Intro-blog
Introduction to Barnsleyrock
I started the first Barnsleyrock site quite a while ago now.
It was in response to the dire state of the rock scene at the time.
The main problems being the lack of people that were going out, and the music.
While trying to convince the djs to play something a little more diverse than the same overly commercial set lists, (that got played week after week), I was told how they were paid to keep people dancing and to keep the dance floor full.
They could only do this by playing songs that everyone knew and could easily dance/mosh to, (bouncy Nu-metal mostly).
On the odd occasion that the dj did give in to pressure and play something a little more
diverse, the dance floor would clear and the dj would prove his point.
This wouldn't have been a problem in a place that had a bigger (and more diverse) crowd.
What was never taken into consideration was the fact that a lot of people that liked something other than bouncy Nu-metal probably hated the night and were long since sick of paying good money to be "entertained" by the same few songs, and concentrating on keeping the dance floor full in the short term, instead of the nightclub full on the whole, was probably not the best way to go.
But at least they were willing to meet us halfway, whenever we had a night with a few more people out than usual, like when the students would break up from Uni, the music was generally better.
As long as there were enough people on the floor everything was cool and everyone was happy.
Most of the time though, you went out on Wednesdays to see the same few faces and dance/mosh to the same few songs.
And to top things off, it wasn't even a full rocknight, we got the first hour while the place was still filling up, and the last hour while it was slowly emptying out.
The catch 22 style situation we were in was fairly obvious..
"Its shit because no-one comes out"
"No-one comes out because its shit"
The Website
I decided to make a website, not knowing anything about Html, or even what html was at the time, I found something called MSN Groups.
It worked through my Hotmail account, it was free and it used a simple editor to create and customise the site.
Some people snubbed it at first and said I should get a "proper" website, but I didn't care.
It was very practical and Barnsleyrock was never supposed to be about a website anyway, its was a community, a way for people to get in contact with other people, on and offline.
Finding members to join was not that easy, this was before Myspace and Facebook, and most
people had never heard of social networking.
I spent countless hours trawling through all kinds of sites, profile sites, local sites.
Local band websites often had a guestbook I could get emails from.
I took emails from everywhere, I even searched the MSN members directory... twice!
My behaviour at this point was getting a little obsessive/neurotic, but I just told myself it was an advantage, as no "normal" person would ever have the motivation to go through such a tedious activity for any serious lengths of time.
Most of the emails I gathered were duds, they were either old addresses that had been abandoned or belonged to people that simply ignored the idiot who was randomly inviting them to join some website that wasn't even a "proper" website.
Some of them did join though, I would add them to MSN, check their location and musical taste, then quiz them about any friends they might have that should also join.
I'd carry on with this procedure of talking to friends of friends, trying to convince them to join up and/or give me details of others who might.
Back then 30-50 members seemed huge, we didn't seriously expect to get that many, but that was nothing, soon it was hundreds!
The site was buzzing with activity, I kept filling the original 150 contacts limit on MSN and had to make multiple accounts, but more importantly than the number of members or contacts, it was starting to have a big impact in real life too.
Barnsleyrock got even bigger, we got lots more people out, the rocknights not only became better but there were more of them (this was a good thing for a while).
I was going out 4 nights a week at one point and 1 of those would start as an alldayer.
Everything was great, the community had become a movement.
Almost everyone now called me by my internet log-in Steverockhead (or Rockhead Steve).
I must have made a few hundred friends and it was an awesome time while it lasted.
Went wrong
One worrying trend we witnessed was although we were getting more people out, more rocknights were springing up and we had to push even harder to get enough people to fill them.
We were able to keep up for a while, but with a finite number of alternative people in Barnsley it wasn't going to last.
An extra night a week isn't that much of a big deal, people can go out more than once a week, they just probably wont spend quite so much.
The problem is when 2 venues hold a rocknight on the same night, a person cannot be in 2 places at the same time, they are either in your venue or they are in your competitors, who are trying to steal your crowd and ruin your business.
Its that simple.
