June 24, 1993: Concert Goes Live on Net
June 24, 2000: President Goes Live on Net

June 24: It’s the anniversary of two internet milestones: The geek band Severe Tire Damage performs the first live net concert on this date in 1993, and exactly seven years later Bill Clinton delivers the president’s weekend “radio address” by web for the first time. 1993: The internet was moving from military to mainstream, and […]

__june_24_dayintech1June 24: __It's the anniversary of two internet milestones: The geek band Severe Tire Damage performs the first live net concert on this date in 1993, and exactly seven years later Bill Clinton delivers the president's weekend "radio address" by web for the first time.

__1993: __The internet was moving from military to mainstream, and from academic to pandemic. The World Wide Web was already up and running, and the growing legion of online habitués was ready for something more than pi a la modem.

Enter Severe Tire Damage, a band of California rockers. They set their gear up on the patios of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center on a June afternoon and sent their show out on the Internet Multicast Backbone, or Mbone. The live performance attracted attention as far away as Australia, mate.

A slightly better-known band, the Rolling Stones, did the first big-name live internet broadcast in 1994. But even then, Severe Tire Damage got in on the act. The renegade rockers used the Mbone again to play some tunes before and after the official Stones concert.

The Stones were miffed and labeled Severe Tire Damage as "furry Palo Alto geeks." STD proudly proclaimed it was the first band in history to play a warm-up set in a different city than the headliners.

STD lives on, as do the Stones. But the Mbone is a relic: surpassed and superseded by superior technical artistry. Wait, maybe that applies to the Stones, too. And STD.

__2000: __U.S. presidents starting with Calvin Coolidge had used radio to address the American public, and Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fireside chats" became the stuff of broadcast and political lore. And though FDR also started presidential speeches on TV, Ronald Reagan chose radio to initiate a series of weekly Saturday-morning messages in 1982.

President Clinton, whose tenure in office from 1993 to 2001 saw the web become a new mass medium, expanded on the Reagan idea. He started the practice of sending the Saturday talk out, not just on the radio, but over the web.

Web video was still in its infancy. Not everybody had the right software. Home connections were more often than not still in the age of the dial-up modem. But Clinton was determined to be ahead of the curve.

In fact, the first webcast of the president's weekly message was not only high-tech in medium, it was high-tech in message. (Professor McLuhan, where are you?) Clinton gave a big election-year nod to the Democratic candidate for president:

Under the leadership of Vice President Gore, we have greatly expanded the spread of information technology throughout the government, cutting reams of red tape, putting vast resources at the fingertips of all of our citizens. Citizens now are using government websites to file their taxes, compare their Medicare options, apply for student loans, and find good jobs. They’re tapping into the latest health research and browsing vast collections in the Library of Congress and following along with NASA’s missions in outer space. This is just the beginning.

The president then announced the creation of a federal-government portal site, FirstGov.gov. (It's still around today as USA.gov.) He also promised to expand the scope of activities and transactions that would be available on the web. And he announced $50,000 in prizes to "students, researchers, private sector workers, or government employees who present the most creative ideas" for improving how citizens and government connect electronically.

The address, by the way, did not come live from the White House. It was recorded at a private home in Los Angeles Friday afternoon for broadcast by radio and web Saturday morning.

As for what Severe Tire Damage thinks of the 42nd president, or sometime musician Clinton's opinion of STD, we leave that to the musicologists and political historians. If music be the food of love, play on, o ship of state!

Source: Today in Technology History; various

*Photo: (left, from top) Severe Tire Damage musicians Mark Manasse, Russ Haines, Steve Rubin, Mark Weiser; (right) Bill Clinton with his saxophone.
Courtesy Severe Tire Damage; Corbis
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