Severe Tire Damage is mentioned prominently, right next to those gleaming spikes.
Yes, "Tiger Teeth" is the name of that thing that causes Severe Tire Damage.
Here some lovely shots of Tiger Teeth from the manufacturer's catalog (Delta Scientific).
Not many people use Tiger Teeth any more ... they do too much damage.
But there are still a few places that use them.
One such place was the Hertz car rental agency at the San Francisco Airport.
When we spoke with the manager there, he told us that he has no intention of
removing them from his lots, because "they REALLY work".
And just for fun, here's a snippet from the 1998 movie "Urban Legend" that shows the usefulness of tiger teeth.
Zero 1987
The band "Zero" releases a song titled Severe Tire Damage on their album, "Here Goes Nothin'".
Vice Academy 1989
In one scene two guys listen to a tape of their favorite rock band: Severe Tire Damage.
It was not one of our songs.
This is the first time that the band performs under the name Severe Tire Damage.
The Vampire Lestat October 31, 1990
The band uses a different name for a Halloween performance.
RU-486 December 31, 1990
The band continues to use different names to be topical and provocative.
The Creeping Features October 31, 1991
The band uses a different name for a Halloween performance.
Playboy Magazine September, 1992
In "Real Men Don't Bond", by Bruce Feirstein:
"... Real Men still keep waiting for a band to be named either Republican Guard or Severe Tire Damage."
You're welcome.
Severe Tire Damage makes the first livestreamed performance on the Internet.
Performing from Xerox PARC, the broadcast is seen live as far away as Australia.
Engineering by Ron Frederick and Steve Deering.
Robin Williams' character pretends to be the singer of
Severe Tire Damage. He was never in the band.
At around the time of our first broadcast on the Internet,
Robin Williams joked about a band called Severe Tire Damage in the movie.
Mrs. Doubtfire.
He was certainly not in the band, and more likely, he'd never heard of us.
Severe Tire Damage is simply a good joke band name.
We couldn't resist, and neither could Robin Williams.
Scene from Mrs. Doubtfire
The Making of '...And God Spoke' 1993
In the mockumentary, a production designer explains his affiliation with directors who made music videos for little known bands: "Bjorn Again" and "Severe Tire Damage".
The infamous article that proposes Severe Tire Damage's drummer as "rock's smartest".
"PARC employs anthropologists to study the workplace, making the think tank
something of a high-tech oddball.
So is Mark Weiser. Besides his day job as a
Silicon Valley savant,he moonlights drumming for a rock band called Severe Tire Damage.
Probably he is rock's smartest drummer. He is ebullient about Severe Tire Damage.
He is ebullient about computers. In fact, he is generally ebullient.
And so when PARC anthropologists told him that a major flaw of current
computers is that they are divorced from their surroundings, he caught the
idea's rhythm..."
-- "We're going to have computers coming out of the woodwork", by Richard Wolkomir,
Smithsonian Magazine, page 84, September 1994.
". . . In the past, the MBone has been
used largely to broadcast arcane discussions about how to digitize libraries and
for space-shuttle videos hosted by the National Aeronautics Space Administration.
(There have been previous live concerts, including one featuring Severe Tire Damage,
a band formed by a Xerox scientist.)"
-- "Wild Horses Couldn't Drag Mick's On-Line Fans From This Concert", by Jared Sandberg,
The Wall Street Journal, page B1, November 18, 1994.
Covers how Severe Tire Damage opened for the Rolling Stones.
Severe Tire Damage appeared on the British news channel Sky TV (Britain's "CNN") on November 19, 1994.
They aired the only known remote site footage
of Severe Tire Damage from the Stones gig (these pictures were taken off computers
in England on the night of the Rolling Stones MCast).
Watch the News Report:
The Washington Post November 19, 1994
Documents the first MCast by Severe Tire Damage.
". . . The MBONE technology is not new--NASA has
been using it to multicast audio and video of space launches for years. The first
documented cybercast of live music cover the MBONE occurred in June 1993, in Palo
Alto, Calif., at a Xerox corporate function (the band, Severe Tire Damage, includes
a former University of Maryland computer professor). . . ."
-- "MICK JAGGER'S OVERBYTE: The Stones' Concert on the Information
Hypeway", by Richard Leiby, The Washington Post, November 19, 1994.
Sunday Boston Globe November 20, 1994
Covers Severe Tire Damage's opening act for the Rolling Stones.
". . . The party-line link enabled a renegade band out of Palo Alto, Calif.,
to electronically crash the party and interrupt about 10 minutes of dull pre-show
interviews. It was a flashback to the days of pirate radio, when entrepreneurs with
high-powered radiotransmitters could commandeer part of the airwaves.
It's unlikely Severe Tire Damage will win any recording contracts with the stunt,
although congratulations are probably on the way from their Silicon Valley
coworkers. . . ."
-- "Stones Rock the Internet", by Michael Saunders and Michele R. McPhee, Sunday Boston Globae,
page 1, November 20, 1994.
". . . The MBONE Broadcast began on Friday
November 18th 10:00pmEST after a an unannounced renegade warmup set by an obscure
and very bad band of furry Palo Alto Geeks. They touted that this was the first ever warmup set by
a band in a different city than the headliner. They started their warmup set
at 9:30EST just as we were about to
do our final set of broadcast tests before the do or die live video feed came via
satellite from the Cotton Bowl so we fully agreed when they did crufty durges like
"I'm an asshole." and "We don't care.". . . "
Severe Tire Damage Editorial: Severe Tire Damage warmed up with comedian Denis Leary's "I'm an Asshole" during
a breakdown of the local MBone connection. Apparently there was no breakdown...
Posted several days later
". . . The Sexually Tranmitted
Diseases came back on for a followup acoustic set, much much much worse than the first,
because they covered campy folk songs that we all recognized from numerous acid trips
around the fires at Grateful Dead parking lot parties, and Washington Square Park furry
troll guitar singalong sessions. YUCK!"
Severe Tire Damage Editorial: Severe Tire Damage's local audience and half the band left during the Stones' MCast.
Bass player Mark Manasse and guitarist Russ Haines stuck around after the show to
host a live worldwide gameshow/singalong, awarding virtual beers to the audience.
Highlights included heavy virtual beer consumption by a rowdy Australian site and
a "Beavis and Butthead" imitation from Finland.
The New York Times November 22, 1994
Coverage of Severe Tire Damage's opening act for the Rolling Stones.
". . . 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 PaloAlto, 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."said 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-halfshow in June 1993. . . .
". . . Mr. Jagger greeted the
Internet audience and said he hoped the system didn't collapse. A spokesman for the group
said the surprise opening act by Severe Tire Damage was a good reminder of the democratic
nature of the Internet."
-- "Rolling Stones Live on
Internet: Both a Big Deal and a Little Deal", by Neil Strauss, The New York Times,
page C15, November 22, 1994.
Severe Tire Damage Editorial: "democratic"? ...try "anarchic".
Covers Severe Tire Damage's opening act for the Rolling Stones.
"9:30 p.m.: . . . suddenly,
as yet another scoopful of penne with pesto is heaped atop a plastic plate in New Jersey,
a pirate transmission begins making its way over the MBone.
"In Xerox Parc,
a Palo Alto, Calif., research facility, a grunge-looking band called Severe Tire Damage
--led by dummer Mark Weiser, director of Xerox Corp.'s computer science lab--attempts
to steal the Stones' thunder as an unscheduled opening acton the Net.
"They may
not be very good, but they are the first to perform a warm-up set in a different state,
geographically, from the headliner. The spirit of Internet anarchy has met
rock's rebellion and neither has backed down. . . .
". . . 9:50 p.m.: With
10 minutes to go before a canned videotape of backstage Stones interviews and
outtakes are to be transmitted from Jersey City over the MBone, and Severe Tire Damage
about to relinquish its unlawful hold on the MBone, Thinking Pictures and Sun haven't
even received a test pattern from Dallas' Cotton Bowl. . . ."
-- "Stones and the Net", Interactive Age, page 1, November 28, 1994.
Severe Tire Damage Editorial: Factual Errors, (1) Our MCast was from Digital's
Systems Research Center, (2) Severe Tire Damage was not led by "dummer Mark Weiser", (3) "unlawful hold"? -not!
Newsweek Magazine December 5, 1994
Compares Severe Tire Damage to the Rolling Stones, favorably!
" . . . NASA regularly bradcasts its space-shuttle missions over the MBone.
Bill Clinton, Al Gore and the Swedish prime minister have all appeared on it.
To say nothing of Severe Tire Damage and Deth Specula, two lesser known rock bands who beat
Mick to the MBone . . ."
-- "The MBone: Can't You Hear It Knocking", by Katie Hafner,
Newsweek Magazine, page 86, December 5, 1994.
Passing mention of Severe Tire Damage opening for the Rolling Stones.
". . . And yet, the evening wasn't a total loss.
After Thinking Pictures finished its work, someone at the company's office
noticed that other sites in this multimedia mini-Net were transmitting video.
A small crowd began gathering around the Thinking Pictures monitor to watch
two bearded guitarists belt out an unplugged cover of the Wild Cherry song
"Play That Funky Music" from one of the sites (berc@panther.pa.dec.com).
"It was then that the real beauty of the Stones concert became clear.
The Internet is the great leveler-the only place in the world where the
Rolling Stones can beyour warm-up act. Now that's something to get excited about."
-- "EXILE ON A MAINFRAME: The Rolling Stones appear live--sort of--on the Internet",
by George Mannes, Entertainment Weekly, page 82, #252, December 9, 1994.
Fortune smiles on our drummer as he mentions Severe Tire Damage.
" . . . Weiser also confesses to being the drummer for a band called Severe Tire
Damage that sneaked onto the Internet before the Stones concert as an unscheduled
opening act. . ."
-- "AloneTogether: Will Being Wired Set Us Free?", by Andrew Kupfer,
Fortune Magazine, page 100, March 20, 1995.
Coverage of the band, including interviews with bass and drummer.
Severe Tire Damage appeared on The Computer Chronicles on May 2, 1995.
The nationally-distributed PBS program appeared in the San Francisco Bay area
on channels 9 (KQED), 32 (KMTP),54 (KTEH) and 60 (KCSM).
Both of Severe Tire Damage's Marks were interviewed during the show.
Mentions how the band opened for the Rolling Stones.
"Music groups from around the world are posting their
songs on IUMA. It has become a form of music self-publishing allowing any group
to distribute their songs electronically. However, the group Severe Tire Damage went
one step further. They actually "broadcast" a live concert on the Internet,
real-time audio and video, as an unofficial opening act for the recent Rolling
Stones debut session on the Internet. The audio quality is marginal, the video
has a slow frame rate, and you need mega hardware to play this game, but the idea
is obviously very cool. As one of the members of the band said--right now there
aren't locks on the Internet and so we can do what we want."
-- "Inside the Internet", by Stewart Cheifet, The Cheifet Letter, page 3, vol 6, issue 8, June 1995.
Severe Tire Damage Editorial: Stewart Cheifet was the host of PBS's "The Computer Chronicles".
Article by drummer Mark mentions our weekly MCasts.
"Today the MBONE is primarily used for special event broadcasting;
the one regular show is by rock band Severe Tire Damage (every Wednesday at 9 P.M. PST)."
-- "Bleeding Edge Technology - From Lab Coats to Market Caps", by Mark Weiser and Andy Garman,
The Red Herring, page 54, August 1995.
Describes how the Rolling Stones followed Severe Tire Damage on the web.
". . . In early 1993, Deering and others were testing ways of transmitting a
lecture across the MBone when a colleague, Mark Weiser, suggested they transmit
his ad-hoc rock concert as well.
"As a result, the band, Severe Tire Damage,
became the first group to perform live on the Internet.
"Late last year, the
Rolling Stones tried the MBone as well. . ."
-- "Homers, Out of the PARC", by Betsy Corcoran,
The Washington Post, page F2 (business section), September 13, 1995.
Nanotopia November 13, 1995
The show features Mark Weiser, and even lets him drum.
Severe Tire Damage appeared on Nanotopia, a 45-minute British documentary which aired on November 13, 1995.
Watch a Segment:
C|Net Central 1996
Severe Tire Damage's tech crew gets to play.
Severe Tire Damage appeared on C|Net in 1996, back when it was a nationally syndicated show.
