Not many people remember me. I was an "original", hanging out at the Rare Groove Bulletin Board. I remember all these people that Dez, Rummy and Rhoq have talked about. I remember going over to Adam's house weeks before he made the Freestyle Nation BB. We were in his room discussing ways on how to promote freestyle in the Chicago area. Considering we both lived in the suburbs, this would be a challenge. The only record stores back then were in Chicago. Anyways, since Adam (such a smart guy) was a genius at computers, majoring in Computer Science in school, he said he would create a freestyel bulletin board of his own, resembling the Rare Groove Bulletin board. He really didn't know what kind of response he would get since there were very very few internet sites back then for freestyle. After a few weeks since we met in his room, he created the Freestyle Nation Bulletin Board. Most of us "ORIGINALS" moved over to the new board. Then Adam created a personal website, with the Freestyle Nation logo beautifully, artistically sound.
Adam helped promote freestyle, not only in Chicago but in the world. We had people from Canada (Franco Carlos), France
(Francis Tanneur), Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Latin America, South America.
Besides Adam, I wanted to help promote freestyle. About the time we met in Adam's room, I just joined a freestyle radio show in Chicago, called "The 4 O'Clock Freestyle Slam" on 103.1 FM, every Saturday from 4-5p.m. Granted it only lasted for about a year. I tried to promote the Freestyle Nation bulletin board on the radio show, but it really didn't reach anyone since not many people had access to the internet as they do today. When I talked about the website and the website addy, probably not many people knew what I was talking about as well. The internet and freestyle has come a long way in the past 5 or 6 years.
When I was with the radio station, I put up their website for the Radio show. Slowly more and more freestyle websites came on the internet. I finally figured out how to do a website, so I strived to be different than anyone elses. On my website, I had weekly happenings in the Chicago Freestyle Scene. What was really unique is since I was the contact for all the record labels, I got their name on the internet by posting their information on the website. I would list their record label name, address, artists, phone/fax number, email, A & R Rep. etc. It was like a dictionary of freestyle. Since my school was powering the website, when I graduated, it was deleted in '97. ..
About some of the posts from above...
Us 'originals' like Primax said, never once did not welcome a newbie, never did we tell them 'go take a hike'. We always welcomed them. We would welcome them on the BB saying, we have their support, etc. Don't really know why those people would say stuff like that...
There is alot of reasons why the "Originals" haven't posted much. There are alot of reasons why the posts on the FN BB dwindled. I can give you one reason. Think of our age. I am 26, which most of us are. Not all of us can sit at a computer all day, and constantly write messages. Like Dez said, we have things going on in our life. I have two kids (3 months and 2 years), a wife and a full time job. I hardly get the chance to do anything, let alone email and post on the website. I used to post 5 or 6 times a day. At points in our life, the Freestyle Nation became our life, just like some of us at clubfreestyle.com.
The drama on the BB got intense, but that is not the only reason why Adam terminated the board. He has a personal life as well, related to which I just described above.
To be honest with you, I checked out ClubFreestyle when it
first came on the internet. Nothing really impressed me about it. So I went back to the Freestyle Nation BB. Since the BB was terminated (3 months ago in 2 days, since June 27th), I went back to CF and was impressed by how much work has been put into it. Jack G has done a great job and I give him much props.
Greg K.