What was the first rock band in cyberspace?
In a well-publicized gambit to promote their pay-per-view broadcast on Showtime tomorrow, the Rolling Stones broadcast 20 minutes of live audio and video from a performance at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas on Friday last week on the Internet, becoming the first major rock band to do so on that network of millions of computers.
But their moment in the limelight was tarnished by a little-known band called Severe Tire Damage. Knowing that the channel carrying the Stones was open to anyone, and wanting to take advantage of the worldwide audience the Stones would attract, the group broadcast an impromptu performance from the Xerox PARC offices in Palo Alto, Calif., directly before and after the Stones concert.
"We didn't want to stamp on the Stones broadcast, but we did want to play before an appreciative audience." says Mark Weiser, who plays drums in Severe Tire Damage and works at Xerox PARC, the company that helped bring about the Internet service known as the Multicast Backbone, or M-Bone, which makes audiovisual broadcasting possible.
The M-Bone, however, is not quite ready to replace television. The Stones show, for example, had low-quality sound and images and could be received by few computers.
Though the Rolling Stones claimed to be performing the first major concert live on the Internet in their press releases, they weren't the first band ever. At least three other groups beat them. A Seattle rock group called Sky Cries Mary claimed that distinction when it sent a live performance over the M-Bone two weeks ago, although a little-known band called Deth Specula was on the M-Bone in August, and Severe Tire Damage performed an hour-and-a-half show in June 1993.
The Internet has become the biggest promotional tool for the music industry since the invention of the press release. Nearly every major record label and many independent ones have staked out space on-line, where they supply fans with information (and dispel rumors) about bands and offer pop musicians for live chat sessions. With only a fraction of the world's record buyers plugged into the Internet, however, what can be more valuable for a band is the publicity that comes with breaking new ground.
Aerosmith received national press coverage in July when it claimed to have created the first single to be available exclusively on-line. But a service called the Internet Underground Music Archive had already made some 75 songs available only on the Internet.
Taking bold new steps in technology can help older musicians like the Rolling Stones prove their relevance in the '90s. But these musicians are often less likely to take risks and can take months or even years to be persuaded.
"The only way I could sell this idea to the Stones," says Stephan Fitch, president of the multimedia computer group Thinking Pictures, which helped produce the program, "was to say to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: 'Look, this is really cool, and it's never been done before. And if you don't do it, I'll do it with Aerosmith.' "
Olivier Pfeiffer, Mr. Fitch's partner, says: "The Stones didn't want to miss the boat and have Pearl Jam or Aerosmith do it next year. And then there's the money side of it, to make them see it as a kind of promotion for the pay-per-view."
For Thinking Pictures and the computer company Sun Microsystems, which financed the program and donated equipment and technical help, the priorities were not to sell a rock band but to sell the Internet itself.
"It's a research and development project for us," George Paolini, a spokesman for Sun, says. "We want to show what the technology is capable of. I think it will be a wake-up call for the corporations to know that this technology is out there."
The technology may be out there, but it isn't accessible to many people. Because it takes a high-end computer known as a work station and a telephone connection that can cost up to $20,000 to receive the M-Bone, few computers other than those at universities and corporations have access to it. In the end, only about 200 computer sites logged on for the program, but some of the recipients were from as far away as Iceland and New Zealand and another was at the United States Department of Defense.
In Manhattan, publicity agents for the project did not know anyplace to see the program in the city. The closest site was the offices of Thinking Pictures in Jersey City, where a large crowd gathered around a small computer screen.
The Rolling Stones performed five songs, including "Not Fade Away" and "Shattered." A spokesman for the group says that the surprise opening act was a good reminder of the democratic nature of the Internet.
The broadcast filled only a fraction of the screen, about 1 1/2 by 1 1/2 inches, and the picture quality was poor. Though videos move at 24 frames a second, these images moved at from 1 to 10 frames per second, resulting in what looked like a high-speed slide show.
And the sound: "It was very choppy," says Mr. Paolini. Because not every site that passes the Internet signal along has equal computer power, he elaborated, the broadcast backed up the system, causing the audio to cut out every now and then.