In addition, the 10 second and 30 second ads for the
show featured Severe Tire Damage prominently.
The show showcased Severe Tire Damage's MBone Wizard, Lance Berc, who worked with BAGnet (Bay Area Gigabit Network).
At one point, Berc and C|Net host Richard Hart shared a virtual "high five".
Ad for the Show:
Watch the Show:
The Official Computer Bowl Trivia Book 1996
Asks "What was the first rock group to perform live on the Internet?" We'll give you one guess.
"Q: What was the first rock group to go on-line on the Internet:
the Rolling Stones,Severe Tire Damage, or Aerosmith?"
"A: Severe Tire Damage;
The group performed Nov. 18, 1994, on the Internet 20 minutes before the
Stones began their first-ever on-line concert."
-- "The Official Computer Bowl Trivial Book", by Christopher Morgan,
Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1996.
Also appeard in: "Test Your Nerdiness",
Mercury News Staff, The San Jose Mercury News, page 1E, business section, May 26, 1996.
Using the Internet / Life on the Internet 1996
More band coverage, including the drummer's work.
Severe Tire Damage appeared on the Discovery Channel in a program called "Using the
Internet" in 1996. The band opened and closed the show, and there was an interview with Severe Tire Damage's drummer,
Mark Weiser. The program was later re-edited into a series and sold as a PBS show called,
"Life on the Internet."
Watch the Show:
San Jose Mercury News May 26, 1996
Reprint of computer bowl questions, including #41 that readers of this site will know.
"Test Your Nerdiness", Mercury News Staff,
The San Jose Mercury News, page 1E (business section), May 26, 1996.
OK, propeller heads. This is your chance to show your significant other that
you are, indeed, the Household Expert on Everything Technical.
In honor of the recently completed Computer Bowl, sponsored by the Computer
Museum in Boston, here are 50 questions that have been used in past Computer
Bowl contests. The questions were taken from ``The Official Computer Bowl
Trivia Book'' by Christopher Morgan.
1 What famous actor tried to steal IBM customers away to Apple Computer
in an early Apple II TV ad: Alan Alda, Kevin Costner or Clint Eastwood?
2 In the comic strip Doonesbury, what computer did Mark learn to
program: The PDP-11/70, the Macintosh, or the IBM PC?
3 In what year was the IBM PC introduced?
4 What was the first home computer to sell a million units: the Apple
II, the Commodore VIC-20 or the TRS-80?
5 What does WIMP stand for?
6 His 1989 song ``Networking,'' has the following refrain: ``Networking, I'm
user friendly/ Networking, I install with ease/ Data processed, truly BASIC/
I will upload you, you can download me.'' Who wrote this: Frank Zappa, Todd
Rundgren or Warren Zevon?
7 A 1993 art exhibit titled Genetic Images at the Centre Georges Pompidou in
Paris used a supercomputer to generate real-time images that ``evolved''with
audience interaction. What supercomputer was used?
8 In the Bloom County comic strip, what was the name of Oliver Wendall
Jones's personal computer?
9 Scott Page is one of the co-founders of 7th Level Inc., which sells
interactive multimedia entertainment software. At one time he played tenor
sax for a rock group. Was it Pink Floyd, Cheap Trick or Yes?
10 The Intelligent Machines Journal later became what publication:
InfoWorld, ComputerWorld, PC World or Datamation?
11 The terms ``virtual reality'' and ``cyberspace'' were inspired by science
fiction's cyberpunk genre. According to Paul Saffo in the Communications of
the ACM, John Brunner is credited with writing the first cyberpunk novel.
Was it called ``Stand on Zanzibar,'' ``Mona Lisa Overdriver'' or ``Shockwave
Rider''?
12 The word ``hypertext'' was coined in the '70s by whom?
13 TV ads for personal computers have been around for many years. For each
of the following celebrity spokespeople, identify the computer company he
represented: a) Alan Alda; b) Dick Cavett; c) Bill Cosby; d) William
Shatner.
14 What book about computers won a Pulitzer Prize?
15 What city's newspapers were the first to use computers to set editorial
and classified pages: New York, Oklahoma City or San Jose?
16 What company worked with Walt Disney Co. to supply effects for the
animated cartoon classic ``Fantasia''?
17 What operating system is mentioned in the movie ``Jurassic Park''?
18 What was the name of PBS's six-part series on the history of the
computer?
19 In the 1980s, a Taiwan-based computer company offered a cheap,
do-it-yourself hardware modification that seemed to triple the speed of a
PC. In fact it merely slowed the system clock down so that benchmarks
appeared to run faster. What was this modification called?
20 Some sources say the term ``personal computer'' was first used to
describe a computer used by Massachusetts Institute of Technology hackers.
It cost nearly $3 million and filled one small room. What was the computer
called?
21 Agnes, Paul and Denise were the names of three custom chips inside which
PC?
22 During the development of the Apple Macintosh, what was the name of the
ancestor of the Mac's Finder? Was it ``The Searcher,'' ``The Flounder'' or
``The Seeker''?
23 Electronic Learning magazine says that, as of 1988, at least one state
required all public school children to take a minimum of one computer course
before graduating from high school. Is it Texas, Massachusetts or
California?
24 In 1974, Borland founder Philippe Kahn first used a personal computer.
Was it the Sphere I, the Micral, the KIM-1 or the SCELBI 8H?
25 In 1983, the Heath Co. marketed a robot kit. What was the name of the
robot?
26 In 1985, a number of computers were discontinued. Name the company that
produced each of the following computers that were discontinued that year:
a) Rainbow; b) Lisa; c) Adam.
27 In 1992, Robert X. Cringley wrote ``Accidental Empires,'' a controversial
gossipy book about the PC industry. The subtitle of the book begins, ``How
the boys of Silicon Valley make their millions, battle foreign competition
and . . .'' Complete the subtitle.
28 One of the earliest personal computers was called the Altair and was
manufactured by MITS. What does MITS stand for?
29 The earliest Intel microprocessor chip was the 4004. Was it first used as
part of an early PC, a Japanese-made calculator or a frequency modulator?
30 What diamater were IBM's first floppy disks: five inches, eight inches or
12 inches?
31 What was the original in-house name for the IBM PC?
32 What was the only personal computer to be named after the state in which
it was produced?
33 What are the real geographical locations of the following places: a)
Silicon Prarie; b) Silicon Valley North; c) Silicon Glen?
34 SEGA is the name of a popular manufacturer of computer video games. What
do the letters SEGA stand for?
35 Arcade games are often thought to be male-oriented, yet a woman, Donna
Bailey, designed one of the most successful video games. Was it Centipede,
Tempest or Ms. Pac-Man?
36 Gen. Douglas MacArthur was once the chairman of the board of a computer
company. Was it Sperry Rand, IBM or Burroughs?
37 Name a PC entrepreneur who has been knighted.
38 Gene Amdahl built the WISC computer for his Ph.D. dissertation at the
University of Wisconsin. In what field does he hold the Ph.D.: engineering,
physics or mathematics?
39 Niklaus Wirth is the well-known developer of the computer languages
Pascal and Modula. What was his nickname at Stanford University?
40 The Pizza Time restaurant chain was started by Atari founder Nolan
Bushnell. What was the name of Pizza Time's mouse robot?
41 What was the first rock group to go on-line on the Internet: the Rolling
Stones, Severe Tire Damage or Aerosmith?
42 3Com Corp. is a well-known networking company. The company name is short
for three words that all begin with ``com.'' What are they?
43 What widely used distrubited-campus-information service originated at the
University of Minnesota and is named after the university's mascot?
44 Who introduced a ``worm'' program into the Internet on Nov. 2, 1988?
45 Before it changed to its current name in 1924, what was IBM called?
46 In a 1984 lawsuit, Berkeley Systems was sued for using the winged toaster
image taken from the cover art of which rock group's album: A) The Grateful
Dead; B) The Moody Blues; C) Jefferson Airplane?
47 During the 1980s, was the per-capita divorce rate higher in the heart of
Silicon Valley, Santa Clara County, or in Boston's Middlesex County where
Boston's Route 128 is located?
48 Of the following companies, which conducted business in tents following
the 1989 California earthquake: Apple, Borland, Sun or Tandem?
49 Before it became animated, what time was the Macintosh watch icon set to?
50 The HP-35 calculator was the first handheld calculator to include
scientific functions. What does the number 35 refer to?
Reprinted with permission from The Official Computer Bowl Trivia Book by
Christopher Morgan. Copyright (C)1996 by The Computer
Museum. Published by Crown Trade Paperbacks.
The Boston Globe October 10, 1996
Passing mention of Severe Tire Damage playing for Korean television.
"Another band, Severe Tire Damage, got exposure on a Korean TV station by talking
about how they used their Web site as a promotional tool, distributing fresh audio
and video each week.
'Severe Tire Damage may have just become the hot new craze in Korea,' says Russ
Haines, the band's guitarist."
-- "Bands on the Web", Globe Staff, The Boston Globe, page c4, October 10, 1996.
Korea January 1997
Severe Tire Damage in a 4-hour piece about the Internet.
Severe Tire Damage appeared on MBC (one of only three television channels in Korea at the time) in a special about the Internet in January, 1997.
The four-hour special featured interviews with many prominent computer scientists, but none as important
as Severe Tire Damage.
The band closed the first hour of the special; was featured during the second hour; and returned in the third
hour for an interview with Steve.
The deluge of fan mail from Korea continued for years,
all for a band that the Korean producers correctly described as "ridiculous."
Watch a Segment:
Watch another Segment:
Usenix January 10, 1997
The band closes a computer conference, our largest gig.
On January 10, 1997, Severe Tire Damage is invited to play a huge computer conference called USENIX down in Anaheim, California,
This conference is so big that it has three parallel sessions, forcing attendees to choose among them throughout the conference.
Only two talks are given joint status and presented in the largest auditorium so everyone can watch:
the opening keynote speech and the closing performance by Severe Tire Damage.
We rock our largest audience yet while delivering what passes for a technical talk called, "Stupid MBone Tricks."
USENIX Introduction
USENIX Talk Excerpt
USENIX "Chris Killed Your Dog"
ComputerWorld February 17, 1997
An article about Mark Weiser barely mentions Severe Tire Damage.
"Less Intrusion is more Useful," by Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown offers the usual pontification by the sages of the Internet
along with silly photos of them.
Mark's bio finally gets around to mentioning the most important aspect of it all: his contributions to Severe Tire Damage.
Discusses the Severe Tire Damage performance at USENIX.
"This year all three USENIX tracks - Refereed Papers, Invited Talks, and
USELINUX Business - shared a common closing session. This year's ceremony
featured the band Severe Tire Damage. The band began its musical career
under another name with a different collection of people. Originally, all
members were employed at DEC, but over the years the band's members have
changed as often as its name.
Severe Tire Damage entertained USENIX participants for an hour and a half,
alternating between playing live music - the lyrics of which usually had a
humorous technical slant - and describing its member's collective
experiences that led to becoming the band it is today.
For up-to-date information on Severe Tire Damage, check out their '2 k3wl 4
u' Web site at http://www.std.org."
-- "Reports on the 1997 USENIX Technical Conference in Anaheim:
Joint Closing Session, Severe Tire Damage's Stupid MBone Tricks,
A Lecture/Demonstration", by Idajean M. Fisher, ;login, Vol 22, No 2, page 37, April, 1997.
Full article about the band. Too bad you can't read Swedish.
Severe Tire Damage - the first live band on the Internet
This is a rough translation of an article that appeared in InterNet Guiden, Nummer 1, 1997
[The cover also said "endast 29 kronor (inkl moms)" which
we figure means, "Only 29 Kronor (still cheap)."]
When the Rolling Stones
announced their performance on November 18, 1994 as the
first Internet broadcast concert, they were way off base.
Soon thereafter they had to change the announcement to
"the first Internet concert with a 'major' band".
Already, a year earlier, on June 24, 1993, the entire world
could see and hear Severe Tire Damage perform live via the Net.
In order to really add insult to injury for the Rolling Stones,
Severe Tire Damage gave a surprise performance as a warm-up band on the Net
half an hour before the Stones' concert.
Severe Tire Damage, describing their music as "loud", hail from
Palo Alto, California, and is made up of four not entirely young garage rockers.
Professionally they all work in the computer industry.
The lead singer, Steve Rubin, works at Apple Research Laboratories.