It was bound to happen sooner or later and when it did it was nasty.
Friends turned on each other and the message boards became hostile.
We were no longer united as one group, we were competing against each other and the rockscene was starting to destroy its self from within.
I had been supporting The Venue/The Upstairs Room for a long time, I had put a lot of money into equipment and I was booking bands, (I would eventually run the night but that was only after 2 djs left and the place was really on its arse).
On Fridays it was the only after-pub venue we had in the beginning, but now we had competition.
And when the pubs got late licenses we had to compete with them also.
In no time at all we had gone from half a rocknight a week, to 3-4 rocknights just on Friday nights alone.
It was as if the town had gone rocknight mad.
Campaigning for common sense didn't work.
Even though no-one could argue with logical reasoning no-one really cared.
Crowds are fickle, people are only concerned with their own short term situation.
Turn outs were generally poor and were made worse by people deciding not to bother going out at all,(in Barnsley at least).
I was spending less time getting new members to join and more time obsessively promoting The Venue.
Most new members would simply sign up and be largely inactive, some would chat on the forum but the novelty would usually wear off after a few weeks.
This is how it always was, but with the joining rate down the site became less active and lost its focus.
It was also old and loosing functionality, I let it die to some extent.
Sites like Myspace were better for promo and in any case, its seemed most people misunderstood what the site was even about in the end.
They just associated it with The Venue and me.
The scene was dying, greed, stupidity, selfish and negative attitudes were killing it.
It was just a matter of time before I would get to say "I told you so" to a lot of people.
The Venue lost its 3 rocknights 1 by 1.
Oxygen would loose its 3 too.
The Room somehow managed to stay open despite being dead (and having no lager on tap).
Present day
So here I am, a few grand lighter, my faith in people seriously dented, and I'm wondering if
I really want to go through it all again.
------ To be continued--------
------Continued 9/1/09 ------
Well, it's been over 5 months or so now since the new site went up.
It's a bit disappointing to see a lack of activity on it but it's going pretty much how I thought it would.
There isn't really as much need for a site like this these days, now that everyone has there own personal social sites but it's nice to have everyone in one place.
And it's a pretty good resource, whenever someone joins up (with a proper profile) I use it to add them on Myspace/Facebook/Msn.
There's also no real unifying cause to "rally the troops" like there was with the first site, rock nights are fucked and I can't see anything on the horizon that could change that any time soon.
I'd appreciate it if everyone didn't forget about the site completely after the novelty of signing up has worn off.
If some of you could put a link to barnsleyrock.co.uk on your social networking sites, that wouldn't hurt either. :)
Oh also, Msn have announced the closing of Msn Groups in February.
It's a shame the old site will be deleted, close to 1000 people joined that site, 17646 posts, god knows how many pictures were uploaded... good times tho :(
If you want to check out some of the old convos/arguments or reminisce over some old photos
http://groups.msn.com/barnsleyrock
I started the first Barnsleyrock site quite a while ago now.
It was in response to the dire state of the rock scene at the time.
The main problems being the lack of people that were going out, and the music.
While trying to convince the djs to play something a little more diverse than the same overly commercial set lists, (that got played week after week), I was told how they were paid to keep people dancing and to keep the dance floor full.
They could only do this by playing songs that everyone knew and could easily dance/mosh to, (bouncy Nu-metal mostly).
On the odd occasion that the dj did give in to pressure and play something a little more
diverse, the dance floor would clear and the dj would prove his point.
This wouldn't have been a problem in a place that had a bigger (and more diverse) crowd.
What was never taken into consideration was the fact that a lot of people that liked something other than bouncy Nu-metal probably hated the night and were long since sick of paying good money to be "entertained" by the same few songs, and concentrating on keeping the dance floor full in the short term, instead of the nightclub full on the whole, was probably not the best way to go.
But at least they were willing to meet us halfway, whenever we had a night with a few more people out than usual, like when the students would break up from Uni, the music was generally better.
As long as there were enough people on the floor everything was cool and everyone was happy.
