The Final Post on AP.net, The Transition to Chorus • Page 2

(this is just a free-flowing post - lots of emotion)

Outside of my parents, my family members, and my fiancee, Jason Tate has impacted my life in incredible ways.

It was the spring of 2004 and I was googling information of the bands I like during a study hour at my high school. I was a senior at the time and lived and died by Tell All Your Friends. I'd read that Shaun Cooper and John Nolan had left the band and were starting a new one called Straylight Run so I wanted to find out some more information. A quick Google search led me to a website called AbsolutePunk.net and the site's main page was featuring releases like Guilt Show and My Heart Will Always Be the B-Side to My Tongue - albums I really liked! Did I just stumble upon a website that completely catered to my tastes? You're damn right it did. I became obsessed - checking the home page countless times every hour. It wasn't till later that summer that my then-girlfriend discovered this site also had forums. Holy shit - I can talk to other people who like the same music as me? This site just kept getting better! I registered under the user name of "The White Pony" (duh) and started posting my incredibly shitty opinion everywhere on the site. I got to know some really incredible people on the forums from late night posting about and sharing of new music. It was really the only website I visited as I moved onto the next phase of my life at college.

It was the fall of 2005 when AbsolutePunk.net CEO Jason Tate stated he was looking for a new staff reviewer. I had just started kind of writing for fun on my Xanga blog and decided to give it a shot. I submitted a review of Emery's The Question and didn't think anything of it. A few days later I got an AIM message from user "Twenty8FootFall" - it was Jason Tate. He liked my review and wanted to bring me onto the AbsolutePunk.net staff. I was incredibly thrilled and I described it to my parents as writing for "the ESPN of punk." Over the next 10+ years, Jason and I would form not only a great working relationship but a fantastic friendship too. Because of the opportunity Jason afforded me, I got to reviews incredible albums, interview and meet some of my favorite musicians and bands, and develop relationships with major and independent labels alike.

The summer of 2012 and AP.net's owner, BuzzMedia (now SpinMedia), was looking to hire the first full-time editor for AbsolutePunk.net to work with Jason. Naturally I applied for the position and just like 7 years prior, I thought nothing of it. After months of interviews and calls, I was offered the position of Senior Editor of AbsolutePunk.net and would be moving out to Los Angeles. That's when the relationship between Jason and I grew and I truly became his "second-hand" man. We shared a singular vision for the site and what we wanted it to be and I was beyond thrilled to be able to execute that vision during the few years I was in LA. After SpinMedia made some poor decisions and I was let go, I took a step back from my writing on the site but Jason never took a step away from being my friend. And that's something I appreciated so so much. Anyone else would have focused on their site and not take a second thought for a laid-off employee but that's not Jason Tate. We developed the AP.net podcast that eventually turned into the incredible Encore podcast featuring himself and Thomas Nassiff. And he still allowed me to finish out as a senior editor at AP.net till the very end and allowing me to post reviews on my own time.

Now we move onto the next phase of working together. The launching of the new site has reinvigorated me and I'll be churning out a lot of writing - more than ever before. But that's a discussion for another day. Tonight is about toasting AbsolutePunk.net - the website that changed my life - and thanking Jason Tate - one of the best people I know, someone I'm truly blessed to call a friend.

 

I'm still thinking about this, and my time at AP. Broke 50k in posts, spent way too much time on there, made some friends I've literally known ten years now, found music that's changed my life forever... it's crazy what special little things happen when you stumble across something that addresses something uniquely "you." You don't think ever being apart of an online community ten years later, let alone kinda working for it's spiritual and physical successor, and yet... it's not a bad place to be at all. In fact, it's pretty great.

 

Yoooo who makes the second to last post??? What a fun game

 

I'm glad the site lives on through here. Sometimes you'd mention not knowing what you'd wanna do after AP and I would think "... After AP??? Noooooo it can never die!" It's just such a part of my life which is corny but like my entire awkward adolescence played out there and yet I'm still here playing out my awkward adulthood lol. If it was just gone forever with nothing else, I'd prob wade through the internet meaninglessly looking for a home tbh!!

 

Dammit Drew you just made me tear up a little

 

Really well-written final post, Jason. I don't remember how I found AP.net for the first time but I was very much a casual music listener then, I know that for sure. I don't think I had ever even listened to an album front-to-back yet. Your site, the people who wrote for it, the community, etc., showed me the great power that music can have, and what it means to really feel music, to connect to something outside of yourself and have an emotional reaction to it. And now I think if there was a day I couldn't listen to music for whatever reason, I'd die haha. So yeah, this is already way longer than I'd hoped, but thank you for creating this community, and congratulations/good luck transitioning it to Chorus. Lord knows I'll still be reading and posting.

 

as Nelly Furtado said " flames to dust lovers to friends [...] all good things to come to an end", can't believe I was on AP for almost ten years, but I totally get why you need a change Jason and it will take some getting used to but I can't wait to be part of this

 

I'm disappointed my post count over there won't be over 100K in the end.

 

Damn it @Drew Beringer you're going to wreck me. You all get like one day of making me emotional, haha, then I'm going back to pretending I'm a robot and being stoic no matter what.

 

You will get used to it fast. After a month, I've already gotten over AP

 

Well, I definitely can't leave you homeless! Haha.

 

I'm really going to miss AP. I know that I wasn't the most popular person and I pissed a lot of people off there but that site truly help me grow as a person. When I look back at the eight years I posted there, I can see the personal growth I went through posting on there. I met so many cool people through that site, most of which I'm still friends with on social media some way or another. I got to talk to so many bands in the front page chats or in the forums, I was always starstruck about it. The site was a part of my life, it's bittersweet to see it go. If anything, thank you Jason for creating a site that had such a profound impact on me. Now it's time to say goodbye and look towards the future, a better future that we all wanted on AP.

 

ACA is going to be sad.

 

Good looking out! I don't have social media or anything so this is the only place I can post the mundane details of my life and get away with it haha

 

I read Drew's post while listening to Celine Dion..that was a mistake.

 

fuuuuuck yes, tomorrow is the day.

 

Been doing the same thing since this thread went up.

 

Someone make an account named ACA with an extra email address before he gets here PLEASE.

Why do I want to inflict suffering/inconvenience on people I barely know?

 

I already did that.

 

I always do this during big moments of my life like with schools and jobs lol and then I listen to this song in my car and cry

/squeezing in one last Christina Aguilera AP-related reference before the ship goes down!

 

I remember one of earliest memories on AP. It was when the 2013 end of the year list was released and I listened to the #1 album, The National's Trouble Will Find Me. I kept waiting and waiting for a bombastic punk song because that's all I really knew prior to AP. I didn't understand the record.

2 years later, I now realize the beauty of those types of albums. A similar kind of record, Ixora by Copeland, is not only a record I discovered on AP due to the thread constantly being active, but an album I now consider one of my all my favorites. The discussion about the artists discussed on the forum made me eager to learn more and to dive in. It sparked a drive.

I think I'm gonna spin TWFM now.

 

@Drew Beringer picturing you saying "the espn of punk" to your parents, all giddy, is making me laugh really hard.

 

I took screen shots of a bunch of stuff a few days ago and was like "this feels like senior pictures" ... and then I was like "oh god, this FEELS LIKE SENIOR PICTURES."

 

one of my best memories of absolutepunk was posting non stop in "The Dark Knight" thread(s) back in 2008. I was 17, just had a part time job, and had all day to sit in my room posting on AP.