Mark Manasse, bass player and singer, works for Digital Systems Research
Center (the outfit that created Alta Vista), where the guitar player Russ
Haines used to be employed.
He "doesn't work" nowadays, but he occasionally fills in as sound
technician and record producer, and toys with 3D graphics.
You can read everything about the hardware and software Russ Haines uses on his
home Web page.
The drummer, Mark Weiser, is cheif technologist at Xerox PARC, where the
technology resulting in today's GUIs (Mac and Windows, etc.) was born.
With these high tech employers in the background it is not surprising that this
California band that noone has heard of was the first live performer on the Net.
The concert was sent over the Internet Multicast Backbone (MBone).
Russ Haines, the guitar player, tells us how it came about:
Our drummer, Mark Weiser, got us a gig on the roof of Xerox PARC.
Coincidentally, on the same day, PARC was visited by Van Jacobsen,
the inventor of the MBone.
Jacobsen was there to demonstrate multicasting technology.
As another aspect of Severe Tire Damage's technological
exaggerations, we figured it might be fun to broadcast the concert
across the Internet.
We had a small audience in Australia, but more importantly, our local
audience went indoors to avoid the scorching sun, and viewed us on their
computer screens.
High-tech engineers don't like too much time in the sun.
"We'll never be sharing a stage with the Rolling
Stones --except on the Internet."
Russ Haines, guitarist of Severe Tire Damage
We posted some questions to Russ Haines and the lead singer, Steve Rubin:
Q: Is it true that the members of the Rolling Stones hate you?
Steve: No, they don't hate us.
Apparently Mick Jagger stated that "Severe Tire Damage highlighted the democracy
of the Internet when they injected themselves as a warm-up band to our performance".
Those who hate us (or maybe not) are the technicians who handled the Internet
broadcast of the Rolling Stones.
Since our Internet staff is much more knowledgeable and experienced than theirs,
the quality of our MBone broadcast was far superior.
(Editor's note: Severe Tire Damage was back by Digital Systems Research Center, while
Thinking Pictures and Sun Microsystems handled the Stones concert).
What do you think about the future of live music on the Net?
Steve: Live music on the net has a future only if people are willing
to pay for it.
After all, we're living in a capitalist society.
As things are now, there's no way of making money by playing on the MBone.
But music is not unique in that the Internet is a cash challenge.
Until commercial entities find a way of making money on the Internet, it'll stay a toy.
Russ: [A sentence in Swedish with three dependant clauses that
can't be found in the English interview.] It can't help but be a big thing.
Certainly bandwidth is one of the most important issues that is slowing
it down. And there's also the question of who will pay for all the bandwidth.
Anyone with access to the Net now can't imagine living without email and
the web for immediate information. In the next few years, live video and
audio will certainly become just as familiar -and invaluable. From live theatre
as entertainment, came "moving pictures" which quickly became
"talkies" which became television as technology progressed. Pony
Express became telegraph which became telephone. The Internet is still
just beginning to be explored by those who are just discovering it. Some
of the goodies that will be developed in the next few years haven't even
been thought of yet.
What brought you together - your interest in computers, in music
or your dream of becoming rock'n'roll stars?
Steve: Our interest in music. It is only a side-effect
that we all work with computers...that is how we knew each other in the
first place. We did not dream of being rock&roll stars, but how can
we deny that it crossed our minds. After all, in this world, the heroes
are the rock&roll stars and the astronauts.
Russ: Soon after I started work at Digital Equipment Corporation's
Systems Research Center, I discovered there was a really bad rock and roll
band that rehearsed in the basement at night. I found myself playing guitar
and we began practicing regularly, rather than just frantically getting
ready for the next concert the day beforehand. While the musicianship of
the band progressed, we began playing songs with more musical qualities.
Rather than playing just "John Wayne was a Nazi" and "Corporate
Deathburger" we tried to find songs that were both danceable and easy
enough to play. During all this, most of the band members were single and
had nothing better to do than spend money on useless things. Musical toys
are certainly some of the best useless things to buy. We love toys. Huge
speaker stacks, wireless transmitters, audio effects --nothing was too
absurd. As we began to acquire toys, other friends found STD a good place
to spend time and money. Brad, our lighting and network effects wizard,
built a wireless remote-controlled stage lighting system. We had flashing
lights, sirens, colored spotlights. Then we added a theatrical fog machine.
Our MBone wizard, Lance, couldn't stop playing with it. Meanwhile, Steve
the vocalist, not wanting to be outdone by the guitarist and bass player,
bought an Apple Powerbook to be used solely as a lyrics storage device.
Steve searched the Internet and found over thirty megabytes of lyrics.
He can find the words to any song we've ever tried to play.
What do you take the most serious, your work or your music?
Russ: You'd be hard-pressed to find anything that a member of
STD takes seriously. When Mark, the drummer, was recently promoted to Chief
Technologist and had to fly to the corporate headquarters of Xerox every
week, he would schedule an overnight flight and sleep under an unoccupied
desk until the board meeting, then fly back that afternoon to make it to
band rehearsal that night. Mark, the bass player, occasionally has made
it to band rehearsal straight from the airport after presenting a mathematics
paper in in Europe. Steve, the vocalist, perhaps said it best, "Now
I know why I got my PhD, to play in Severe Tire Damage." Everyone
in the band is a leader in their field (except me: I haven't worked in
years) and works hard to stay there. We know that STD sucks, but it sucks
in such new and interesting ways...
Steve: Although we all take our work seriously, we know that it is
important to take your fun seriously, too, in order to retain sanity. The
band is very important. Some of us may indeed take it more seriously than
our work. I, for example, would sooner quit my job than the band.
How large was the audience on the Internet concerts?
Steve: Our largest internet audience was the Rolling Stones
warmup gig. We estimate that a few thousand people were watching (because
there were a few hundred sites connected). Our first MBone performance
garnered only a few listeners, but some as far away as Australia. Although
we are certainly not an international success, it is true that we are very
well known in computer circles. In fact, nearly every computer programmer/engineer
that I meet these days has heard of our band.
Russ: [A sentence that seems to say:] We were just interviewed
by a Korean TV crew! [Sentence created and emphasized in Sweden.]
Do you think this is a realistic alternative for "unknown"
bands to get a larger audience?
Russ: It may be easiest to think of it as a college radio station:
a place where you hear a lot of weird stuff, some of which may have redeeming
value. There are already sites on the Net that are virtual radio stations,
playing some of the better independant music available worldwide. Just
as word processors didn't make everyone a great writer and desk-top publishing
didn't make graphic artists and editors out of people, the ability to distribute
music and performance via the internet won't make everyone a virtual Paganini
or Marcel Marceau.It does however, give almost everyone who thinks they
have something to say an outlet. There's plenty of room for everyone, however,
and we look forward to watching everyone else soon.
What are your plans for the future?
Steve: Our next live concert will be on January 8, broadcast
from Anaheim, California (home of DisneyLand). We will be playing a live
concert for the Usenix conference, and broadcasting it onto the MBone.
Beyond that, we haven't made many plans, but we will surely play many more
MBone shows (we have done nearly two dozen so far).
Guitarist and vocalist chat about Severe Tire Damage.
Steve and Russ were interviewed on the PBS show "The Internet Cafe" in 1997.
The show was filmed at the Cybersmith Cafe in Palo Alto, California.
The history of Severe Tire Damage and its technical innovations were discussed.
The Custom CD and Severe Tire Damage's website
were plugged by host Stewart Cheifet.
Before filming, the producers of "Internet Cafe" give Steve, Russ, and
Lance free passes to all of the VR games at the Cybersmith Cafe.
While waiting for the video crew
to shoot the interview, Severe Tire Damage racked up hundreds of dollars of game time.
By the time the interview
started at midnight, the producers had become accustomed to hearing,
"Can we have another game card? This one's used up."
Severe Tire Damage's Mark Manasse talks about bilking the known universe out of their money.
Wired Magazine May 1997
An article about drummer Mark and the hazards of Severe Tire Damage.
"If Mark Weiser's name sounds vaguely familiar, it's probably because he plays drums in
Severe Tire Damage (www.std.org/), the first band to broadcast a concert live on
the Internet in June 1993.
What you may not realize, however, is that the hyperpercussive Weiser
leads a double life: he's also cheif technologist at Xerox Parc."
-- "Hothouse Flowers", David Diamond, Wired Magazine, page 172, May, 1997.
Check out Severe Tire Damage's way-cool bass player.
Austrian TV September 8, 1997
An Austrian film crew has dinner with Severe Tire Damage.
Mark the drummer was invited to a technology/performance art festival in Austria.
To warn their countrymen, they sent a video crew.
The result was this piece on ORF, an Austrian television network.
Lots of fun footage of everyone.
It even includes a band dinner at Blue Chalk where Brad phones Mark to ask him to pass the bread.
Notice also that they used the original artist versions of songs we played for their background music.
And notice also that Severe Tire Damage got to swear quite clearly on Austrian television.
Only one problem with the video: it's in German!
Watch the Show:
Konrad Magazine 1997
An article mentions (in German) how the band eats at Beppos.
"Bei 'Beppo' steigt jeden Mittwoch die Stimmung.
Der Italiener mit niedrigen Decken und Hunderten von Fotos an den Wanden ist Treffpunkt
fur die Nerd-Band 'Severe Tire Damage' ('Schwerer Reinfenschaden').
Die Jungs, irgendwo bei Firmen wie Xerox PARC bis Digital Equipment beschaftigt,
sind die wohl schlechteste Band im Valley.
Aber ihre Proben sind High-Tech-Happenings: Via Internet konnen Surfer weltweit
das Mischpult und die Nebelmaschine bedienen."
-- "Auferstanden aus Platinen", Von Thomas Borchert and Peter Menzel, Konrad, No 1, page 74, 1997.
What! You want it in English? Get real...this magazine was the German equivalent of "Wired",
and was published by that pillar of Germania, "Stern". Translate it yourself!
A reporter is amazed at how much sushi and saki we can consume.
Stan came in the other day and asked if I thought he could get away with
expensing a $280 sushi dinner. No. And how could you have possibly eaten that
much sushi? Turns out Stan and photographer Dave Koehn were hanging with Mark
Weiser, Xerox PARC's Chief Technologist, and the boys in his band--all brilliant
guys. Once the sake kicked in Stan got the inside scoop on PARC developments.
In addition to conducting groundbreaking scientific research that has transformed
computing (the mouse, the graphical user interface, etc.) Weiser's team has come
up with some really useful devices. For instance, the Hi-Tech Coffee Alert
System. A newly brewed pot of coffee generates an alert signal that's sent
across their office network. Added bonus: an automatic counter to record
coffee-sitting-out-on-burner time.
Meantime Rick lunched with more incredibly smart people at another Bay Area think
tank--IBM's Almaden Research Center. Heard the story behind the development of
the trackpoint for IBM laptops. Ted Selker and his team went through 100
prototype keyboards before deciding to place the device between the g, b and h.
Material presented another problem---needed to be firm, but couldn't dent the
finger. They tried fish skin, but Selker's father, a rubber expert, convinced
them that rubber was the way to go.
Now, I was going to conclude this column with some paragraph about how much fun
it is to meet some of these people--but I'm being distracted. Gixman is loudly
talking on the phone to a Broderbund PR person. He's explaining why the Miller
brothers should not feel miffed about the fact that the Today Show has no
interest in interviewing them about Riven (the Myst sequel they developed, a very
big deal in the game world)........
"Hey, the only way the Today Show would be interested is if the game blows up
when you play it".
'Til next time....
-- "Cool People We Get To Meet", Jan Boyd, New Media News Online,
www.newmedianews.com/jan/j101797.html,
October 20, 1997.
San Jose Mercury News November 15, 1997
Front page coverage by Silicon Valley's best newspaper.
The whole world is a stage for this cyberspace garage band
Elizabeth Wasserman
Appeared in The San Jose Mercury News, page 1 (yes, front page news), Nov. 15, 1997
One night a week in the basement garage of Digital Equipment Corp.'s research facility in Palo Alto, a few noted
computer scientists pick up drumsticks, plug guitars into Peavey amps, and bang out thunderously loud songs with
names like "Car on Fire" and "Carcinoma."
Unlike other garage bands, these guys aren't just waking the neighbors.
The whole world can listen to Severe Tire Damage, the unofficial house
band of cyberspace.
