Your earliest online film music/forum experiences?

Mine was an online Yahoo! Group, which was a email "chain" back then. Somewhere around 1997/98. You'd reply to emails, and it was sent out to all the people attached to that group. A slow way to build conversation, but finding other film music fans was such a treasure! I was really into the movie Titanic then, and part of the newspaper team at my high school. I remember writing an article for the newspaper about James Horner's score try to drum up other enthusiastic listeners. But it didn't really work, sadly. I never really found any likeminded film score friends until I discovered that Yahoo! Group email chain, so it was really awesome. I also discovered Filmtracks.com around the same time. I didn't join the message board there, but I did enjoy following along with Christian's reviews.

My earliest film music forum experiences have faded into the dim and distant past!

The FSM board must have been my earliest experience of a film music board but I can't recall how that fitted in with scorereviews.com (an earlier iteration of MainTitles). I do remember there being some sort of messageboard but I can't remember the name - something containing 'FILMUS' or something like that?

There were other boards about but I just lurked around those rather than being an active participant. Until I got involved with scorereviews.com!

I vageluely remember a lot of Yahoo/Geocities communities from 1996/1997. Back then, I never actively particpated in any discussions.

After starting with film music, I quickly started looking stuff up, mostly the name Hans Zimmer. It's funny in retrospect that his name caught my eye as he is second on the credits in The Rock. It took me two years to find out at home that it was The Lion King that was my first soundtrack, though it wasn't my request, more like parents asking me and my brother if we want the cassette and me going "yeah!". It had to be ingrained in my subconscious.

The first site I found was, actually, Filmtracks. The cool thing were the clips, so I could have some interest in certain scores by listening to the clips (anyone remembers the RealAudio format?!), had to get the player, etc.

Later I participated in comments (an originally vicious exchange with one guy who later backtracked his comments, led me to discover Elliot Goldenthal).

The main forum of choice for me was first Scorereviews and now MainTitles. I had a short stint at FSM, but decided not to pursue it due to the attitude to my favorite composer. That said, Hybrid Soldier is there and quite rabid, so I have been considering to get back for a while just to flame Hybrid for, well, a part of a recent controversy.

That I don't remember, just the format and the software, which was somewhat of an early memory hog, wasn't it?

Oh, that's true. It was very specific to a single app. I am not sure if later Winamp and other players like that didn't include the format, but originally it was for a specific application and I never knew why Clemmensn got the idea to use it.

This post is so long, I had to write it in Word first. I thought since I opened up for this topic I’m so passionate about, I could just as well go all the way. It’s important to me, and I’m so longwinded about it, because it helped defined who I am today. And I can use it as a reference in the future. Feel free to ignore it.

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Internet. It was such a weird thing in the mid 90s. In 1994, I was in high school. One day, one of my classmates, who for some reason had access to computer rooms in the engineer college nearby, came up to me and told me about this internet thing. I had heard about it, but didn’t really know what it was. He presented it to me as this gigantic source of information about everything. I didn’t really believe him. Up untill that point, all my information about things I loved – bands like Supertramp, composers like John Williams – were acquired through encyclopedias. If I were lucky. So I gave him a challenge: Find all you can about Supertramp! Believing it was too obscure for this silly internet thingie. He came back the next day with a print-out of a site that had the complete discography and what-not. I was stunned.

Over the next year or so, I gradually found out more. We didn’t have internet at home, but I went to classmates who DID have home connections – you know, those slow, dial-up modems that drained the phone bill. Found a couple of Williams sites (Scott Hanson had one, remember him?). I also discovered filmmusic.com. At that site, there was a resource site about other film music resources, among them an “ad” of sorts about FSM. This was before they had a site of their own. You could send dollars in an envelope (I think it was $20) and get a 1-year subscription. I scribbled the information down, and decided to go for it. Went to the bank, took out dollars, sent it to Lukas, and my subscription had started (I believe the first issue I got was the one where they released their first CD, David Shire’s THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1-2-3….I have since acquired the preceding issues, so I now have a complete collection).

Eventually, we got internet at home, but I couldn’t stay on for long. I drained the phone bill, and I took up the line. In the few minutes I was online, I tried to absorb everything I could about all my “obscure” passions. I still believed I was the only person in Norway interested in soundtracks, but seeing these sites and notes online helped me understand “I was not alone”.

In 1996, aged 18, I moved away from home, to Oslo. Over the next year or so, my only internet connection was these computer terminals in the campus hallways. They were slow, but they got the work done. But again I had to be quick about it, because there was a line behind me of other people wanting to get online.

From there, it went quickly, and I’m not going to go into all the details. But after having studied at the university for a year and half (philosophy and English), I went into the army in January-1998. After the intital 3-month recruit period, I was stationed as a corporal at a military camp in the middle of nowhere, but pretty close to Oslo. I was a ‘sykevokter’ (a kind of nurse) serving at the army hospital 24/7, so I had one week on and one week off. While I was on, I sometimes snuck away from my duties to visit the computer room. I dialed up the slow line, and noticed that FSM now had a site – moreover, they had a messageboard in the now-defunct “branch format”! In March-1998, I made my first post there – a request to soundtrack salesman Gerry Kroll aka soundtrackers about getting me the Varese release of Bill Conti’s NORTH & SOUTH/THE RIGHT STUFF. We concluded the deal, and had several more deals over the next years.

