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Why I oughta, but I probably won't.
I'm a bit sketchy about when I arrived here, but it was a long time ago. In many ways it was an alternative way of meeting up with some of those I actually knew from shopping at 58 Dean Street in London and its subsequent manifestations over the decades. We would occasionally have others who would descend on whichever pub we were using at the time when they had called at the shop and expressed an interest in going for a pint or more with like-minded soundtrack enthusiasts. Niall from Ireland was an example of this.
When Zoom meetings came on the scene last year I thought for a long time about joining a meeting before actually doing so. Stephen Woolston, its organiser I then realised I had befriended some time before but I had not actually ever met. He was presumably a friend of someone else I actually knew. I guess we've all friended others we've not really known. Anyway I joined the Zoom group, and have not looked back. I'm not one of the dominant voices in the group, but that is not a complaint just an observation. We're an easy-going group whose meetings are more akin to casual conversations in a pub. Sadly without the alcohol.
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Posted: |
Mar 26, 2021 - 7:31 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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Thanks for the reminder, Howard. It always takes me back to that particular time in the late 90s. I know I've told the story many times before, probably in this very thread.
Ca. 1995. I'm still in high school. I go online at a friend's house, who has this weird thing called internet. While scouring through filmmusic.com, I discover an "ad" for Film Score Monthly, the magazine. This was before they had a site. I go to the bank to get dollars, and send the required amount to Lukas (dollars in envelope!) for a subscription. First issue I eventually get is the TAKING OF PELHAM issue, which also marked their first CD release. I later get all the preceding issues, so I now have a complete FSM magazine collection.
December-97. FSM has been a site for about a year, two at the most. They implement a messageboard. At this time, I'm studying English at the University of Oslo. I can only go online at the internet terminals in the hallways, and have to be quick about it, because there's a line behind me. I look at the board, but don't post.
In January 1998, I enter the army. During downtime, or whilst doing chores around the compound, I go to the computer room with a slow modem dial-up for a peek at the FSM board. In March-98, I take my first step as board contributor. I create an account, and post my first FSM post -- I believe it's a query to Gerry Kroll about getting me the ol' Varese release of Conti's NORTH & SOUTH/THE RIGHT STUFF. He responds, we enter into a transaction (again -- dollars in envelope!). I buy several more CDs from Gerry in months and years to come.
Eventually, I get into the swing of things. The controversies surrounding Latham Conger III. The informative and entertaining posts by Terry Walstrom, Bill Smith, Rogerio Ferrari, Chris Kinsinger, Dana Wilcox, Guy McKone, Jim Cleveland, Deckard etc. etc. Many of whom are no longer around.
Towards the end of the year, they change the interface from the "tree format" to the type of messageboard that is more or less the same today. Around the same time, I notice your arrival, Howard - but I think you posted on the tree format too. We all hang around and have a great time untill late 1999, when - for some reason I've forgotten - the FSM board goes down. We all emigrate to moviemusic.com for about a year. Then FSM returns in October-2000, and we flock back.
Fastforward 21 years to this day. Some things are the same, some things have changed (for better and worse). But Jesus -- we've been here for the duration of an adult person. People who were born when we first logged on to the board, now have kids of their own.
[Sorry for all that -- I'm in a nostalgic mood today]
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At least we already know your answer to your question later, mate!! 
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I just realized that I'm a year away from my 30th anniversary as an "FSM-er," as I first subscribed to the newsletter in March 1992. As far as this board goes, I first started coming here in 1998 - I know this because that was the year the Seattle libraries installed internet. (I didn't get my own computer until '02.)
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Hi, Howard!
Hi, everybody!
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I just realized that I'm a year away from my 30th anniversary as an "FSM-er," as I first subscribed to the newsletter in March 1992. As far as this board goes, I first started coming here in 1998 - I know this because that was the year the Seattle libraries installed internet. (I didn't get my own computer until '02.)
Ah ... another Seattleite.
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I just realized that I'm a year away from my 30th anniversary as an "FSM-er," as I first subscribed to the newsletter in March 1992. As far as this board goes, I first started coming here in 1998 - I know this because that was the year the Seattle libraries installed internet. (I didn't get my own computer until '02.)
Ah ... another Seattleite.
Yes. Buried deeper in it every day.
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I was the moderator here for a while (a decade or so) before handing it off. Still here, almost 30 years later.