Most of the time though, you went out on Wednesdays to see the same few faces and dance/mosh to the same few songs.
And to top things off, it wasn't even a full rocknight, we got the first hour while the place was still filling up, and the last hour while it was slowly emptying out.
The catch 22 style situation we were in was fairly obvious..
"Its shit because no-one comes out"
"No-one comes out because its shit"
The Website
I decided to make a website, not knowing anything about Html, or even what html was at the time, I found something called MSN Groups.
It worked through my Hotmail account, it was free and it used a simple editor to create and customise the site.
Some people snubbed it at first and said I should get a "proper" website, but I didn't care.
It was very practical and Barnsleyrock was never supposed to be about a website anyway, its was a community, a way for people to get in contact with other people, on and offline.
Finding members to join was not that easy, this was before Myspace and Facebook, and most
people had never heard of social networking.
I spent countless hours trawling through all kinds of sites, profile sites, local sites.
Local band websites often had a guestbook I could get emails from.
I took emails from everywhere, I even searched the MSN members directory... twice!
My behaviour at this point was getting a little obsessive/neurotic, but I just told myself it was an advantage, as no "normal" person would ever have the motivation to go through such a tedious activity for any serious lengths of time.
Most of the emails I gathered were duds, they were either old addresses that had been abandoned or belonged to people that simply ignored the idiot who was randomly inviting them to join some website that wasn't even a "proper" website.
Some of them did join though, I would add them to MSN, check their location and musical taste, then quiz them about any friends they might have that should also join.
I'd carry on with this procedure of talking to friends of friends, trying to convince them to join up and/or give me details of others who might.
Back then 30-50 members seemed huge, we didn't seriously expect to get that many, but that was nothing, soon it was hundreds!
The site was buzzing with activity, I kept filling the original 150 contacts limit on MSN and had to make multiple accounts, but more importantly than the number of members or contacts, it was starting to have a big impact in real life too.
Barnsleyrock got even bigger, we got lots more people out, the rocknights not only became better but there were more of them (this was a good thing for a while).
I was going out 4 nights a week at one point and 1 of those would start as an alldayer.
Everything was great, the community had become a movement.
Almost everyone now called me by my internet log-in Steverockhead (or Rockhead Steve).
I must have made a few hundred friends and it was an awesome time while it lasted.
Went wrong
One worrying trend we witnessed was although we were getting more people out, more rocknights were springing up and we had to push even harder to get enough people to fill them.
We were able to keep up for a while, but with a finite number of alternative people in Barnsley it wasn't going to last.
An extra night a week isn't that much of a big deal, people can go out more than once a week, they just probably wont spend quite so much.
The problem is when 2 venues hold a rocknight on the same night, a person cannot be in 2 places at the same time, they are either in your venue or they are in your competitors, who are trying to steal your crowd and ruin your business.
Its that simple.
It was bound to happen sooner or later and when it did it was nasty.
Friends turned on each other and the message boards became hostile.
We were no longer united as one group, we were competing against each other and the rockscene was starting to destroy its self from within.
I had been supporting The Venue/The Upstairs Room for a long time, I had put a lot of money into equipment and I was booking bands, (I would eventually run the night but that was only after 2 djs left and the place was really on its arse).
On Fridays it was the only after-pub venue we had in the beginning, but now we had competition.
And when the pubs got late licenses we had to compete with them also.
In no time at all we had gone from half a rocknight a week, to 3-4 rocknights just on Friday nights alone.
It was as if the town had gone rocknight mad.
Campaigning for common sense didn't work.
Even though no-one could argue with logical reasoning no-one really cared.
Crowds are fickle, people are only concerned with their own short term situation.
Turn outs were generally poor and were made worse by people deciding not to bother going out at all,(in Barnsley at least).
I was spending less time getting new members to join and more time obsessively promoting The Venue.
Most new members would simply sign up and be largely inactive, some would chat on the forum but the novelty would usually wear off after a few weeks.
This is how it always was, but with the joining rate down the site became less active and lost its focus.