Mercury News photo by Pat Tehan Bassist Mark Manasse, drummer Mark Weiser
and guitarist Russ Haines are
three members of Severe Tire Damage;
not shown is vocalist Steve Rubin.
The band was the first to perform over the Internet,
beating the Rolling Stones by 20 minutes on Nov. 18, 1994.
Three years ago this Tuesday, Severe Tire Damage beat the Rolling
Stones to be the first rock band to broadcast live music and video on the
Internet. Since then, this group of Silicon Valley technological wizards
has continued to set new milestones for online performances -- they
followed the first audience-controlled video camera that pans the band
with the first audience-controlled fog machine.
All this from what might be the world's smartest rock band, with three
Ph.D.s and patents galore. They're smart enough to know they're not
musical geniuses. "We write code better than we write songs,"
admitted vocalist Steve Rubin, 45, who holds a doctorate in computer
science and works for a software start-up, Electric Editor.
It was the group's technological skill that enabled the obscure Severe
Tire Damage -- named after the signs that accompany security spikes at
rental car lots -- to beat the Rolling Stones in an online battle of the
bands on Nov. 18, 1994.
The middle-aged British rockers had announced they were going to be
the first band to broadcast live audio and video on the Internet from a
performance. But then this other group of middle-aged geeky rockers
stole their thunder.
Aware that the Internet broadcasting outlet carrying the Stones was open
to anyone, and wanting to play to the worldwide Stones audience,
Severe Tire Damage and its technical crew jumped the gun and
broadcast an impromptu performance from Palo Alto 20 minutes before
the Stones.
Multicasting rockers
Back then, as is still true today, not everyone with a computer could watch. Internet surfers need a computer with at least
a Pentium chip, special software and a high-speed Internet connection of about 128 kilobits per second.
The warm-up band claims to have been better received than the Stones. "There were only nerds listening, that's why we
got more applause," said drummer Mark Weiser, 44, chief technologist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, widely
regarded as the father of ubiquitous computing, a theory that computers will be embedded in everyday objects which
communicate with each other.
"Being better technologists than the Stones," he added, "we sounded better because we had a better signal."
At the time, Severe Tire Damage and its networking crew were
actually old hats at "multicasting," transmitting their live video and
audio worldwide over the Internet's multicast backbone, or MBone.
In June 1993, the band performed at the opening of a new fitness
center at Xerox PARC. On the same day, Xerox was hosting a
lecture by one of the principal creators of the MBone and his talk was
being cast over the Net. After he finished, they turned the cameras on
the band.
The band got together seven years ago just for fun. They don't do
weddings, but they've gotten gigs at Unix conferences.
The researchers have come to see a larger purpose to their chords and
riffs and howls. "We're trying to understand how the Web and the
network are going to be used in the future," said bass player Mark
Manasse, 39, a mathematician at Digital who factored one of the
world's largest prime numbers. "This is a good test in terms of
self-publishing, self-promotion and multi-media content delivery."
The band's weekly 8 p.m. Wednesday night rehearsals can be found
on its Web site at http://www.std.org.
There, the band sells T-shirts and compact discs.
Fans can opt to buy one of the two complete albums recorded by the
band, or any combination of songs they want on a customized CD.
"We believe that this is something that everybody is going to be doing in the future," said Russ Haines, 32, the
guitarist, who formerly worked for Digital but now regards himself as the band's professional slacker. "It would be real
easy for huge corporations to monopolize this. But it's important to me to see that everybody can participate, that the
Internet is not just a money-making place to be."
First radio show
Severe Tire Damage's technical staff -- Xerox researcher Berry Kercheval and Digital's wizards Lance Berc and Brad
Horak -- writes its own software, interfaces and has rigged fiber optic cable into the Digital basement garage.
At 9 a.m. Nov. 21, the band will be trying out their show electronically, without the use of amplifiers, at radio station
KFJC (89.7 FM).
Until now, the band has attracted an audience mainly of technology workers and academics and, thanks to some
international television coverage, teenagers from Korea.
"Severe Tire Damage is very excellent," read one e-mail from Korea.
Technology, not culture, remains a barrier. "I want to watch you on the Internet," another teen wrote, "but I don't
know how to."
Lyrics from 'Car on Fire'
Smile and watch her scream
You could be a thousand places
Safe inside a dream
You can wear a thousand faces
Light the fuse and run
Broken bodies in your sleep that
Vanish in the sun
Still the flame you bury deep is
Burning like a star
Burning like a star
Burning like a star
And someone said they saw a car on fire
(We don't care) Cause life's a bore
(We don't care) If you get yours
(We don't care) Much who you are
(We just wanna watch your car on fire)
Lyrics by Bill Coates, music by Bill Coates and Dexter Kozen.
Mark Weiser speaks of calm computing. Of course, we know better.
A segment that aired on November 19, 1997 covered Severe Tire Damage's illustrious drummer.
The band introduces and closes a segment on Mark Weiser, who speaks of calm computing.
Severe Tire Damage disavows all knowledge of anything calm.
Watch the Show:
KFJC 89.7 FM November 21, 1997
Severe Tire Damage meets their favorite DJ: Rocket J. Squirrel.
Severe Tire Damage was invited to play live from the studios of KFJC radio
(89.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area) on November 21, 1997.
After 35 minutes of nonstop chatter and music, the band left the airwaves and went to work
(hey! it was 9:00 in the morning).
The show was replayed on December 12, 1997.
Pictures from the studio:
The Washington Post December 15, 1997
Severe Tire Damage becomes the "house band of cyberspace".
"Geek bands are hardly indigenous to the Washington area.
Silicon Valley has a loose network of garage musicians and entrepreneurs,
techies craving an after-hours release."
"Unlike many of their companies, few of these band members ever gained notice
beyond their garages, however.
One cult exception is the band Severe Tire Damage, which was recently dubbed
"the unofficial house band of cyberspace" and, according to the San Jose Mercury News,
was the first rock band to broadcast live music and video on the Internet three years ago,
beating the Rolling Stones by 20 minutes."
-- "For Geeks, It's Music to Their Ears:
High-Tech Workers Are Banding Together and Hitting the Stage", Mark Leibovich,
The Washington Post, page A01, December 15, 1997.
San Jose Mercury News January 6, 1998
An article about our drummer with an embarrassing photo.
Mercury News photo by Patrick Tehan
"Weiser has fun with his computing. Every Wednesday night, he plays
drums in Severe Tire Damage, a rock band made up of computer
researchers, and their rehearsals are broadcast over the
Internet. Three years ago, the group, which sings songs with names
such as 'Car on Fire' and 'Carcinoma,' beat out the Rolling
Stones by 20 minutes to become the first rock band to broadcast
live on the Net."
-- "Here, there and Everywhere", Elizabeth Wasserman, The San Jose Mercury News, page 1F
(Science and Technology section), January 6, 1998.
Severe Tire Damage was asked to special-deliver their Spice Girls ripoff song
"Chipmunks Wannabe" in time for the KFOG Spice-o-rama on January 29, 1998.
The morning banter went something like this:
Dave Morey: ...We got a package from Severe Tire Damage,
a group that is known for various things, for being the "First Band on the
Internet" among others. I was going to play a cut but I noticed this sticker
that says "parental advisory -- contains explicit lyrics."
Peter Finch and Kim Wonderly (together): All the more reason to play it!
Dave plays excerpt from the Severe Tire Damage CD, "Small Furry Rodents Wannabe", a Chipmunks
Spice Girls parody. Amused laughter...
Dave: It says this took them an hour and a half to record this...
Kim: That long?
Dave: They note that "chipmunk" refers only to the small mammal that if
anthropomorphized might have a high squeaky voice and bears no relationship
whatsoever to the intellectual property of the Bagdasarian corporation.
Also, they say that coming soon is "Severe Tire Damage World", the
movie. Check out their web page at www.std.org...
CareerTech Online February 2, 1998
Severe Tire Damage teaches bad habits to aspiring engineers.
Rocking the Internet
Charlotte Thomas
Appeared in CareerTech Online on February 2, 1998
Rock the Net
Rocking and rolling on the edge of unconventional interaction, an R&R band
made up of Silicon Valley techno wizards takes to the Internet with weekly
live on-line rehearsals and a web site selling custom CDs. At the same time,
they're pushing the envelope of Internet technology.
Reading their list of firsts, you'd think that, technically, these are some very ingenious people, and you'd be right: First
entertainment on the MBone; First interactive live video program on the Internet; First video remote-controlled camera on the
Internet; First audio mixer on the Internet; First web-controlled fog machine; First custom; Compact Disc orderable on the
Internet; First worldwide pantsless broadcast. Uh-h-h-h, did you say pantsless?
Well, that's Severe Tire Damage (STD), a rock and roll band a little on the punk side with the requisite attitude and the
technical intellect to back it up. The band members' credentials are impressive. Drummer Mark Weiser, chief technologist at
Xerox PARC and formerly head of its Computer Science Lab, is referred to as the Father of Ubiquitous Computing. He's
now researching Calm Computing. Bassist Mark Manasse, who came from Bell Labs' Murray Hill New Jersey Computer
Science Research Lab, and currently is a software consultant at Digital Equipment's (DEC) Science Research Center (SRC)
doing work in microcommerce. Vocalist Steve Rubin left Apple Computers Advanced Technology Group to create his own
startup, Electric Editor, Inc., an industrial CAD/CAM software company that's banking on a program he wrote. Guitarist
Russell Haines, also an ex-Digital SRC employee, who heads his own commercial video firm.
Furry Palo Alto Geeks
In the thick of Silicon Valley innovation, STD is pushing the envelope of interactive media on the Internet, and, as can be
seen from their list of "Firsts," they seem to do it before anyone else. Even the Rolling Stones. Back in June 1993 when
HTML was more common in alphabet soup and the MBone, or the Multicast Backbone, was another technical novelty, STD
was the first band to perform live on the Internet. Tuned in geeks from as far away as Australia took note. However, the
Rolling Stones didn't and little more than a year later, publicized the fact that they were going to be the first band to play live
on the Internet. "Not so," said STD. "Well, we mean the first MAJOR band," noted the Stones' web site. "Hmmmm," said
STD, some of whose members had helped create the audio broadcasting technology the Stones were going to use. Rising to
the challenge, STD crept into the dead 20 minutes of time prior to the Stones' appearance and, complete with pirate logo,
opened for the legends and then filled in afterwards.
Retaliation was swift. "Furry Palo Alto geeks playing moldy campfire music," the Stones harrumphed. "You bet,"
responded STD. "Except we're not from Palo Alto," added Haines. STD also was quick to point out that their sound
quality was better than the Stones. So there. What would you expect from a bunch of musically inclined computer science
types? Such is the sweet revenge that the technical smarts of a rowdy rock and roll band allows. STD doesn't pretend to,
nor do band members say, they want to attain the levels of notoriety that successful music groups scramble for. "We
know our music sucks but we have a good time with the technology," says Haines. Proving the point, Rubin admits,
"We're known as the band that has more computers than band members."
Indeed, their fascination with interactive media via loud R&R has taken them in all kinds of fun directions. Says Weiser,
"The Internet was new, and we were doing something new with it. It's like when you're playing with a new toy." Yes,
the additional bells and whistles STD has come up with are fun and games, but in the meantime they're staking new
technical ground. Take their often weekly rehearsals. No garage musicians these. Squeezed into a basement storage room
at DEC's Research Center, they've become a drawing card for high-tech types who wander in to see what technical
curiosities STD is up to. They usually find plenty once the Wednesday night rehearsals finally get going after reportedly
prodigious amounts of food and drink are consumed. What makes these rehearsals unique is that audience participation is
not limited to what the room can hold. STD is live on the Internet, and viewers with the right kind of software can tune in
and literally turn on a variety of gadgets STD has generously put in place for their amusement. It's safe to say the Stones
don't allow onlookers to fiddle with their sound mix. But STD does, and more.