SheriffJoe
Hey joe, hope ya keeping well.
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Posted: |
Mar 27, 2021 - 11:27 PM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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Here's looking at you, Saul P, BillC, Preston NJ, and joan h.
Why I oughta, but I probably won't.
Yer the greatest, George. The fact that I too visited 58 Dean St. even if it was 45+ years ago only makes m'head go Zonesque at the thought that we along with any of the other blokes may have crossed paths on that very day.
Oh and tell Les that I kept Thor up till 2am the other night! Our record stands!! 
Hey joe, hope ya keeping well.
Forget Bus Riley, Sheriff Joe's Back In Town! We've had some good times, Mr. Rix, yes? The original Empire Of The Sun thread! And have never forgotten your reaction upon hearing Jerry was given The Story ("OH MY GAWD!" ). Gawd do I/we miss that guy.
Still waitin' on that steak dinner...
Oh I thought of you and that while typing! Dana, you still deepinaharta Texas? Listening to TKAM Ava-style??
...and vinylscrubber...
Yes!
...and the rest of the "gee, are they still alive?" bunch.
Thank you. We may be a bunch of maroons but The Over-the-Hill Gang we ain't.
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Thats a cassette i wanna hear at our next zoom...Howard Lemmon on tenor sax playing watermelon man!
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Posted: |
Apr 9, 2021 - 10:43 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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OK, so this is something I wrote for Maintitles this evening. But I thought it would work here too -- as an extended version of the previous post I made.
*****
This post is so long, I had to write it in Word first. I thought since I opened up for this topic I’m so passionate about, I could just as well go all the way. It’s important to me, and I’m so longwinded about it, because it helped defined who I am today. And I can use it as a reference in the future. Feel free to ignore it.
******
Internet. It was such a weird thing in the mid 90s. In 1994, I was in high school. One day, one of my classmates, who for some reason had access to computer rooms in the engineer college nearby, came up to me and told me about this internet thing. I had heard about it, but didn’t really know what it was. He presented it to me as this gigantic source of information about everything. I didn’t really believe him. Up untill that point, all my information about things I loved – bands like Supertramp, composers like John Williams – were acquired through encyclopedias. If I were lucky. So I gave him a challenge: Find all you can about Supertramp! Believing it was too obscure for this silly internet thingie. He came back the next day with a print-out of a site that had the complete discography and what-not. I was stunned.
Over the next year or so, I gradually found out more. We didn’t have internet at home, but I went to classmates who DID have home connections – you know, those slow, dial-up modems that drained the phone bill. Found a couple of Williams sites (Scott Hanson had one, remember him?). I also discovered filmmusic.com. At that site, there was a resource site about other film music resources, among them an “ad” of sorts about FSM. This was before they had a site of their own. You could send dollars in an envelope (I think it was $20) and get a 1-year subscription. I scribbled the information down, and decided to go for it. Went to the bank, took out dollars, sent it to Lukas, and my subscription had started (I believe the first issue I got was the one where they released their first CD, David Shire’s THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1-2-3….I have since acquired the preceding issues, so I now have a complete collection).
Eventually, we got internet at home, but I couldn’t stay on for long. I drained the phone bill, and I took up the line. In the few minutes I was online, I tried to absorb everything I could about all my “obscure” passions. I still believed I was the only person in Norway interested in soundtracks, but seeing these sites and notes online helped me understand “I was not alone”.
In 1996, aged 18, I moved away from home, to Oslo. Over the next year or so, my only internet connection was these computer terminals in the campus hallways. They were slow, but they got the work done. But again I had to be quick about it, because there was a line behind me of other people wanting to get online.
From there, it went quickly, and I’m not going to go into all the details. But after having studied at the university for a year and half (philosophy and English), I went into the army in January-1998. After the intital 3-month recruit period, I was stationed as a corporal at a military camp in the middle of nowhere, but pretty close to Oslo. I was a ‘sykevokter’ (a kind of nurse) serving at the army hospital 24/7, so I had one week on and one week off. While I was on, I sometimes snuck away from my duties to visit the computer room. I dialed up the slow line, and noticed that FSM now had a site – moreover, they had a messageboard in the now-defunct “branch format”! In March-1998, I made my first post there – a request to soundtrack salesman Gerry Kroll aka soundtrackers about getting me the Varese release of Bill Conti’s NORTH & SOUTH/THE RIGHT STUFF. We concluded the deal, and had several more deals over the next years.