During one of my “off” periods in 1998, when I was back home, I established two Yahoo Clubs, one about Elfman called “Elfmania” and another about general film music called “Celluloid Tunes” (if memory serves). The latter became the benchmark for my current site celluloidtunes.no, first formed as a site in the year 2000. So technically, my site is 23 years old, even though no one has heard about it. I also engaged a lot with a Spaniard called Ricard at the time (founder of the Yahoo Club “Heroic Film Music”), who would later establish what is now JWFAN.com. These Yahoo Clubs (later called Yahoo Groups) have now been deleted by Yahoo.

Back at FSM, business went on as usual. Lots of interesting information and posts, but also some controversies (particularly a guy called Latham Conger III, who would lash out at you if you went against him). I returned to the university in 1999. But then, suddenly, FSM went down. I can’t remember why. All FSM members emigrated to Peter Kelly’s moviemusic.com, and we stayed there about a year. Loads of great conversations were had.

In October-2000, the FSM messageboard suddenly came back, and we flocked back like the dedicated fans we were. Interface-wise, the current board is pretty much the same as it was back then, 21 years later. Shortly thereafter, I posted my first “official” criticism of complete and chronological releases (already a known entity by then, and I think the post was a re-post from something I’d posted on moviemusic.com), for which I’m now (in)famous. Lukas made fun of it with the “watermelon” story in the first of the get-togethers. I’m OK with that, have at it! But in general, I love the early 2000s on FSM. Someone started a thread about something – a score, a film – and we would discuss the film or music. Nothing, or very little, about desiring new releases or expansions, or any other technical nuts and bolts. This was pure aesthetics.

We had our share of controversial members (beyond myself) – Andre Lux, Pluto, Daniel2, what-have-you. And there was drama, just as there is today. But things seemed to sort themselves out.

I finished my university degree in 2004, which is about the same time as I started the “Cheers” thread (that thread is now a micro cosmos in itself, at least for me – recounting my life events in the 17 years since). After that, I went on to become a television personality of sorts in 2005 and 2006, and was then hired as a university professor throughout 2007.

At this point, FSM was still the go-to place for online discussion. It was also the first year I got internet connection in my small apartment, I think, after having had to use university connections up to this point. But I started to explore outwards.

At this point, I was already a member of JWFAN, who my old friend Ricard had started many years earlier, but didn’t participate much. But I noticed another site called scorereviews.com – created by Mikael Carlsson. I went there, and quickly came into the swing of things. It was such a different group from FSM. You didn’t have to “stay on your toes” in order to avoid controversy; you could just be who you wanted to be – drunk or sober, controversial or straightforward, it didn’t matter. I loved it. If FSM was the big disco that everyone went to, scorereviews was the pub on the corner. About a year into my stay there, Mikael had to close it down, but Bregt – one of the members – suggested that we created a new site and board, and that eventually became maintitles.net (after a round about what the name should be – I’m still not sold on maintitles!).

My academic career didn’t pan out. After 11 years in academia, and being tempted into TV after being a sort of “TV celebrity” myself, I went into television production in 2008 (as a casting agent), and worked as that until 2010, untill that career didn’t pan out either. From 2011 onwards, I’ve worked a freelance film (and film music) journalist, but rarely getting the income I need – which has now caused all kinds of problems (that I won’t go into here).

But coming to FSM, Maintitles, JWFAN and other film music forums has been a release valve throughout. Film Score Monthly will always be my original film music home, no matter how controversial or disliked I am (exemplified most recently by the dismissal in Stephen’s Zoom chats due to my inebriated state of mind). Maintitles will always remain my favourite film music forum on the net – a place where you can be yourself and just relax – even if the activity has waned. JWFAN has been fun to follow; or rather Ricard’s success after our Yahoo Club encounters and discussions in the late 90s. I also sometimes check out Filmtracks, Intrada and other places.

Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to meet many of these anonymous faces live. FSM, Maintitles, JWFAN. Without exception, all the meetings have been great. No arguing, no nonsense. Just pleasure. Despite what’s happening behind screen handles on anonymous boards. I could tell endless stories about these meetings over the last decade, and supply with great images, but I’m already longwinded enough.

I hope it will continue for as long as I live.

scorereviews.com

Ah yes! Crikey.

So yeah, that was my first online experience and then the segue into Main Titles. I learned and discovered a lot in those first few years. And met a lot of you lovely people.

I think I remember it well because it's so important to me -- the whole validation of who I am.

On the other hand, I'm terrible at remembering what my first soundtrack was, or the first film I watched etc. I have some THEORIES (which I laid out in the 'love of film music' thread), but I can't be 100% sure that's how it went down.

I guess that's selective memory for you. The superlong post above was written under a little bit of influence, so I need to edit it and tidy the text up a bit at some point. It comes off as very "rambling".