It was also old and loosing functionality, I let it die to some extent.
Sites like Myspace were better for promo and in any case, its seemed most people misunderstood what the site was even about in the end.
They just associated it with The Venue and me.
The scene was dying, greed, stupidity, selfish and negative attitudes were killing it.
It was just a matter of time before I would get to say "I told you so" to a lot of people.
The Venue lost its 3 rocknights 1 by 1.
Oxygen would loose its 3 too.
The Room somehow managed to stay open despite being dead (and having no lager on tap).
Present day
So here I am, a few grand lighter, my faith in people seriously dented, and I'm wondering if
I really want to go through it all again.
------ To be continued--------
------Continued 9/1/09 ------
Well, it's been over 5 months or so now since the new site went up.
It's a bit disappointing to see a lack of activity on it but it's going pretty much how I thought it would.
There isn't really as much need for a site like this these days, now that everyone has there own personal social sites but it's nice to have everyone in one place.
And it's a pretty good resource, whenever someone joins up (with a proper profile) I use it to add them on Myspace/Facebook/Msn.
There's also no real unifying cause to "rally the troops" like there was with the first site, rock nights are fucked and I can't see anything on the horizon that could change that any time soon.
I'd appreciate it if everyone didn't forget about the site completely after the novelty of signing up has worn off.
If some of you could put a link to barnsleyrock.co.uk on your social networking sites, that wouldn't hurt either. :)
Oh also, Msn have announced the closing of Msn Groups in February.
It's a shame the old site will be deleted, close to 1000 people joined that site, 17646 posts, god knows how many pictures were uploaded... good times tho :(
If you want to check out some of the old convos/arguments or reminisce over some old photos
http://groups.msn.com/barnsleyrock
Add a Comment
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Comment by DravenRocks on November 23, 2008 at 11:04pm - I'd be one of the first to admit that i lost interest. Be it in certain people,or in certain venues. But my passion for the music will never,ever wane. I suppose my point is...if you build it they will come. Besides i'm sick of having to go to Sheffield for a semi crap rock night.
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Comment by charlie on October 23, 2008 at 8:45pm - that was amazing. you should try just once more you never know the second time round things may be different, there new faces on the rock scence and stronger bonds. the diversity or barnsley is getting larger aswell, if you look the room is more of an emotic place or lighter rock, were as millstones and oxygen are playing the heavier stuff. to please different groups of the rock scene, insted of all the music just being played in one place, this way everyone has somewhere to go
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Comment by Yellow Sunshine on September 1, 2008 at 6:02pm - wow i never realised it was all that bad,waiting for the next instalment,:)xx
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Comment by Steverockhead on August 3, 2008 at 7:37pm -
Lol
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Comment by El Sausage on August 3, 2008 at 7:13pm - we do have beer on tap at the mo so you can bugger off steve :P wont last long though haha c'est la vie
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Comment by pete g on July 31, 2008 at 11:37pm - wow, seen you around for so long, never realised you where loosing money while we partied. thats "bogus"
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Comment by Steverockhead on July 31, 2008 at 6:35pm
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Who was sleeping with each other?
Do you know something I don't or did you just and that bit for drama? lol
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Comment by Venusian Queen on July 31, 2008 at 6:32pm -
This is the first time I've read this. Bravo.
Like you say though, I think it got to a point where everyone kinda fell out. There was that much backbiting going on, and people sleeping with each other (ha) that nobody could look each other in the eye. I just hope we get to see some decent nights again soon
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Comment by Emski on July 31, 2008 at 6:08pm -
you talk a lot of sense there steve...and i remember many conversations back when i was working at venue and oxygen had just opened predicting what would happen....and sadly it did happen.
unfortunatley i then movedaway and there just wasn't enough pulling me back to tarn for nights out, but far not i'm back out drinking in tarn now and hopefully there will be some good nights ahead!
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Comment by Chris on July 28, 2008 at 6:58pm - It took him ages cus he had to get his mum to check it for spelling and grammar.
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