Turned on by a Fog Machine
Though only those listening on the MBone can hear the results, the audience can adjust the levels of each instrument on a
mixer remotely controlled by computer. The mixer STD got off the shelf. The software to connect it to the web was
written by Berry Kercheval, a researcher at Xerox PARC who also recorded most of STD's album. As if this wasn't
enough interaction, hooked up viewers can play with a live video camera that can be tilted and panned at will. STD also
came up with the appropriate software to allow this. The "how to play with the camera" on STD's web site tells viewers
that "they can turn the whole broadcast into a bad home video with just a few quick clicks of a mouse." What with the fog
machine under Internet audience control, rehearsals can get out of hand, and often do, but the band enjoys the response
they get from their virtual audience. Says Weiser, "As we're playing, our engineer will call out. 'Here are two more
people from Korea, one more from Finland.'"
In a more serious vein, Weiser notes that as the band gets more and more into developing uses of the Net, STD is riding
the crest of unconventional interaction. Even the relatively new uses of virtual reality are left in their wake. "Star Trek had
virtual reality for 30 years, and you didn't see an alien controlling the mix," Weiser says. STD's web site, up for four
years, continues their innovative thinking by incorporating new code and autoloading streaming audio. The site
(www.std.org) is mostly the work of Haines who is responsible for all the art work, text and a lot of the code. "I'm the
glorified web master, writing HTML, Java script, setting up a server or two as well as all the 3D annotations," he says.
Products from custom CDs to T-shirts and music clips add to the goodies.
Lyrics a "Tad on the Cynical Side"
But enough of this technical stuff. What does their music sound like? Well, you could tune into their web site and check
out the sounds from any one of their many CDs for sale or you could take their word for it. "Really bad. Loud and bad,"
says Haines. "We've gotten better in the last couple of years. We're not as painfully bad now, just bad." "Musically,
we're all over the map," responds Manasse, who says that their most popular songs are closest to Van Halen, but they are
free to play what and how they want since they make their living doing other things. In Rubin's opinion, STD is "Totally
strange, but we like to think we're danceable." Which is good since STD does play gigs and gatherings, and as Manasse
points out they're starting to make a name for themselves by "ruining a lot of parties." Understandably, with STD's
abundant wit, lyrics play an important part of their music. Rubin and Haines both write a lot of them. "We're remarkably
uncreative in that area," says Haines.
Manasse describes the lyrics as a "tad on the cynical side." However, this could be the understatement of the year with
song titles such as Carcinoma, Chris Killed Your Dog, and an especially irreverent tribute to Lady Di. Most of their songs
have some basis in reality. One song, written by a faculty member at Cornell, sings of Evariste Galois, a French
mathematical genius, who was close to finishing up "one of the most influential treatises on algebra" but was shot to
death in a duel.
With articles in major newspapers and magazines, TV and radio appearances, STD's notoriety grows steadily and is sure
to broaden from the "15-year old Korean boy," that Manasse characterizes as their typical fan. This was the result of a
telecast of STD on Korean TV that apparently half of Korea saw. Even so, Weiser says, "We're not trying to become
famous rock stars. Mostly we're trying to have fun." "Once or twice a month we get e-mail solicitations by people not
better connected than we are," says Manasse. "We're not in this to make money." Given that approach, it's not too
surprising that Weiser's advice to graduating engineers is to do what they love. He finds this out about the people he's
interviewing for jobs at Xerox. "I ask them what their hobbies are, and if I get the impression they really enjoy
technology and are constantly developing new skills, then I know they're explorers," he says.
San Francisco Chronicle June 23, 1998
Severe Tire Damage heads up a list of geek bands.
Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy
Some of the Valley's top execs spend off-hours strumming and thumping in garages, basements
Jamie Beckett, Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writers
Appeared in The San Francisco Cronicle on June 23, 1998
Consultant Russ Haines plays guitar with Severe Tire Damage,
which broadcasts its rehearsals live on the Web.
Chronicle Photo by Kat Wade.
The Fillmore hosts an all-star lineup this Friday -- although you've probably never heard of any of the bands.
But in the high-tech world, they're famous.
Headlining at the rock palace where The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin once belted out tunes is a band of middle-aged guys called The Flying Other Brothers, led by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Roger McNamee.
Also on the bill: Where's Julio? headed by three founders of Excite, one of the top Web search engines; and the Raving Daves, a 10-member combo from high-flying software-maker PeopleSoft.
These high-tech hobby bands will rock the Fillmore at a fundraiser for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group working to protect online civil rights.
The Fillmore performers are just a few of the dozens of amateur bands that are springing up as fast as startups in Silicon Valley. Some of the Valley's best- known executives, venture capitalists and technical visionaries are spending their off hours living out their rock 'n' roll fantasies, strumming and thumping in garages and basements.
``Every company has a little pickup band,'' said Fred Davis, a former programmer and computer magazine editor who plays keyboard. ``If you have a bunch of techies around, it also means you have a bunch of musicians around.''
High tech and music go together, like -- well, like rock 'n' roll. Math, computer programming and music all require the ability to recognize and organize patterns.
``It's the math and music parallel. Like math, music is structured, it's ordered and you can do something with it,'' said Russ Haines, an audio and video consultant who plays guitar and sings for Severe Tire Damage, which is probably the highest tech of the high-tech bands.
In 1993, this self-described ``geek band'' became the first in the world to broadcast a live rock video over the Internet -- a year ahead of the Rolling Stones. When the Stones did their Web broadcast, Severe Tire Damage electronically crashed the show.
Now, the band -- whose members include Mark Weiser, chief technologist at famed research center Xerox PARC and Mark Manasse, a cryptography expert -- broadcasts its weekly rehearsals live on the Web. Fans can do more than just watch: By pressing a button on their computer screens, they can trigger a fog spray in the cluttered Digital Equipment storeroom in Palo Alto where the band practices.
Scores of other musicians in Silicon Valley make technology part of their repertoires.
Aaron Zornes, a database guru at the Meta Group research firm, holds virtual jam sessions with far-flung friends by using his Disclavier, a high-tech piano that can transmit digital signals over the Internet.
The Raving Daves -- named for PeopleSoft chief executive Dave Duffield, who occasionally sings and plays guitar with the band -- was born one midnight when Baer Tierkel, deep into a difficult coding problem, sent out an e-mail inviting others to join him for an impromptu concert.
Since then, they've had so many appearances that band members wrote a database application just to manage the band's schedule and lyrics to its 300 songs.
This is the band's second appearance for the Electronic Frontier Foundation at the Fillmore. Last year the event raised $130,000 and became a sort of Woodstock for the digital community -- including a solo by Steve Jobs' daughter, Lisa, the namesake for Apple's first personal computer. Jobs stole the show when she sang the Beatles' ``Revolution.''
Although brothers Giles and Roger McNamee played music in college, their band began in 1987 under the name Random Axes.
Computer industry analyst Esther Dyson unintentionally sparked the first Random Axes jam by leaving McNamee off the invite list for a game of charades used as an icebreaker at her annual conference. The jam session began as a consolation event for the uninvited.
After that, the Random Axes -- which included trade press editor Bill Machrone, former Apple Computer research and development guru Larry Tessler, multimedia publisher Tony Bove and software entrepreneur Philippe Kahn -- played occasionally.
Roger McNamee created the Other Brothers three years ago to perform at a charity affair at Comdex, the nation's largest computer trade show. The band joined others including Grown Men, led by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who used professional studio musicians to back up his guitar playing.
Besides the math connection, many high-tech rockers have another trait in common.
``Your parents don't tell you to go learn electric guitar. They don't encourage you to be a rock musician -- you have to be really entrepreneurial to do it. People in high-tech are entrepreneurs,'' said Zornes, the database marketing guru. Zornes played with two bands that had minor hits in the 1960s.
Avram Miller, whose day job is running Intel's new-business arm, was a pianist who learned about electronics to measure audience reaction. He thinks the success in music and business often go hand in hand.
``Playing a musical instrument takes physical dexterity. To succeed, you have to have discipline and you have to be somewhat systematic because you have to overcome your body,'' said Miller, who still plays jazz piano.
Execs like Zornes and Miller aren't the only tech-types who like to groove. Kludge is a Silicon Valley band made up of editors at computer trade publications owned by CMP Media. It is led by Paul Kapustka, who edits the newsletter GeekWeek.
Kapustka revels in the unabashed geekiness of Kludge -- its name is slang for a quick and dirty engineering fix. Kludge specializes in computer-industry parodies of rock 'n' roll tunes, such as an homage to Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, set to the tune of Elvis Costello's ``Allison.''
The most recent Kludge-job: an altered ``Sympathy for the Devil'' called ``Sympathy for the Inventor,'' which honors Bob Metcalfe, the granddaddy of computer networking.
Michael Goldberg, a former Rolling Stone editor and current editorial director of Addicted to Noise, an online music magazine in San Francisco, said that other industries -- especially the financial industry on Wall Street -- also have hobby bands. He argues that forming bands is a Baby Boomer thing.
``It's not just a technical thing,'' Goldberg said. ``After the Beatles hit in the '60s, anyone who was anywhere from nine to 25 wanted to be in a band.''
But Frank Ingari, who leads a band of software industry executives, said there is a peculiar affinity between music and technology. The CEO of Shiva Corp., a data networking company in Massachusetts, leads a band called Look & Feel.
``High-tech in general and software in particular requires the same kinds of behaviors and attitudes you need in a band,'' Ingari said. ``You need people collaborating according to a plan, but the plan has to leave room for improvisation.''
Most tech-band members play primarily for fun. But for some hot Gen X bands, like Irene's Cuisine, the possibility of going pro holds a certain allure.
``We've got the best of both worlds,'' said Randy Eckhardt, who with his buddy Ric Niel, produces hit video games like Madden Football for Electronic Arts. On weekends, they team with other software designers to play at San Francisco nightclubs like Slims. Now they're talking to national booking agents.
``Being in the game business, we know that making a hit is 135 percent luck. So the expectation of making it big in music isn't there,'' Eckhardt said. ``But on the other hand, if the opportunity ever came up, it's not the sort of thing you pass up.''
Silicon Valley Bands
Some of the bands, their members and their day jobs.
