History of the Rocketears

By January 1995 The ResRocket Surfer Project had amassed 600 members. "The mailing list was a hive of humor and strangeness, confessions, hints, tips and friendship," says Henshall. "Meanwhile the collaborations in the ftp site were growing and getting more focused."

In a true expression of Net democracy, the name of the group was chosen by a vote of the site's member ship who picked "Res Rocket" from a list of 10 names randomly generated by a computer program.

In April, Willy and Tim met up with Canton Becker and Matt Moller from the States - two Chicago University students who had created a "midi-MOO" - or in other words, a virtual environment that enabled multi-user, realtime music making across the Internet. The beta testing of teh DRGN software had thus begun.

On May 25th 1995 Netmare were commissioned to design and construct the Res Rocket Surfer Website. Netmare Beta-tested the DRGN software and designed the Web interface. Working closely with band members, they gave Res Rocket Surfer a distinctive visible international presence, and when the site briefly became Netscape's "cool site of the day", accesses hit around 150,000 in 24 hours.

Res Rocket Surfer's DRGN was unveiled two weeks ago at the Intel New Music Festival.

For a US$14.95 monthly subscription fee, users can select between public recording studios, rollicking jam sessions, or MOO-like chats. To play in the studios, musicians must use MIDI instruments or traditional instruments rigged up for MIDI protocol translation.

Inside the studio, each musician, represented by an avatar, can either play along in real time or perfect their part locally and add it to the mix later on.

Rocket Power was used to record a cover-tune of Bob Marley's 'Them Belly Full', recorded live on the BBC in front of over 55 million viewers in a deadline of under one hour. The single was being recorded for the charity 'war child'. The famous people you'll recognize are: lead vocals provided by Sinead O'Connor + Brinsley Forde (formerly of Aswad) in London, keyboards by Thomas Dolby in San Francisco and vocals from Lucky Dube in South Africa. The single was recorded live on television in BBC's Maida Vale Studios in London and produced by Matt Black + Jonathan More of Coldcut, and Tim Bran of Dreadzone.

The other musicans involved with this single: Jay Griggs [aka jay - new orleans], Willy Henshall [aka willers - san fran], Kevin Cunningham [aka citizenk - los angeles], Stacey Van Buskirk [aka girlie8 - san fran], Jon Voda [aka voda - london], Dave Walker [aka davew - san fran] and Tony Verderosa [aka tonyv - nyc]

The song, was only being sold over the Internet with all proceeds going to benefit the War Child charity.

Yesmate.com and Magex were distributing the single through a free CD loaded with digital content - including, free MP3 tracks with tunes from the Yesmamma community of artists, producers and DJs. The CD will come along with 50,000 July 2000 issues of the UK DJ Magazine.

The War Child single is available in secure audio format on the War Child CD.

The CD wasfree but you must donate $1.50 from your Magex digital wallet to 'buy' the single.

The Yesmamma War Child CD also contains:

audio mix by Rickee Whoop Whoop
6 hours and 30 minutes of top MP3 music from the Yesmamma online collective including tunes from The Cinematic Orchestra, Coldcut, Amon Tobin, Justice, Fug, Divine Society
installer software for Yesmate.com (BT SurfTime compatible)
Magex/RioPort software
VJamm video scratching software (as used by Coldcut)

The news of this event and the sale of the single was not announced until July 12, 2000 in this official press release.

First RocketPower Applications Have Entered Beta! Be one of the first audio professionals worldwide to have your own Rocket Network Internet Recording Studio.... Join the Rocket Network Beta Program!
Leading audio software manufacturers Steinberg and Emagic have developed new versions of their products that have "RocketPower". These enhanced versions enable users to collaborate and produce audio via the Internet.

Beta versions of these new RocketPower applications will be available to selected users for Beta testing. Every Rocket Network Beta tester will receive:

• Free access to Internet Recording Studios.
• Free Rocket Network Professional Upgrade.
• Free software upgrade to the new RocketPower Beta version.

Canton Becker:

"I left Rocket in August 2000, when it simply became to big and corporate for my tastes (and when I couldn't make much of a difference anymore in the face of marketing-driven development.) Rocket Network was bought (and shut down) by Digidesign/Avid in March 2003.

There are so many cool things that ought to be made, but there's not enough time to make them all by yourself. But when you get the wrong folks involved to help, the dream gets spoiled. *Sigh.*"

Zoggo (Benjamin Lewis):

"Resrocket (a.k.a Rocket Network) was an ambitious effort to create a global community of musicians collaborating online. In many ways, it succeeded beyond expectation. In other important areas, however, it failed. My involvement began back in 1996 or so, jamming online with very a basic MIDI app. Eventually the Resrocket programmers created an easy-to-use GM MIDI sequencer that worked flawlessly online in a virual studio environment. I spent many hours creating with people all over the world..."

Avid/Digidesign Acquires the Assets of Rocket Network Inc. According to Scott Dailey, Vice President of Business Development, Digidesign will not resurrect the service in its former incarnation. That means that Rocket's former collaboration partners such as Cubase and Emagic will have to find a new technology partner or develop their own remote collaboration service.

Doozy establishes the www.rocketears-online.net domain and FTP/Web server.

FtpSYNC was used and sessions continued. The messageboards flourished in a flamey flamboyance that kept most users intensely interested in the diabolical discourses.