Originally posted by billhortonlives in 2002:
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Note: I wasn't here at the beginning. The information I've used here was taken from the message board and archives. If I've misquoted, misinterpreted or simply misplaced the facts...well, you guys know me by now so cut me a little slack. I have actually been kicking this little lark around for a few weeks. Then came the news from CJ yesterday. I decided to go ahead and write something. I know it's gonna be longwinded and it probably gives away more about my Bruce fanaticism than I should make public but you know what, I don't give a damn. I fucking love this place and I don't discount the SPL's significance to any of us. Is this post insane? Maybe. Is it absurd? Probably. Isn't it a bit looooooooong? Yep, it's as long as it had to be and if things go well it will be even longer one day. Am I worried what people will think about it? Not on your life. After all, it's "just" a website. Besides, I'm the guy who'll say anything...remember?
Last night I was telling a friend about the crisis situation we're facing here and, apparently, she found my love of the SPL even more mindboggling and worrisome than my love of Bruce's music. You probably have friends or relatives just like her...you may even be married to someone just like her. They think we're crazy. They don't hear anything special when they hear Backstreets, Badlands or Born to Run...to them it's just music, just rock music. They don't get it and they don't get us. My friend is one of those sorts...in fact, she thinks Bruce "sucks." I let the conversation wander off shortly after she said something along the lines of "What in the hell is the damn FPL STP [honest to God, that's how she said it] anyway and what's the big deal? It's just a website." She shouldn't have said that. I don't think she quite understands the true depths of obsession she is dealing with here. What is the "damn FPL STP" anyway? If I thought she might have cared, this is what I would have told her.........
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"At the end of every hard-earned day
People need some reason to believe..."
-B. Springsteen, 1982
"I have found The Promised Land," reads a recent message posted by Randob300, " I can't believe my eyes. About three months ago I found Claudio's site... I didn't think life could be any better...then I found SPL, and I noticed birds chirping and fluffy white clouds in the sky." To an outsider, the statement might seem melodramatic at best or, at worst, downright crazy. To those of us who remember all too well the amazement, excitement or simple sheer joy we felt the first time we logged on to the server, it makes perfect sense. In a sense, the Stone Pony London is, for tramps like us, a promised land of sorts. The forum is our church, the place where we come to congregate and fellowship with the true believers and the FTP server is our Heaven, that lofty, somewhat mysterious place to which prayers were uploaded and the returned blessings were counted in kilobytes-per-second. In a way, most of us did arrive here like pilgrims...many of us were led and many of us simply stumbled upon the SPL. I was one of the stumblers, one of those lucky ones who quite by accident ended up in just the right place. Many of us may have found the Pony by accident but it is no accident that it was here to be found at all. The Stone Pony London is the brainchild of the great CJ, truly a man among fans. Something like this starts out as an idea, evolves into hard work and, finally, becomes a triumph. The SPL is a triumph; make no mistake about that. As miniscule and trivial as something like this server and forum may be against the scope of everyday life in the real world, when taken in the context of what it's bestowed upon a worldwide group of Rock & Roll fans; the sense of camaraderie it's fostered, the open sharing it's inspired and, of course, the music, the incredible fucking music it's provided are, when compared to the state of most online "communities", a miracle. A small one, for sure, but a miracle just the same.
In keeping with the general consensus that being a Bruce Springsteen fan is a religion (or at the very least, a cult) CJ, to me, has always seemed a bit of a mystic figure, looming over the landscape of the SPL like a benevolent Creator, maintaining and keeping watch over our little Eden. In my time on the forum, CJ did not post often. His posts were handed down like revelations ("We're Back" - March 5, 2001 AND December 10, 2001) or fatherly admonitions ("Now don't get too excited" 12-10-01 again) or somber realisations ("Stone Pony London Soon To Be Closed" - 2-14-02) from On High. Well, in the course of every true religious experience, there comes a moment when the convert begins to look back on and question not only his conversion, but his own existence. Haven't you ever stirred at your computer at some unholy hour of the night, your eyes bleary, the closing strains of Rosie still leaking out of the PC speakers, and asked yourself "Who am I? Why am I here?" Like a Believer who arrives at church knowing that both the building and his faith were already complete when he arrived, for a while I was content with the very fact of the SPL's existence. I never worried over it's legality, morality or mortality...it was here when I came, therefore it will always be here. It is only when faced with paradise lost that the origins of paradise seem important. When somebody dies, it's not just that final date that's engraved on the marker; the birth date is there, too. At a time when we're all wondering where this whole shebang is headed...I decided to find out where it came from. All religions have their sacred scrolls. Round here, we call em archived posts. The story is there. It's not my story and maybe it's not my place to tell it. It's CJ's story, in its beginnings at least. By the end, it belongs to all of us.
So, in CJ's words, "Gather around, folks - here is the story..."
Not surprisingly, it is a fan's story. As CJ told it, "It was early 1999 when Bruce and the boys hit Europe. I was so excited about the tour. It was all I thought about until after I got some tickets to the Manchester and Earls Court shows in the UK. RMAS was buzzing like I had never before seen." Hmm, that doesn't sound so mystical...it sounds a lot like the way I was feeling when the Los Angeles shows were announced and I scored my own tickets to two of them. "Some boots started to surface - first I heard Barcelona, Asbury Park, and then the best one yet was from Italy. Demand for these boots was high - VERY HIGH. People were trading like mad on RMAS and the boots were selling for a fortune on eBay."