THE RAVING DAVES (rock)
Dan Fink, training, PeopleSoft, percussion
Leonard Rainow, Red Pepper development, PeopleSoft, keyboards
Dan Williams, tools development, PeopleSoft, sound engineer
Dalia Chatterjee, financials development, PeopleSoft, vocals
Dan McIntosh, tools publications, PeopleSoft, bass
Janis cq Weiss, technical marketing, PeopleSoft, vocals, percussion and harp
Mark Fletcher, tools publications, PeopleSoft, percussion
Baer Tierkel, tools development, PeopleSoft, guitar and vocals
Eric Tamm, publications, PeopleSoft, guitar and vocals
Earl Barron, publications, PeopleSoft, harp and vocals
Rick Frank, tools development, PeopleSoft, lead guitar
WHERE'S JULIO? (rock)
Joe Kraus, co-founder/senior vice president, Excite, drums
Mark Van Haren, co-founder/software engineer, Excite, lead vocals
Ryan McIntyre, co-founder/manager, tools and engineering, Excite, bass
Nick Brown, PhD student, Duke University, sax
Daniel Soto, engineer, SiliconLight, bass
SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE (rock)
Mark Manasse, financial cryptographer, Digital Equipment, bass
Steve Rubin, chief technology officer, Electric Editor, vocalist
Mark Weiser, chief technologist, Xerox PARC, drums
Lance Berc, researcher, Digital Equipment, Web broadcast and networking for band
Berry Kercheval, principal architect of network management tools, Join Systems, sound engineer, backup bass
Brad Horak, chief network officer, Digital Equipment, special effects and connectivity
Russ Haines, audio and video consulting, self-employed, guitar and vocals
THE FLYING OTHER BROTHERS (classic rock)
Roger McNamee, venture capitalist, Integral Venture Partners, guitar and vocals
Giles McNamee, investment banker, First Albany, guitar
Larry Marcus, new media analyst, BT Alex. Brown, drums
Bill Bennett, marketing consultant, Idea Inc., bass
Bert Keely, co-founder, Live Inc., lead guitar
Corrinne Monnard, seeking capital to start a wholistic spa, percussion and vocals
Tony Bove, multimedia expert, Live Pictures, harmonica and vocals
LOOK & FEEL (rock)
Frank Ingari, president, Growth Ally consulting firm, rhythm & lead guitar
David Blohm, CEO, Virtual Knowledge (educational software), drums
Bryan Simmons, vice president of communications, Lotus Development Corp., vocals & violin
Allen Razdow, CEO, Torrent Systems (operating system for parallel processing computers) keyboards
Drew Hannah, General Manager, SoftBridge (software develpment tools), bass
KEEPING OUR DAY JOBS (rock and blues)
Kevin Christian, pricing manager, Netscape, bass
Mark Fletcher, technical writer, PeopleSoft, drummer
Greg Costanzo, technical support manager, Oracle, guitar
Tom Haunert, technical writer, Oracle, guitar
Alyn Kelley, cq release manager, Oracle, keyboard
Mark Costanza, civil engineer, SFO, sax
HUMAN TORCHES (surf jazz and punk)
John Poultney, News Editor, MacHome Journal, bass and vocals
Evan Welch, Web technologies consultant, Autodesk, drums and special effects
Russ Roesner, Web and network administrator, self-employed, saxophone and vocals
Michael McMorrow, Web-centric training strategist, Dublin Group, guitar and vocals
KLUDGE (rock and parodies)
Paul Kapustka, editor, GeekWeek newsletter, lead singer
Mitch Irsfeld, editor-in-chief, InternetWeek, ryhthm and acoustical guitars
Ralph Azzara, studio musician, lead guitar
Eric Biener, district sales manager, Network Computing magazine, drummer
Stephen D'Ippolitto, account manager, InternetWeek, bass and ryhthm guitars
Jason Levitt, senior technology editor, InformationWeek, saxophone
Mike Azzara, publisher and editorial director, InternetWeek, lyrics and production
IRENE'S CUISINE (New Orleans-style R&B and funk)
Randy Eckhardt, game producer, Electronic Arts, lead vocals and guitar
Gary Gettys, game producer, Electronic Arts, guitar and vocals
Ric Neil, game producer, Electronic Arts, bass and tuba
Harry Green, doctoral student in ethno-musicology, drummer
Mark Corr, musician, Spark Recording Studio, keyboards
Chris Jordan, maritime insurance broker, Sedgwick Inc., sax, and vocals
Scott Holmes Van Schoick, cq quality assurance engineer, Mindscape, trombone and percussion
Dave Poole, multimedia animator, Protazoa, sax and trumpet
CHIEF O'HARA (dance music)
Mark Brewster, systems integrator, Oracle, bass and vocals
Mike Donohue, quality assurance manager, Oracle, vocals, percussion and guitar
Steve Fram, software developer, Career Central, keyboard, guitar, and vocals
Paul Lorence, documentation manager, Sun Microsystems, guitar and vocals
Ed Meares, Web site production, Designscape Media, percussion
DOUBLE FUNK CRUNCH (disco and funk)
Robert Kennedy, computer programmer, Silicon Graphics, keyboards
Jon Kuppinger, computer network administrator, Roche Pharmaceuticals, guitar
Paul Reynen, microbiologist, Roche Pharmaceuticals, bass
Dan Shafer, occupational therapist, self-employed, drums
Laura Sanford, vocal instructor and property manager, self and Ed Rogers Realtor Inc., vocals
Guy Blume, film and video editor, ITN, vocals
Erik Gibb, user interface designer, Manual 3, sax
Paul Somerville, sales, Spectra-Physics, sax
NOT THIS TUESDAY NIGHT (jazz)
Russ Haines, audio and video consulting, self-employed, guitar and vocals
Mark Weiser, chief technologist, Xerox PARC, drums
Robert Kennedy, computer programmer, Silicon Graphics, keyboards
Another band, They Might Be Giants, releases an album with our name.
Windows Refund Day in S.J. Mercury News Feburary 16, 1999
Severe Tire Damage plays at "Windows Refund Day" and the singer makes rude comments about Microsoft and greed.
Severe Tire Damage shows up at "Windows Refund Day"
Severe Tire Damage performs live on location from a flatbed truck while hundreds of angry geeks demand a refund from Microsoft. Almost...
THE PREMISE
Microsoft was unfairly forcing companies and shoppers to buy "Windows" operating systems on all computers even if the purchaser never intends to use it (to run Linux, for example).
THE EVENT
Anyone who had been forced to buy "Windows" software bundled with their computer BUT HAD NEVER USED IT was invited to join a protest Monday, 15 February 1999.
Marchers would arrive at the Microsoft Foster City campus and demand a refund.
The organizers of the protest realized that Severe Tire Damage was the obvious choice to foment the rabble.
Also, Severe Tire Damage had really good press contacts...
THE FIASCO
But the organizers made two mistakes.
First, in attempting to get a live music permit from the Foster City, they put the fear of God into the police department.
The police were at Microsoft in force before anyone else.
Second, and more importantly, the Windows Refund Day organizers apparently underestimated Microsoft's resourcefulness.
When Microsoft first moved to Foster City they donated a large sum of money.
A friendly gesture that enabled the Foster City Police Department to buy a really neato Command Winnebago with lots of radios and cable TV and stuff.
Prior warning also allowed Microsoft to lock their doors, put up banners reading "Microsoft Welcomes Linux Users" and "Microsoft/Linux Conference This Way", and generally defuse the event.
THE RESULTS
Reporters arriving for the media circus were disappointed there was no Severe Tire Damage available at the event.
"We weren't going to come until we heard Severe Tire Damage was playing," was heard from a network affiliate.
Severe Tire Damage lost some credibility that day.
The only highlights were Steve's spouting sound bites to as many reporters as possible at Microsoft before the demonstrators arrived.
And "Anal Probe Girl". Severe Tire Damage still hasn't heard from the WRD organizers. A thank you would be nice.
This was Mark Weiser's last gig. Just a coincidence? You decide.
Then, to make things even stranger, the whole event got written up in the San Jose Mercury News:
Programmers demand freedom from Microsoft operating system
Miguel Helft
Appeared in The San Jose Mercury News, February 16, 1999
Photo by Penny De Los Santos
Mae Ling Mak, left, and Brian Targonsky hold signs toward the Microsoft offices in Foster City.
Associated Press photo
Tim O'Mahoney of the Linux Users Group joined others in the march at Foster City.
They paraded from a local strip mall to a suburban parking garage.
They carried signs demanding freedom of choice.
And they chanted slogans calling for the end of an unfair tax.
Call it the "March on Foster City," a political protest over a computer
operating system, a rally that was vintage Silicon Valley of the late 1990s.
About 100 computer programmers converged Monday on the Foster City offices of
Microsoft Corp. seeking a refund for copies of the Windows operating system
they say they never wanted but were forced to buy. Microsoft hung a banner
welcoming the protesters who cheered for alternative operating systems like
the free, collectively developed Linux, and FreeBSD, a version of Unix.
The two are underdogs in a market-share fight against the nearly ubiquitous Windows.
"In the '60s people protested over what was right," said Steve Rubin, a
computer programmer with flowing gray hair. Rubin is a member of Severe Tire Damage,
a rock band that describes itself as the first Internet-only band. "In the '90s
people protest over money. People want their money back. They resent Bill Gates."
Others said money was a small part of what motivated protesters. Control of their
destiny was more important, some said.
"It is a lot deeper than just my refund," said Marilyn Davis, who runs eVote,
a maker of online voting software. Davis said the protesters want to prevent Microsoft
from controlling the operating system, which she called the "nervous system of our future."
"The issue is as important as the peace issues of the Vietnam era," she said.
"The difference is that people aren't dying."
Hyperbole or not, there were other differences too: The protest had a scattered,
fun and genteel tone to it. The activists ranged from gray-haired veterans of
'60s protests to college-age programmers with laptop computers.
Some used wireless modems to beam reports of the rally to their favorite Web
sites while others updated their friends over cell phones. Even the handful of
Foster City police officers called in to monitor the event had a bemused expression on their faces.
Microsoft response
Microsoft's public relations and marketing people were on hand to greet the protesters
and answer questions from dozens of reporters and camera crews who gathered to
witness the unusual rally.
No one got a refund, however, and the protesters were not allowed into Microsoft's
sales offices on the ninth floor of the office tower.
"We are always available to talk with customers," said Rob Bennett, Microsoft's
group product manager for Windows. "It's really up to the personal computer manufacturers"
to issue refunds, he said.
The issue boils down to this: All personal computers sold with Windows come with an
"end user license agreement" that says if the buyer does not agree to the terms
of the license, they can return the product to the manufacturer for a refund.
Most computer makers require users to bring the entire computer back for a refund,
and won't issue a refund for the software.
Linux users, as well as users of FreeBSD, IBM's OS/2 and Be Inc.'s BeOS, say that
when they buy a personal computer, they are being charged unfairly for Windows.
They call it the "Microsoft tax," and they want the Redmond, Wash.-based software
maker to take charge of issuing the refunds.
"We don't want their Windows and we want our money back," shouted Eric Raymond,
who led the half-mile parade of protesters through the streets of Foster City to the
rooftop of the parking garage adjacent to the Microsoft offices, where the event,
dubbed Windows Refund Day, was held.
The process for refunds "is already in place," Bennett countered.
Raymond is one of the leaders of the "open source" or "free software" movement,
which believes in freely distributing software source code, the basic instructions
that programmers write. Publishing the code allows other programmers to review it
and add to it, ideally ushering in software that is collectively developed for the
sake of consumers. Their goal is also to undermine Microsoft monopoly control over
the software industry and force other software makers to reduce the prices they charge
for their products.
Despite the lack of refunds, protesters said the rally, which like the open source
movement was the product of a grass-roots effort, was a success. Representatives of
VA Research, a Mountain View-based maker of personal computers that come equipped
with Linux, handed out dozens of T-shirts with the company's logo.
Mood to celebrate
"I want people to know that there is an alternative," said Larry Augustin, VA
Research president and chief executive officer.
And although they could not get into Microsoft's offices, the protesters were in a
mood to celebrate: They capped the Presidents' Day operating system protest at a
San Francisco coffee shop party.
"It's unusual to get nerds to get together and do anything together," said Robert
Berger, president of Internet Bandwidth Development, a Saratoga-based computer
consulting firm. "But people sense there is a deeper issue here."
Severe Tire Damage elucidates to a horrified classroom.
Photos by Berry Kercheval
Severe Tire Damage was invited to Cal State University Hayward on March 1, 2000 to speak to a group of multimedia graduate students.
The topic: "Severe Tire Damage's Stupid Internet Tricks".
After pizza and a few pitchers of beer, the band regaled students with useless facts and tall tales.
The audience didn't laugh at any of the Monty Python references in the lecture and seemed frightened when
Severe Tire Damage launched into hits like "Carcinoma" and "Chris Killed Your Dog".
Highlights included a listing of previous Severe Tire Damage drummers and how they died,
a few phone calls to Mark's cell phone from viewers on the Internet,
as well as screaming feedback and drum smashing as the band left the stage after the last tune.
Severe Tire Damage never got the promised honorarium from CSUH. Always get payment in advance, kids.
Monk (TV series) March 10, 2006
Another Severe Tire Damage joke in the episode, "Mr. Monk Goes to the Dentist",
Everyone wants to make jokes about Severe Tire Damage, even the detective show
Monk.
In season 4, episode 15, "Mr. Monk Goes to the Dentist",
lieutenant Randy Disher temporarily quits the force and devotes himself full time to his high school garage band "The Randy Disher Project".
The other band members disagree about the name of the band. One band member suggests "Severe Tire Damage" as a better name for the band.
Watch the Segment:
Wired Magazine June, 2008
We are accused of killing the recording industry through Internet distribution.
Wired Magazine publishes this graph showing how the events of 15 years before (1993) affected the world today.
Severe Tire Damage is one of the influences to be found:
Severe Tire Damage gets it's own page in the history books.
History of the Internet offers a retrospective look at the early days of the Internet, from 1965 to 1995.
Severe Tire Damage figures prominently for having done more stupid things than anyone else.
Interviewed in 2014, the band has been reduced to a bunch of old people reminiscing about the days when we were young and foolish.
History of the Internet
Master Minds May 7, 2020
Now that we're trivia, a contestant on the game show, "Master Minds" is asked about us.
Here is the question: "The band Severe Tire Damage was credited with doing what for the 1st time on the Internet in 1993:
selling digital music, live streaming or sending spam?"
Of course, we did all three of those things, but the right answer is "live streaming". Interestingly, that term hadn't been coined back then. We called it "multicasting."
Even the Chinese are curious about how we became so ridiculous.
A Chinese website devoted to nerds all over the world.
They finally discover us and want to know how we became such incredible superstars.
Needless to say, we have no answers to that.
