It just got a little easier to never miss a beat of live music in Boston. After almost a yearlong hiatus, Just Another Scene (conveniently located at justanotherscene.com) was resurrected on Monday, bringing the music information monster that Boston University sophomore Sean Carlson created five years ago back to life.
As one of the most valuable online resources for New England music fans including thoroughly comprehensive concert listings, features, album reviews, artist, label and radio listings the site has received more than three million visitors since it first appeared online in 1998.
Carlson, 20, who is double-majoring in political science and public relations, remains the only person responsible for the major upkeep of the Site; interested in international relations, he sees a similar link between spreading information as a way of increasing understanding on a larger scale. Back in 1998, Sean Carlson led the life of a typical 15-year-old music fan: a freshman in high school, working part-time at the local supermarket and going to as many ‘all ages’ shows as he could find in the area of his hometown of Andover, Mass. He loved the scene but noticed a strong sense of division and competition among the bands for attention and recognition.
‘Most everything happens because of somebody’s desire for change,’ Carlson explains on the site. Believing that creating easier access to information about the scene might help, Carlson began compiling all the music information he found on flyers handed out at shows, mailing lists and on the internet and used the HTML knowledge he learned in seventh grade, built a website, naming it Just Another Scene and asking ‘is [the New England scene] something special or just another scene?’ says Carlson.
Almost entirely by word of mouth, the site grew more and more popular over the following year, eventually receiving more than 6000 visitors each day. By 2000, the Boston Phoenix featured Just Another Scene in its ‘Best of 2000’ edition and radio stations WFNX, WBCN and WAAF utilized the site’s concert listings. All on his own, Carlson was spending between 15 and 20 hours a week on the site, even though he was still too young to be attending many of the shows it listed.
‘It was like a part-time job, except I wasn’t getting paid,’ Carlson joked. ‘I always saw the site as an outgrowth of myself, but as it grew it became its own thing, its own entity.’
As Carlson headed for college at BU in the fall of 2001, he remained devoted to Just Another Scene, but he soon realized he did not have the time in his schedule to keep up with the daily demands of maintaining the site. He spent the following summer studying at University of California at Berkeley, where he had little time or access to a computer, and when he returned he had more than 3,000 emails regarding listings for the site. Shortly after, his computer crashed beyond repair.
At the beginning of January 2003, Carlson worked with his cousin Eric Schrock, a Brown University computer science major, to develop a new database format. ‘It’s back and bigger and better than ever, it’s going to be faster and more accessible,’ Carlson says.
Though plain in appearance, the site is packed with over a thousand concert listings through next October, from the biggest arena to the smallest dive bar.
‘It doesn’t discriminate. You have Beck playing at the FleetBoston Pavilion and you have three high school kids playing in a church basement, and they’re receiving the same level of attention,’ Carlson said. ‘It’s a great thing.’