During one of my “off” periods in 1998, when I was back home, I established two Yahoo Clubs, one about Elfman called “Elfmania” and another about general film music called “Celluloid Tunes” (if memory serves). The latter became the benchmark for my current site celluloidtunes.no, first formed as a site in the year 2000. So technically, my site is 23 years old, even though no one has heard about it. I also engaged a lot with a Spaniard called Ricard at the time (founder of the Yahoo Club “Heroic Film Music”), who would later establish what is now JWFAN.com. These Yahoo Clubs (later called Yahoo Groups) have now been deleted by Yahoo.
Back at FSM, business went on as usual. Lots of interesting information and posts, but also some controversies (particularly a guy called Latham Conger III, who would lash out at you if you went against him). I returned to the university in 1999. But then, suddenly, FSM went down. I can’t remember why. All FSM members emigrated to Peter Kelly’s moviemusic.com, and we stayed there about a year. Loads of great conversations were had.
In October-2000, the FSM messageboard suddenly came back, and we flocked back like the dedicated fans we were. Interface-wise, the current board is pretty much the same as it was back then, 21 years later. Shortly thereafter, I posted my first “official” criticism of complete and chronological releases (already a known entity by then, and I think the post was a re-post from something I’d posted on moviemusic.com), for which I’m now (in)famous. Lukas made fun of it with the “watermelon” story in the first of the get-togethers. I’m OK with that, have at it! But in general, I love the early 2000s on FSM. Someone started a thread about something – a score, a film – and we would discuss the film or music. Nothing, or very little, about desiring new releases or expansions, or any other technical nuts and bolts. This was pure aesthetics.
We had our share of controversial members (beyond myself) – Andre Lux, Pluto, Daniel2, what-have-you. And there was drama, just as there is today. But things seemed to sort themselves out.
I finished my university degree in 2004, which is about the same time as I started the “Cheers” thread (that thread is now a micro cosmos in itself, at least for me – recounting my life events in the 17 years since). After that, I went on to become a television personality of sorts in 2005 and 2006, and was then hired as a university professor throughout 2007.
At this point, FSM was still the go-to place for online discussion. It was also the first year I got internet connection in my small apartment, I think, after having had to use university connections up to this point. But I started to explore outwards.
At this point, I was already a member of JWFAN, who my old friend Ricard had started many years earlier, but didn’t participate much. But I noticed another site called scorereviews.com – created by Mikael Carlsson. I went there, and quickly came into the swing of things. It was such a different group from FSM. You didn’t have to “stay on your toes” in order to avoid controversy; you could just be who you wanted to be – drunk or sober, controversial or straightforward, it didn’t matter. I loved it. If FSM was the big disco that everyone went to, scorereviews was the pub on the corner. About a year into my stay there, Mikael had to close it down, but Bregt – one of the members – suggested that we created a new site and board, and that eventually became maintitles.net (after a round about what the name should be – I’m still not sold on maintitles!).
My academic career didn’t pan out. After 11 years in academia, and being tempted into TV after being a sort of “TV celebrity” myself, I went into television production in 2008 (as a casting agent), and worked as that until 2010, untill that career didn’t pan out either. From 2011 onwards, I’ve worked a freelance film (and film music) journalist, but rarely getting the income I need – which has now caused all kinds of problems (that I won’t go into here).
But coming to FSM, Maintitles, JWFAN and other film music forums has been a release valve throughout. Film Score Monthly will always be my original film music home, no matter how controversial or disliked I am (exemplified most recently by the dismissal in Stephen’s Zoom chats due to my inebriated state of mind). Maintitles will always remain my favourite film music forum on the net – a place where you can be yourself and just relax – even if the activity has waned. JWFAN has been fun to follow; or rather Ricard’s success after our Yahoo Club encounters and discussions in the late 90s. I also sometimes check out Filmtracks, Intrada and other places.
Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to meet many of these anonymous faces live. FSM, Maintitles, JWFAN. Without exception, all the meetings have been great. No arguing, no nonsense. Just pleasure. Despite what’s happening behind screen handles on anonymous boards. I could tell endless stories about these meetings over the last decade, and supply with great images, but I’m already longwinded enough.
I hope it will continue for as long as I live.
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Pardon!
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