The history of the Internet is full of sparkling moments that have changed the entire world,
and the invention of livestreaming is definitely an impressive one.
Nowadays you would never be surprised by this technology with so many live events around you, but back in the 1990s,
when online communications were all about texts and emails, streaming live audio and video seemed like a miracle.
You might be wondering: how and when did this miracle happen? What technologies were used？Who did the first live show on the Internet?
In order to answer these questions, we have to go back to 1993.
On June 24, 1993, using a technology called MBONE, Severe Tire Damage played the first live performance on the Internet.
Unlike other bands, it was formed by four cool computer scientists working at different high-tech companies:
Steven Rubin (Apple), Russ Haines (DEC), Mark Manasse (DEC) and Mark Weiser (Xerox PARC).
Severe Tire Damage in 1995
From left to right: Steven Rubin, Mark Manasse, Russ Haines, Mark Weiser
Recently we invited Severe Tire Damage to join our interview and let them share this historic moment with us.
In this interesting interview, Steven Rubin, the lead singer of the band, discusses how Severe Tire Damage
became the first live band on the Internet, the technology they were using to make this happen, the opening
performance they did for the Rolling Stones, and the feedback they received at the time.
Being a musician, Steven also shares their favorite STD songs and performances, the songwriting process and his own understanding of music.
Regarding his real work as a computer scientist, Steven talks about how he became interested in computers,
the projects he worked on in his career, and the potential risks brought by computers.
The last part of this interview is for Mark Weiser, who died in 1999. Mark was the drummer of Severe Tire Damage,
and also a visionary computer pioneer widely considered to be the father of ubiquitous computing.
The following is our conversation with Severe Tire Damage (Steven Rubin answered all the questions,
and was assisted by Russ Haines and Mark Manasse).
LiveVideoStack: We are very excited to have Severe Tire Damage with us here.
Before the interview starts, could you please introduce yourself to us?
Steven Rubin: I am Steven Rubin, the lead singer of Severe Tire Damage. I'm still in contact with Russ Haines
(the guitarist and alternate vocalist) and Mark Manasse (the bass player and background vocalist), both of whom have agreed to let me speak for them.
The drummer in the band, Mark Weiser, died in 1999.
Being the First
Severe Tire Damage in 1993
LiveVideoStack: How did you become the first band performing live on the Internet?
Steven Rubin: We worked at the various computer science laboratories that invented this technology.
Mark Weiser was the Chief Technology Officer of Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) and was aware of many of the emerging trends in computing.
He knew about a talk that was going to be given at PARC about livestreaming (a term that didn't exist back then),
and he was aware that the speakers were going to demonstrate the technology by broadcasting their talk over the Internet.
Coincidentally, Xerox PARC was throwing a party on the roof of the building that day to celebrate the opening of their new fitness center.
Mark recognized an opportunity for Severe Tire Damage to play over the Internet, and he got us the "gig" playing on the roof.
When the talk ended, they switched the camera feed to us, and researchers as far away as Australia were treated to our music.
LiveVideoStack: What technologies did you use to make this happen? What challenges did you meet in the process?
Steven Rubin: The technology was called “MBONE,” or Multicast Backbone.
The challenge was that every piece of data sent over the Internet must go from one point to another.
Therefore, if a computer wants to “broadcast,” to send a piece of data to multiple other computers,
it must send that same piece of data many times to deliver it to each viewer. MBONE technology allowed the data to be sent only once,
over a “backbone” of the Internet, and each viewer could tap into a local MBONE node to download the data.
It reduced Internet bandwidth and allowed broadcasting. This technology no longer exists because newer versions of the
Internet protocol now support the idea. So MBONE was an early version of the livestreaming technology that we have today.
LiveVideoStack: In 1994, you opened for the Rolling Stones on the Stones' first Internet show. How did that happen?
Steven Rubin: We did our first broadcast over the Internet in 1993, and word got around that such a thing was possible.
In 1994, the Rolling Stones were touring America to promote their “Voodoo Lounge” album. Mick Jagger claimed to be a technophile,
so he decided he wanted part of their Dallas, Texas show to go out live on the Internet. At the time, MBONE software had no interlocks,
no advanced features to identify different streams and keep them separate. There was only one stream, and everyone who used the
software communicated over it. So a half-hour before the Stones went out on the MBONE, we did. Broadcasting from a conference room at DEC's
Systems Research Center in Palo Alto, we introduced ourselves as the opening act in the world's first “virtual concert,”
where the warm-up band was in a different city than the main performers. We played for about twenty minutes, told the audience that the Stones
would be there soon (like a good warm-up band always does), and disconnected from the MBONE. Many told us that our broadcast was better,
but this was no surprise to us—the band crew members were some of the inventors of this technology, whereas the Rolling Stones used hired
programmers who had to stumble through the complexity of some very-new software.
LiveVideoStack: How did you feel about being the first live band on the Internet? What feedback did you receive?
Steven Rubin： The feedback from the Stones gig was instant and amazing. Because the world press was watching the broadcast,
Severe Tire Damage was suddenly very popular. Articles appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post,
The Boston Globe, and foreign media such as British Sky TV.
To us, it was a like a joke, to be famous because of our hobby instead of our real work. Newsweek called us “less well-known than the Rolling Stones,”
which we thought was a great compliment. Walking through the streets of Palo Alto one day, someone stopped Mark Weiser and said,
“I know you...” Mark expected to be identified as a famous scientist, but instead the man said, “You're the drummer in that band.”
This made him quite happy.
Why Music Matters
LiveVideoStack: How did you get interested in music? Was there any particular musician or band that inspired you to get into music?
Steven Rubin: I always liked strange music. Frank Zappa, The Residents, punk rock. I also enjoyed “novelty music” (comedy) and my brother,
Paul Rubin, had a novelty band (“Cab City Combo”). So the opportunity to sing my favorite songs was hard to resist.
LiveVideoStack: How and when was the band formed? Why was it named Severe Tire Damage?
Steven Rubin: The band was started by Mark Manasse, who gathered some fellow nerds to play at a computer conference.
After that, the band reformed with the other three members. We weren't called “Severe Tire Damage” at first.
Instead, we changed our name each time we performed. We were “N.W.A. (Nerds with Attitudes)”, “Box of Rocks”, “Oil Supply”,
“The Vampire Lestat”, “RU-486”, and “The Creeping Features.” One night, we played with another band called “The Nigels,”
so we changed our name every time we introduced ourselves, calling ourselves, “Son of Nigel,” “Where's Nigel”, and even, “The Dead Nigels.”
Severe Tire Damage was inspired by a hotel parking lot's warning sign, and the name was just too good, so we kept it.
LiveVideoStack: What was your songwriting process? Where did you find the inspiration?
Steven Rubin: Russ Haines wrote most of our songs. Mark Manasse did a few and I did one or two, mostly just lyrics.
Russ can compose a song based on nearly any subject. Fans who wrote to us with stupid questions always got a song.
A rival band got a song. One of our crew's fathers got a song. Russ even wrote a song about a silly frog-shaped toy (Ornamental Comic Toad).
LiveVideoStack: What's your favorite Severe Tire Damage song and performance?
Steven Rubin： I have many favorite songs, but Chris Killed Your Dog is high on the list. Mark Manasse is fond of his own song,
Pincushion Boy, an ode to Multiple Sclerosis. Russ likes Who Cares, which, as the title track of our CD,
reminded us that we were taking our fifteen minutes of fame a little too seriously.
As far as performances go, our USENIX conference was certainly the best (January 10, 1997),
with thousands of fans gathered to watch us deliver the closing talk. We had three screens behind us: a slide screen
(as all conference presentations need), a closeup video of the band (because the hall was quite large),
and an MBONE screen of our broadcast. We titled our talk, “Stupid MBONE Tricks”
and interspersed music with a presentation of our technological silliness.
But for all the fame and praise that performance elicited, I'm still partial to our last gig in March of 2000,
when we played for a media class at Cal State Hayward. The students were afraid to get too close and left the first
few rows of the auditorium empty. So, with my wireless microphone, I climbed over the empty chairs while snarling the lyrics to our songs,
causing the students to shrink deeper into their seats.
LiveVideoStack: What do you like most in music? What did you try to express through music?
Steven Rubin: One of the things I like about punk rock is that it addresses social issues, although in an angry and satirical way.
I wrote lyrics to a number of songs, and I always used that model to make them socially relevant.
Subject matters in my songs included the media, war, mental illness, and health care.
Severe Tire Damage in 1997
LiveVideoStack: Was it difficult to lead a double life (programming and making music)?
Steven Rubin: Not at all. One was my job; the other was my hobby. Each one fed on the other to make me more popular, so it was a complete win.
Why Computers Matter
LiveVideoStack: How did you get interested in computers?
Steven Rubin: I learned about computers in 11th grade of high school, back in 1968. Programming grabbed me instantly,
and I haven't stopped enjoying it, even 54 years later.
LiveVideoStack: What projects did you do in your career?
Steven Rubin: The main project I did in my career, one I still work on even in retirement, is an open-source EDA
(electronic design automation) system called “Electric.” People around the world use it to design integrated-circuit chips.
I wrote it when working at Schlumberger/Fairchild, left it on the back burner when I was at Apple, then picked it up again at Sun Microsystems.
LiveVideoStack: Among all the work you have done, which part do you find most satisfying?
Steven Rubin: I like to see my programs get used. Back in graduate school in the 1970's, I wrote computer games,
and it always thrilled me when I saw others playing them. I still enjoy hearing from users of Electric who tell me
about the chips they've made with my program.
LiveVideoStack: What was the work atmosphere like of your time? What about the computer scientists those days?
Who impressed you the most?
Steven Rubin: I was always a researcher, working in labs that were independent of production software.
This gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted, without consideration of sales or marketing.
Our heroes were the geniuses who could imagine all this stuff. In our band, the two Marks were such people:
Mark Weiser with his broad visions of computing, and Mark Manasse with mad mathematical skills who understands foundational aspects of the field.
LiveVideoStack: Do you see an overlap between music and computer science?
Steven Rubin: There has always been such an overlap. Stanford's computer-music department has been around for decades,
and some of the early computer workers were interested in making music. When I was in high school, in 1969,
we discovered that we could put a radio on top of the processing unit and the high-speed computations would leak radio waves,
playing different types of static sounds. We experimented with our programs to see how they sounded, and we were soon able to play simple songs using our code.
LiveVideoStack: Looking back, what technologies or innovations do you think should have benefited the world but actually not?
Steven Rubin: All technologies benefit the world, but cause massive human suffering along the way.
Computers have done this too, and the effects are not done yet. I don't know what aspects of computing should have been done better,
because no matter what gets done, it gets twisted both for the better and the worse.
LiveVideoStack: What do you think about the future of computers? What potential risks would they bring?
Steven Rubin: Computers are already demonstrating one serious risk: privacy. Smart phones track the location of every person on the planet,
and emerging digital identity systems go one step further, controlling our access to places and our ability to move about.
In Memory of Mark Weiser
Severe Tire Damage in 1995
LiveVideoStack: When did you first meet Mark Weiser? What was your first impression of him?
Steven Rubin: I met Mark when he joined the band, back in the 1990s. At first, he was just a drummer from another research lab,
but we soon discovered that he was the most famous of us. He was friends with tech reporters and got interviewed in revered publications.
But Severe Tire Damage never let him forget that he was just the drummer. Even at our popular USENIX conference performance,
as soon as he got up to address the audience, we teased him mercilessly and drove him back to his drum throne.
He could be a nerd somewhere else, but when he sat down to play drums, he (like all of us) lost his fame and became just another musician.
LiveVideoStack: What did he bring to the band? How did he influence you?
Steven Rubin: Mark brought notoriety to the band. He enjoyed being the drummer, and he always brought it up when being
interviewed about technology. Naturally, this helped the band become more popular. Another thing Mark did was to make all of us
want to be “Chiefs" (after all, he was a Chief Technology Officer). I joined a startup at one point and demanded to also be called
Chief Technology Officer (even though the company had only three people). Others in the band searched for creative ways to be Chiefs,
too. Why should Mark have all the fun?
LiveVideoStack: What were Mark Weiser's visions?
Steven Rubin: One of his visions was something he called “Ubiquitous Computing” where computers would be everywhere,
even in our clothes. This vision has certainly been accurate.
