Do you miss AbsolutePunk at all? • Page 6

Yeah remember when I talked about how it was fun to be mean? It was fun to be mean to AppleJack

 

Jack sucks shit

AP had a certain kind of chaos that I’m definitely nostalgic for. Discovered a lot of really great artists And expanded my music tastes via straight up bullying from old head music forum posters

 

I don't really miss AP but when the site was first revamped I was disappointed because I didn't think it would cover a lot of the same things. Turned out to not be true and since chorus started my music taste has expanded so that's always a good thing.

 

2001-2004 for the music
2005-2010 for the community

facebook & twitter consolidated online socializing across the web. music journalism as a whole just kind of flopped. artists have more of a voice with social media and their co-signs/recs have a lot of value. i miss the old days cuz nostalgia & i'm old now. its all nice to think about, but it can never come back as it was.

 

Nah not really. The internet as a whole has changed a lot in the last few years and Chorus is a better match for that. I'm also a vastly different person than in my peak AP posting years in the early 2010s and this site is a better fit for me now, even though I'm way less active (except in the baseball thread)

 

man this got me thinking about the tinychats of 2011-12. good timesss

still glad my most embarrassing web footprints are gone. i was 14 in dec 2001 when i made my account some time around christmas. crazy how i remember that day, sitting on AIM at 1am, shitposting on the linkin park forums. oh god, its all coming back!

 

one time in a job interview I was asked what kind of websites I go on. I listed ap as one of them and he was like oh yeah I know that site.

I didn't get the job

 

When I was a 12 year old girl on AP back in like '08, I used to get shit on for liking all time low all the time. It got so bad at one point that I posted some thread about the 'problem with AbsolutePunk...' as the title and whined about how everyone was mean to me and then deleted my account and probably cried about it after. But, ya know, it builds character. Forged by the flames of Ap.net

 

I miss the reviews and heated discussions in the comments. I love this site, but I do wish there were more reviews. The politics thread really influenced me and my political views. Everyone liked to bash on Personal Life, but we were our own clique and probably the most welcoming. The community here is smaller, but more tight-knit and a lot less toxic.

 

I'm gonna say a rock solid no.

The culture of Chorus as a community has been much better. We went through a rough patch where there was a LOT of virtue signaling but by now I feel like a lot of us who have been on this site forever have just... grown up and mellowed out.

Absolutepunk had a small window where the music forum discussed all kinds of music and not just "the scene" and I enjoyed that... was instrumental in my tastes expanding. But at the same time you couldn't just have an opinion without someone else trying to talk down to it lol. And then they went back to only discussing pop-punk and I was over most of the bands I liked in high school / much of that scene by then.

I've made legit friends that I've met in real life on both sites though. Including having dated someone long distance for a bit haha. I met 5 AP members on my first "road trip" on my own (10 years ago, I was 19) up to New England, and I still talk to two of them. I've also met my current roommate on AP right before it switched to Chorus, we just moved to Atlanta and am good friends with two other Chorus members here. At the beginning of this year I just played a show with @nohandstoholdonto in Charlotte, and most recently I consider @Fucking Dustin a great friend now after he visited (right before the pandemic hit.)

Socially this has been a pretty expedient way to connect with like minded people, I've met 16 total haha.

 

Personal Life forum needs to stay dead and buried. So much of that shit we thought was funny when we were in college would NOT have aged well and we'd probably be ashamed of ourselves

 

for the old heads

 

I miss the frequency of news and a bit more opinionated content from a variety of people Jason ran the site with. The reviews were.

I don't miss the drama. I like the mature feel of this site much better. I prefer chorus.fm but there are some aspects of AP that would be beneficial to bring back.

 

I miss it every single day, although objectively Chorus is a MUCH better, and healthier, environment. The current community on Chorus is way, way, way, way better than at any point on AP. Both sites remain the only spaces I've ever had for talking about the music I like, which is important considering my whole identity is wrapped up in that.

 

If AP was gone and there was no Chorus I'd miss the hell out of it. But Chorus has done a nice job filling that role AP filled for me socially, as a daily interaction.

I don't use Chorus for finding music nearly as much as i did AP... but I also have a lot more avenues for that now than I did back then, so that's a wash.

 

Can I ask what other ways you use now to find music? I find a lot of music through Chorus, tho admittedly more on Absolute.

 

Live video concerts like audiotree are always good. Here’s a list of 12 of them 12 Super Awesome Live Music Session Channels To Watch On Youtube — The Music Mermaid. Seatte’s KEXP radio station is another favorite.

