Back in August 2005, I registered the domains NewLostCityRamblers dot com and dot net.
Remembering why I did this foolish thing causes me conflicted emotions, to the point that they cancel each other out. Today, I very rarely think of it, except to puzzle over why I did it and what to do next.
That summer, I was kicking around the idea of starting a blog devoted to the members of the New Lost City Ramblers. The band is the best-kept secret in America — their influence is truly incalculable, their musical output seemingly endless and of supreme quality, and almost nobody under the age of 50 seems to know who they are.
When I’ve asked baby-boomer folk and blues enthusiasts how they got into the music (hoping to hear a story about the Harry Smith Anthology), they’ve almost always said they were roped in by the New Lost City Ramblers. After a while, I started to take that message to heart.
The individual members of Ramblers are still out there performing, mostly on their own and often in mind-bogglingly small and informal settings. So starting a blog to trace their comings and goings — and what hot young bands were being compared to them, who was crediting them with starting their careers, and so forth — seemed both a fun project and a useful public service.
But it turned out to be something a good deal more. Once I started the blog, I found my own understanding of the band growing exponentially. I also became much more familiar with a wider community I’d have known nothing about had I not maintained that blog. It was a door to a considerably wider world than I had known.
It is now inactive, though I haven’t given up on it completely. I never received one comment from a reader, and the site statistics remained virtually non-existent — it was as thankless as hell. When I started my full-time pursuit of the Anthology’s Frank Cloutier and the Victoria Cafe, something had to give, and it was the Ramblers blog. Still, I very much miss what I got out of it, and I hope it will somehow live again some day soon.
ANYWAY, point is, I was kicking around ideas for a name, so I went to a domain registration service and started plugging in ideas — BattleshipMaine.gov, BlackBottomStrut.net, LongPlayingShortSelling.com, and so forth. Soon, I thought to try the obvious thing — NewLostCityRamblers dot com and dot net. I was very surprised — startled — that the domains were just sitting there, waiting for anybody at all to just pay a few bucks for them.
So I puzzled over that. I had long been a fan of Tom Waits, so I knew TomWaits.com had been held for years by a cyber squatter. Going to the domain yielded a come-on for a flat-out porn site, plus a lot of pop-up windows. I hear Waits had to pay a lot of lawyers to finally get his name back. Although I’m not absolutely sure, it appears Mike Seeger’s name is already being squatted on in an analogous, if slightly more clever way — perhaps the reason for the real Mikes’s odd URL.
For several days in a row, I returned to the registration site. I thought about alerting the Ramblers that the domains were available, but figured they must already know. I wondered if there might be such acrimony among the members that none wanted to be seen as grabbing the band’s name. Mostly, I foresaw the day that a cyber squatter grabbed the domains and set up his scam, at which point they would become much more expensive property.
After several days of watching and thinking, a normal person would have concluded that the domains were worthless, that nobody wanted them, and they would remain available forever. But not me! I started wringing my hands a bit over the issue, especially since knowing they were available made me feel partly responsible for any bad outcomes. I thought about seeking advice at certain discussion lists I follow, but going public might have resulted in a self-fulfilling prophesy.
So … one day, without really having thought it out very deeply — on a whim — I whipped out a credit card and nabbed them. (It’s ssssooo easy to do, almost like “one-click” buying at Amazon.) Of course, this multiplied my involvement exponentially. Instead of resolving a puzzle, it turned the puzzle into a problem, and one that was decisively MINE. Maybe that’s what I wanted — I’m not sure.
And so there it is. It’s embarrassing, because it’s ethically ambiguous and something only an obsessive “fan” would get himself into. It’s a bit like Iraq — too costly to hold onto, especially since it was none of my business in the first place, but it’s uncomfortable imagining what might happen if I walked away.
I’m pretty sure — assuming no other intervention — I’ll hang onto the domains for a time and keep wondering about them. If the Ramblers want them, they can sure as hell have them for nothing. When I do let them go, I’ll try to give their management plenty of advance warning.
In the meantime, the domains sit there as something for me to think about, a touch stone. The very situation itself is an episode in the screwy history of the band’s under-appreciation … and in the strange career this kind of music is enjoying in cyberspace … and in my own obsessive, expensive relationship with both.
Editor’s Note: This is installment 22 in my 28-part attempt to post one entry of The Celestial Monochord every day during the month of February 2007. And boy howdy, am I running out of ideas … but I’m still standing! I’m gunna make it!