And so CJ had what must have seemed to him a very good but small idea. If I'm completely wrong here, CJ, and you knew from the start that it was a stroke of bloody genius, I'll reword my impression. At that time CJ was "working at a European ISP...which I helped design and build. Since I had technical authority at the time, I decided to put up a small FTP server and offer a few of these 1999 boots to fans. I figured I?d work on my LINUX skills and test some Internet routing across Europe."
Apparently even CJ underestimated the ramifications his idea would have on the lives of Springsteen fans all over the world. He goes on to say, "Word spread fast and one afternoon I checked the server to find over 120 users downloading
three of four boots from all over the world ? users were from as far away as Japan, South Africa, and even Brazil. I was amazed." I can only imagine the look of surprise and maybe even satisfaction on CJ's face when he sat down to check his server and found all those users logged in. Of course, things got even more amazing in those first few days. " A few days later, I noticed that some folks had uploaded other boots as well," he explains, and then says something so similar to words we've all
spoken when we realised what the Pony had to offer in the way of bootlegs, "Some I had heard of, others I didn?t even know existed. Winterland Night! Holy shit, my tape of that show was lost years back. It sounded so wonderful . . . I thought I?d never hear it again." Winterland Night was one of the lost boots the server returned to me as well. I know just how CJ must have felt.
Think about it: the SPL was created barely three years ago. One thing to consider and remember is that those early days of `99 were pretty heady days for Bruce fans. We'd just gotten Tracks the previous November, Bruce had been named
to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and, suddenly, there was the tour. After a good long time, being a Bruce Springsteen fan felt good again. So it seems to me that CJ had more than just the right idea; he had it at the right time. "In a week, the server was full (it only had about 3GB of disc space allocated to it). I had a pretty damn good collection of Bruce boots. Let?s see . . . how many users are on right now . . . geeeeez . . . 210!! The server crashed that day. Somebody posted the address to RMAS. OK, time to limit the user access . . ." The server was full, CJ says, in a week. I find it only fitting that our paradise had its first pains of creation in seven days...just like some other little paradise I've heard tell of.
And so, of course, once the location of the promised land was known among the believers, the faithful came in droves. It seems to me that poor CJ may have suddenly found himself playing the role of Moses to the searching tribe of Bruce tramps. "Later, I got mails from all over the world. Fans asking for this and that, traders wanting to trade, and a guy named GMAN who ran the original Stone Pony FTP site in the States. He gave me special access to his box, and I started to mirror his whole collection ? and he had tons of boots ? about 25GB worth." And so we learn that before the SPL came into existence, there was already ANOTHER server called the Stone Pony. At this point, I must revert to my original feeling that what always has been always will be. After all, this latest time of darkness that looms above us isn't the first time we've been faced with the server's possible demise. It's happened before, even back in those dark ages of 1999, according to CJ. " Unfortunately, his server had to close down ? and my little box crashed again
due to high demand."
Well, if you've hung with me this far on my trip into the early days of the SPL, you'll notice that we've come to a crucial point in the story. If you remember your Sunday School lessons, or your Cecil B. Demille films, you know that when Moses was confronted with the full responsibility of his leadership and "chosen" status among his own people, he found that he was not up to the task and he cast his staff down in anger. He led his people through to the Promised Land but poor ol' Moses gave up and died on the other side of the river. Not CJ. He, like Bruce, wanted to "cross that river, to the other side." He made up his mind that "this demand was too important to ignore. I then dedicated a server just to FTP and named it the Stone Pony, London ? in honor of GMAN?s efforts in the States. I also began Brothers Under the Bridge that month, my own Springsteen site where I began posting review, news, setlists, etc. It was a great way to prepare for the shows I would see in the UK and it got quite a lot of hits as well."
And so it's true...from small things, mama, big things one day come. Over the years the believers have continued to find their way to CJ's little paradise. Those of you who were here in the beginning made the way easier for those of us who came along later. These days there are plenty of disciples on this board to "preach" to the new converts (read: members in training) about the virtues of FTP clients, the redemptive value of uploading, the "sin" of trading MP3 sourced boots, and the simple, human pleasure of getting off a good one-liner on the message board. If you ever doubt that something special goes on around here, take a look at some of the other Springsteen boards on the web; the most surprising quality of some of the flaming, bashing and downright meanness that occurs on many of them is how little of it happens here. Oh, we take our little pot shots...but they're usually with a grin. We have our disagreements but 9 times out of 10 we manage to contain them within the boundaries of common courtesy and respect. I think I know why: I think that each of us knows in our hearts how lucky and privileged we are to have this community and this server. It's a community project. For us, the hardest of the hardcore, the Stone Pony London has become such a part of us that we could not help becoming part of it.
So where do we go from here? That hasn't been decided yet, but I'll go along with the optimism spoken by CJ when he summed up the three year lifespan of the SPL: "The server has been hacked, rebuilt, upgraded, rebuilt again, praised continuously from all over the Earth, and left alone by the lawyers. It has stood for quite a long time now. I don?t know if we will be able to keep it up forever, but so far things are looking pretty good...I am sure it will explode again when another tour starts. Hopefully, we?ll be around when that time comes."
Yeah, CJ, hopefully we will. Thanks for every effort, man.
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~A thought for any of you who actually read this all the way through...just be thankful
you've never sat across from me on a train. I once bored a guy so much he slept through all of Arizona and half of New Mexico. Of course, I picked the story right back up when he woke up in Las Crusces. The poor bastard.
And if you think this post was freakin' long, wait a few weeks or a month or however long it takes CJ and the rest of us, and see what I do with the sequel. Hmm, how does this sound??? PONYBOY: THE RETURN OF CJ!
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