Online devotees of the thrash-metal band Megadeth gather in Las Vegas today to honor not only their beloved band, but themselves, as one of the oldest chat communities created specifically on the Web. Besides kicking off a Megadeth tour in support of the new album, Cryptic Writings, the Rattler Reunion at the Hard Rock Cafe includes a live Palace chat with the band, and the crowning of Miss Megadeth, Arizona.
When Capitol Records put up the original Megadeth, Arizona site in 1994, it included one of the first Web chats. Fans, known as Rattlers, logged on in hopes of talking with band members, and stayed for the sweet relief of meeting others like themselves.
"It was extremely cool," recalled Mark Smeets, a student at Douglas College in Vancouver. "There's a certain bond among fans of that genre that you can't find anywhere else. It really does turn into a brotherhood, er, personhood."
Chatting on the site, Smeets met, and fell in love with, a woman from Greece. "She came on, and it was like, 'Finally, a human that likes Iron Maiden. And you're my age? And you play bass, too?' It was overwhelming."
"It proved so many things to me: that love has no boundaries and that beauty is not only skin deep, it's beyond it," Smeets said. "You have to look for the mind in the person, and that's what counts." Their relationship lasted two years, and they remain friends.
Capitol Records had planned to keep the site up only three months, said Robin Bechtel, senior director, new media, "but all these letters came in, begging us to leave it up. So we decided to stop updating it in April 1995, but we left it up for people to come and look."
When the MegaDiner chat closed, habituées switched to fan-maintained sites (including Smeets' Dethly Contaminants) many of which had chat capability.
Stories of how Megadeth, Arizona has influenced lives abound on the site's bulletin boards. Many fans, like Julie Fahring, say that it was the Megadeth site that piqued their interest in computing and getting online.
"I'd never been on the Internet," Fahring, a university employee in Phoenix, said. "Of course I'd heard about it, but it wasn't of interest to me. I went to their show last month, and they were passing out stickers with a Web site address. I thought, 'Wow, I can look up these guys on the Internet.' A week later, we went down to CompUSA and got a computer."
The updated Megadeth, Arizona Web site, which premiered 14 June, employs Palace Presents software, which includes live audio streaming. Rattlers today will be able to hear band members answer questions in real time during a pre-concert chat from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. PDT.
Long after the big concert, even after Capitol Records shuts down the site a second time, the Rattler community will remain intact, said Smeets. They'll gather at fan-maintained sites, where they'll continue to share what they know about the band, computers and the Internet, and life and love.