Also Spotify playlists are always awesome, like whenever Jamie Colletta, an influencer who works with SXSW, makes one I listen to it.

Aside from that my friends @CarpetElf and @EmmanuelSCastle hit me up with tons of recs, plus I have dabbled in being a DIY touring musician so I spent today watching live streams by smaller / local musicians and venues that I still am on Facebook with. Which I’m hoping stays a thing after the pandemic cause lots of people just don’t like to go to shows & I think the spectacle of performing the song in real time should still have a way of reaching those people.

It’s just so easy to search shit up on YouTube and Spotify compared to when I was a teenager on AP haha. Shit, one of my favorite bands (Fugazi) has entire concerts from the 90s and early 2000s on YouTube, complete with local organizers speaking about political issues lol. Any band that does that is gonna get my attention at least.

 

@Randall Mentzos, Mr. Northbrook/Terrain? lol.

I literally don't think our paths have crossed a single time since the switch, somehow.

 

Yes!! Long time no talk! Your initials are THH right? (Just to make sure I’m remembering the right Tim). If so I just searched you up and we’re still Facebook pals lol

 

Yep, aka "xJesusFreakx." Friends w/ a decent amount of Chorus/AP.net people, but I don't actively interact w/ many on there. I've kinda settled into letting Chorus, Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram fill different online interaction voids, lol. Think a couple people in a Facebook comic book group are the only ones I regularly see in my feed there, though random people will come out of the woodwork sometimes to react to stuff I post.

Do you mostly just talk sports on here? 'Cause that'd explain why I haven't seen you in forever. Comics & movies have been my main hubs since the switch.

 

Yeah pretty much lol. This is the only place I can talk about football strategy in-depth with people who actually understand it and keep up with the league even during the offseason. It’s also cool how dudes in there have been in there FOREVER & have set roles as the resident fan of a particular team. Very tight knit group that’s hardly changed much since the AP days.

I’m about to FINALLY, YEARS LATER release the first Terrain EP haha so that’s fun.

 

Ha, nice. My resident role is just "person who has way too strongly held opinions about Spider-Man."

And... really? Dang, lol. Will have to give it a listen at some point. How much does the project resemble your original vision for it, when you first changed the name?

 

That’s a hard question to answer haha, cause I still have full band indie-rock songs that were part of that initial “vision” - they’re fully written and straight up ready to go into the studio, have been for a WHILE. I do play those songs at my live shows.

but 1) I’ve never found a committed drummer. The one who lasted the longest was a shady guy who never contributed money or promotion to the band, and I cut him out of my life cause I slowly found out how he treated women poorly 2) recording full band music is much more expensive & that’s a barrier to me doing it on my own.

I did spend a few years learning drums and I do intend to just lay down the drum tracks myself eventually, if I can’t find that committed drummer. But I’m not there yet. So I focused on my acoustic, fingerpicking songs the last two years instead. Now the EP I’m releasing is mostly acoustic (but with elec guitar and piano to accent & detail the background). It was just an easier stepping stone / milestone to reach by myself.

Do you remember my acoustic demo song “Marienne”, the first self recorded track I released as Terrain? That was released during the AP days and I’m pretty sure I posted it in the Northbrook thread when it was done. That’s the oldest song that is on the EP.

 

That song title sounds vaguely familiar, but tbh, what's more familiar to me is your ongoing drummer struggle. And, you leaving behind a drummer who mistreated women might be a bigger sign that you've moved past pop punk than the name change, lol.

But, yeah, that all sounds cool. Hope you're eventually able to finally get some full band songs out there as intended... however long ago that was. And, I'm sure the more stripped down tracks are dope, too. Any of those tracks feature guitar feedback? One of the random things I remember from back in the day is your fascination w/ how certain alternative bands were able to make that sound on record, lol.

 

Haha actually, my guitar style has changed quite a lot. I’m not really interested in just slapping a lead guitar part on top of some chugging chords anymore. It’s the most common way to layer guitars, and I don’t mind when other bands do it well, but for me and my writing personally, it feels played out.

Now the way I write is like, two layered guitar parts that weave together and both have melodic & rhythmic elements to them. Definitely one of the biggest things I picked up from listening to a lot more indie rock. Learning how to play fingerstyle has helped with that cause now I sometimes hit the guitar rhythmically in between melodies I’m playing. And using my thumb offers a lot more versatility with how the guitar melodies are arranged / being able to play fuller, more detailed sounding riffs.

I would definitely say the instrumental details / guitar layering is probably the thing that stands out most about my music at this point.