, but what&#8217;s the point? If we choose to keep the chatter going, if we allow ourselves to be open to discuss how we feel about music, something worth our time will result. Thank you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<nav class=\"page-links\"><strong>Pages:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/this-is-your-5th-anniversary-rock-town-hall-blog\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">1<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/this-is-your-5th-anniversary-rock-town-hall-blog\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">2<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/this-is-your-5th-anniversary-rock-town-hall-blog\/3\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">3<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/this-is-your-5th-anniversary-rock-town-hall-blog\/4\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">4<\/span><\/a><\/nav>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know about you, but I feel like dancing! Today, January\u00a012, 2012,\u00a0marks the 5th anniversary of Rock Town Hall&#8217;s life as a thriving, all-access public blog. If you ask me, the past 5 years (and the 4 years before that) have been a\u00a0fun and worthwhile extracurricular pursuit. Not a day goes by that I <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/this-is-your-5th-anniversary-rock-town-hall-blog\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342,16],"tags":[565],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11310"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}