LiveVideoStack: If he were alive, what do you think he would say about today's computer industry?
Steven Rubin: He'd be in love. IOT (Internet of Things) would delight him. And Severe Tire Damage would probably still be playing gigs.
LiveVideoStack: Last but not least, will Severe Tire Damage release new singles or albums in the future?
Will there be a performance on the Internet?
Steven Rubin： After Mark Weiser died, we got a new drummer, but it wasn't the same anymore.
The remaining band members are getting old (I'll be turning 70 in October), and although Mick Jagger can still hobble around a stage,
we're probably beyond that. These days, we get featured in HOTI (History of The Internet) and other historical projects designed to capture those amazing early days.
Other members of Severe Tire Damage
Russ Haines (the guitarist and alternate vocalist)
I was the late bloomer in Severe Tire Damage, having only recently been issued patents and founding high tech startups.
After STD I worked for tech companies in Silicon Valley, taught college and corporate classes, and had a textbook published.
My startup "Eye Vapor" involved worldwide travel to create real-time Hollywood effects for large events and performances including the Super Bowl,
Pan American Games, Beyonce, Deadmau5, and The Jabbawockeez. My current project spends other people's money and creates nothing.
Mark Manasse (the bass player and background vocalist)
I've been an industrial computer science researcher since just after finishing grad school at Wisconsin in 1982 with a
PhD in mathematical logic and an MSc in computer science, where I met David Johnson (of Garey and Johnson) while he was
teaching at Madison in sabbatical from Bell Labs. He suggested I join him at Murray Hill, which I did. From there,
I worked in theoretical CS until I spent a quarter teaching CS at the University of Chicago, which I had previously declined for
undergraduate and graduate schools, and a teaching job. In 1984, I met Greg Nelson while he was on sabbatical from Xerox to
teach at Princeton during which time we started working on some CS semantics research. During that year many at PARC had left
for a new research lab for the Digital Equipment Corporation, as did Greg, so joining him meant leaving for DEC SRC and California in the summer of 1985.
I stayed there when Compaq purchased DEC, but left when HP decided to purchase Compaq, and left (with a dozen DEC SRC and WRL researchers)
for a new research lab for Microsoft until they decided that running groups both in Redmond and Mountain View was too pricey and shut us down.
From there I worked for three years at Salesforce, while they concluded that research wasn't a corporate desire, and dumped us.
I then started at a currently struggling startup, i2Chain, where I produced five patents (out of my total of just over fifty),
only two of which have issued so far.
Learn more about Severe Tire Damage and their music: www.std.org
We truly appreciate Steven Rubin who edited the whole English interview article and provided those precious STD photos.
We also thank Barry Zhao for reviewing the Chinese translation.
A documentary that describes how Severe Tire Damage scooped the Rolling Stones.
Any band that's been around for over sixty years deserves to have documentaries made about them.
This YouTube video
tells about how Severe Tire Damage did a surprise opening act for the Stones back when everyone was much younger.
Were the Rolling Stones the First Band to Play on the Internet
The Telegraph July 4, 2023
An article reliving Severe Tire Damage's opening act for the Rolling Stones.
Thirty years after opening for the Rolling Stones, Severe Tire Damage continues to entertain the world with ridiculous antics.
In this article, our performance is relived once again and found to be far less entertaining than a night with the Stones.
But, as Severe Tire Damage has been saying since the title of our first album, Who Cares?
In 1994, the Stones wanted to make history as the first band to perform live on the internet –
but a group of scientists had other ideas.
It was to be The Rolling Stones’ most ambitious performance yet.
Not content with the colossal world tour they had just completed for their 20th studio album, Voodoo Lounge
(which overtook Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell as the highest grossing tour at that time),
they planned to conquer what would become the biggest stage of all.
On November 18, 1994, The Rolling Stones would be the first band to perform live on the World Wide Web.
Except, they couldn’t be. Shortly after the band published their press release announcing their intentions,
their publicity team received an email from a group of computer scientists in Palo Alto, California.
The Rolling Stones couldn’t be the first to play live online, these geeks informed them,
because it had already been done – namely by their own band, an obscure outfit called Severe Tire Damage,
who would later gain notoriety as rock’s most hi-tech pranksters when they upstaged The Stones.
This month marks 30 years since Severe Tire Damage planted the proverbial flag online,
thanks in large part to their proximity to the most brilliant minds working in tech – some of whom were in the band.
Though members came and went, key players included bassist Manasse and Russ Haines on guitar,
front vocalist and Apple employee Steve Rubin, and Mark Weiser, whom Smithsonian Magazine named “rock’s smartest drummer”.
Today, Weiser is known as the father of “ubiquitous computing”, a term he coined in 1988
to describe a future where computers would be so common, and so seamlessly integrated into our lives,
we would cease to notice them. He also championed live streaming technology, writing in 1996 that the multicast –
an early iteration of the livestream – would “utterly change our world over the next 50 years”.
Prior to live streaming, the internet was visualised as a point-to-point system, where users sent files,
like pictures or videos, directly from one person to another.
A still from Severe Tire Damages first livestream concert on the internet
“But what if I want to send it to a thousand other people around the world?” Rubin explains.
“I had to, back then, send it a thousand times to each one of these people, which would overload the internet.”
The multicast backbone (or Mbone) reorganised this structure with a “backbone” that travelled across the internet once,
which multiple people tapped into simultaneously. This reduced the amount of data that had to be sent,
and paved the way for broadcasting to an online audience.
To demonstrate how the technology worked, a lecture was planned at Xerox PARC, a Silicon Valley tech hub,
which would also be cast over the Mbone. Once the talk finished, Weiser, sensing an opportunity,
arranged for the stream to cut to the roof of Xerox PARC’s new leisure centre, where his band, Severe Tire Damage,
were performing in the beating June sun.
“It was a hot summer day, and a bunch of leotard-clad dancers were doing their aerobics routines to celebrate this new fitness centre,”
says Rubin. “That’s how we became the first band to perform live on the internet.”
By today’s standards, the quality of that first stream was pretty poor.
The picture would have been small and jumpy, resembling a thumbnail-sized gif more than the HD resolution
we’ve become accustomed to on YouTube. But the audio worked well enough, and the band soon received emails from their colleagues
celebrating their performance. One attendee wrote, “To quote all the people who said of Woodstock, ‘I was there’ (remotely).”
“We started multicasting our rehearsal sessions on a weekly basis,” says Manasse. “The audience could talk back over the Mbone,
so we’d do things like take requests.” More band members were drafted in – not to play up front, but to handle the technology.
People like Lance Berc, who was already working on the Mbone, Brad Horak and Berry Kercheval devised interactive elements
like a remote-controlled camera, which the audience could pan across the band, and a smoke machine.
“Someone in Illinois would click a button and in California, where we were performing, suddenly the room would start filling up with theatrical fog,” says Rubin.
“It was very natural for us to combine our love of music and our love of networking,” says Berc.
“And since The Stones chose to use the same technology, it was a natural step to extend to The Stones’ broadcast.”
On the other side of the States, in a New York office, Stephan Fitch was getting ready to pitch the Mbone to The Rolling Stones’ lawyer.
He had just founded the company Thinking Pictures with a vision for adaptable on-screen storytelling based on audience reactions.
He was also adept at toying with the Mbone. “I would watch NASA in space sometimes,” he says. “We decided that would be an interesting thing to break.
Let’s put the world’s greatest rock band in this thing.”
Fitch also realised the internet could be a useful loophole to evade exclusivity deals. Ever the skilful curators of their brand,
The Stones had already wangled a sponsor for most elements of their tour, with rights already signed away for television and radio –
streaming offered another potential revenue source.
“We said, ‘Well, multicast is not broadcast. We want to do this thing called the internet,’” says Fitch.
“They’re like, ‘Internet? What’s that?’ We said, ‘World Wide Web.’ They said, ‘What’s that?’”
Making history: Severe Tire Damage were the first band to perform live on the internet
It was music’s equivalent of the space race, as artists rushed to redefine live performance and audio formats in the digital sphere.
Aerosmith released the first downloadable track, Head First, in June 1994. The Stones were determined to make history next.
“The concern was if The Stones didn’t do it, Bowie was going to,” says Fitch. “Bowie used to say, ‘Never wear a new pair of shoes around Mick.’
They had somewhat of a competition, apparently.” The band settled on broadcasting 20 minutes of their Dallas Cotton Bowl concert on their first website,
stones.com. And triumphantly wrote a press release bragging that they would be the first live-streamed rock band. Or, more accurately, they should have been.
When Severe Tire Damage contacted The Stones, they quickly amended their press release to specify that they were the first “major” band to perform online.
But Severe Tire Damage couldn’t resist a small prank to even the odds. “We decided to pirate their audience,” says Manasse.
The Mbone was still relatively primitive, with none of the encryptions that secure livestreams today.
For a group of computer scientists, a virtual stage invasion would be child’s play.
“We were pretty advanced by the time they did their broadcast,” says Berc. “We spent the night before with The Stones’ tech team,
helping them find the parameters for their broadcast.”
So it was that one Friday afternoon, Severe Tire Damage bundled into a DEC conference room – a rather more modest venue than the Dallas Cotton Bowl,
where The Stones were waiting in the wings, completely unaware of their unofficial support act. Half an hour before The Stones made their virtual debut,
Severe Tire Damage burst online, their frontman noting the historical significance as he greeted the net: “I remember going,
‘Hi, welcome to the world’s first virtual concert where the opening act is in a different city from the main attraction,’” he later told Mercury Studios.
Twenty minutes of rocking followed, with the band playing original tracks like Chris Killed Your Dog and Carcinoma, before bowing out.
“I said ‘Thanks, The Stones will be right up,’ and we cut the connection,” says Rubin.
Keith Richards and Mick Jagger performing during the band's Voodoo Lounge tour in 1994 Credit: Paul Natkin/Getty Images
When The Stones went live, Mick Jagger gestured to their online guests:
“I want to say a special welcome to everyone who’s climbed into the internet tonight and has got into the Mbone. I hope it doesn’t all collapse.”
Incredibly, for such a feat, only 200 people saw the broadcast. Many of those present were academics,
who accessed the internet through a university linkup. Nonetheless, in the weeks that followed, the press was abuzz.
Newsweek Magazine described Severe Tire Damage, with some comic accuracy, as “a lesser known rock band”.
The Stones’ tech team, more unkindly, called them a “very bad band of furry Palo Alto geeks” in a press release.
But The Rolling Stones took a more diplomatic approach, describing the prank as “a good reminder of the democratic nature of the internet” to the New York Times.
“It’s like the moon landing,” says Fitch. “What we did with The Stones, everybody’s doing now through their phone.”
It was the beginning of a new era online, when the general population adopted the internet.
Thinking Pictures later live streamed more concerts with artists like Oasis, Tori Amos and Duncan Sheik.
Berc joined a start-up that was commercialising streaming – they initially envisaged thousands of streams going out to millions of people.
“Now it’s millions of streams to billions of users. It was far beyond anything we dreamed up back then,” he says.
Tragically, Weiser, the mastermind behind Severe Tire Damage’s first multicast, never saw his predictions for 21st-century computing materialise.
He passed away from liver failure caused by cancer in 1999. But his legacy endures. Berc explains:
“In the Nineties you had to have expensive equipment to do the kind of video that people do from their cheap cell phones.
Anyone can put something on the internet. Back then, you had to be a guru of some sort.”
Yet any hopes of a digital renaissance, may be sputtering again. Democracy on the internet, Fitch argues, now has more to do with legislation,
which is tightening across the globe. “People are trying to make it not democratic,” he says, citing a bill backed by the White House in March,
which gives it new powers to ban TikTok. In the UK, due to security concerns, the Chinese-owned app is banned from all government-owned devices.
“I think the future of all this is they’re going to ban everything,” says Rubin. ”We’re the first and last people to use the internet this way,
then all the interlocks will come down and we will be banished to our little holes in the wall. It’s been fun.”
“Music will be underground again. It will be 1984, or Fahrenheit 451,” adds Berc.
With lawmakers and commercial forces increasingly circling, it remains to be seen whether the internet’s next phase
can retain the same rebellious spirit that fuelled its makers through the 1990s. But if Severe Tire Damage proved anything,
it’s that rock n’ roll resurfaces in the unlikeliest of places – and its unruly playfulness may just be the true mother of invention.
