May, 1998
What this site is all about is a bunch of Bellingham-area musicians trying to promote our music. We're loosely organized and communicate through e-mail or on the local scene, and even occasionally meeting in the flesh.
Lately we've been orgranizing benefit concerts to raise money and awareness for promoting our music, and little by little, after 3 years it seems we are making progress. The list of bands and musicians continues to grow, and more and more local bands are creating their own web pages each month. BIMA aspires to be a place where you can access these sites. Recently, we've added a calendar page and a catalog page where you can sample and purchase our recordings.
Stayed tuned, I think 1998 is going to be an interesting year...
September, 1996
The BIMA concept came to me as I was brainstorming marketing ideas for my new album, "Finger Noise," which I began recording in the fall of 1995. As I began to compile my list of names, contacts and phone numbers in preparation for the project, I realized two things: 1) that this was a valuable list not only to me, but also to other musicians, and 2) that my hand-written organizer had no back up. What would I do if I lost it, or it was stolen?
At the time, I had just begun developing the Cellophane Square web site and beginning to understand the Internet, and the answer to my concerns seemed obvious: why not "archive" my organizer information on web pages on the Internet? In one inspired late-night session I fleshed out a skeleton of how the pages would be organized: I'd have one page with a list of all the guitar players I knew, with their phone numbers and what style they played. On another, I'd list all the drummers, on another. It grew from there. I added pages for music teachers, music stores, clubs, etc.
Then I took the idea, along with my basic web site, and presented it to Richard Huff at Pacific Rim Network, which is the Internet Service Provider that Cellophane Square uses for Internet access. He agreed to host my little local music site, which I dubbed "BIMA," short for "Bellingham Internet Music Archive." At that point, I realized that other people on the Internet were doing the same thing: "IUMA," which is short for the "Internet Underground Music Archive," is the best known, but virtually every major city from Seattle to St. Louis to Boston has a "local music" web site of some sort. And each site is unique to its region, and each has something to offer both its own local community and the world at large.
BIMA went on-line in October of 1995, and soon after that I established it as a legitimate business with a registered trade name, business license, and bank account. I now have several associates and volunteers and I hope to gain more as we begin to hold monthly meetings. Several local businesses have shown support for BIMA, including Cellophane Square, Pacific Rim Network, Harris Music, Info Northwest and Cyber Express.
I believe that BIMA will give many local musicians a sense of community that is lacking, and will also provide a way to bring their music or service to more people. The Internet, and more specifically, the world wide web, is ideally suited for this purpose, and furthermore I believe that there is a strong need for such a service. As BIMA becomes more established I would like to see it expand into a full-blown non-profit organization and record label, staffed and run by community volunteers and label artists. The musical services that a resource like BIMA could provide to the community are many, not only listings for local musicians and bands, but possibly an on-line musical calendar, a resource for finding a suitable music teacher, a resource for club owners and booking agents to book bands, provide catalogs for local record labels, a library of downloadable sound samples, and a printed Bellingham Music Directory.
Obviously, all of the above is content intensive and being able to execute something like this depends on the cooperation and coordination of many people, but I'm an optimist and I feel it's going to be a great thing for a lot of people, for the community, and it will put the City of Bellingham on the music industry's map.