Severe Tire Damage was the first band to perform live in the Internet, on June 24, 1993. They played a gig at Xerox PARC, and broadcast the performance live over MBone, the experimental IP multicasting backbone and virtual network.
>On Friday, November 18, 1994, the Rolling Stones decided to broadcast one of their concert tours on the Internet. Before their broadcast, Severe Tire Damage returned to the Internet, this time becoming the "opening act" for the Stones. Instead of an obscure Australian researcher, the entire world press was watching this time, and Severe Tire Damage was elevated from obscurity to Warholian fame.
>Newsweek magazine described Severe Tire Damage as being "a lesser known rock band." The Rolling Stones told The New York Times: "the surprise opening act by Severe Tire Damage was a good reminder of the democratic nature of the Internet."
>Band members: The core band consisted of these people:
>Russ Haines: guitar and vocals. Haines worked at DEC Systems Research Center.
>Mark Manasse: bass and vocals. Manasse worked at DEC Systems Research Center.
>Steven Rubin: vocals. Rubin worked at Apple Computer.
>Mark Weiser: drums. Weiser was Chief Technologist at Xerox PARC.
>History of the Internet - Severe Tire Damage, The Internet’s First Live Band
>Severe Tire Damage was the first live band on the internet.
>In 1993 they began multicasting onto the internet's IP multicast backbone, the MBONE.
>In 1994 they opened for the Rolling Stones on the Stone's first internet show.
>The band often played in the parking garage at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in Palo Alto.
>Severe Tire Damage was the first band to perform live over the internet.
>Like many bands, they performed at garages and at parties.
>However these garages were the parking lots of companes creating a new world of personal computers and open networking: DEC, Apple, Sun, Xerox PARC.
>And at these parties were prople who were inventing the technology of this new world.
>In 1993 Severe Tire Damage began to broadcast video & audio performances over the internet's new IP MulticastBackbone - thge MBONE.
>In 1994 Severe Tire Damage opened the Rolling Stones first online internet show.
>"We were using about half the available bandwidth. Half the available total bandwidth of the internet was just us, doing really really bad songs. That's because the internet had not been pumped up to do anything with audio or video at the time. The internet was for email, was for text." [...] "You gotta remember too, that this was 152x76 pixels or something, incredibly small screen, updated maybe 8-12 times a second. The audio at best a bad telephone connection."-Russ Haines, Digital Equipment Corporation
>"I think what we did was a kind of piracy, like in the early days of people buying airplanes, where you'll land in some farmer's field, because you had no place else to go, and it was ok because there weren't very many airplanes around. There aren't very many people now who can use the internet in this way, and so anything goes for new, because we're still explorers exploring brand new space and there's very very few of us." -Mark Weiser (1995), Chief Scientest, Xerox PARC
