[FM] Article about Hober Radio -- Long

[SueTrainor@aol.com]

Thought you all might enjoy this. Hot Soup did a live, guest spot last April. 
We really enjoyed working with these folks!

Sue Trainor
songs.com/hotsoup
________________

 
"Control/Alt Folk Rock"
By Frank Ahrens
"Washington Post" Staff Writer
Thursday, June 8, 2000; C01

They are society's underground intelligentsia, extra-clever dropouts, 
techno-hippies who navigated the Internet by hand before the Web was born. 
The rest of us are just now understanding what it means to get "information 
sick"--besieged by PCs at home and work, cell phones, pagers, ATMs, Palm 
Pilots, GPS, you name it. They've already passed through info-infirmity and 
emerged on the other side.

They are the Webolutionaries, and now they're turning their attention to 
radio.

Inside a geodesic dome in woodsy Takoma Park, a small group of them may be 
crafting the future of that ancient medium. Listening to Internet jukeboxes 
through your computer? How 1999. The people inside this dome have evolved 
beyond that. They have created an Internet radio station called Hober, and it 
plays the soundtrack of their philosophy: "warming the desktop."

Perhaps you'd expect a radio station run by Netheads to play techno thrash or 
brutalist punk. You'd be wrong. Log on to Hober and you'll hear folk and 
bluegrass. You'll hear quiet reggae and ambient music, or a Mississippi 
bluesman. This is salve for the digitally assailed. Precisely because the 
rest of the world yells at you and demands your time and attention, Hober 
does not. Hober is calm. The people in this dome dream of wooden keyboards. 
Their computer mice roll on hemp-covered mousepads.

Come inside the dome.

There's some nice folk music playing.


Denizens of the Dome

Gregor Markowitz, 42, is tall and quietly insistent, with the 
doorjamb-ducking, excuse-me manner of the lanky. He is Hober's father. Johnny 
Bonneville is the dealmaker--wiry and long-haired, with jack-o-lantern eyes. 
He is the station manager. The third Hoberite, Alane Hartley, 33--also 
Markowitz's girlfriend--is elsewhere in the dome.

Markowitz and Bonneville hover over a bank of computer screens in a tiny 
upstairs room of the two-story dome. A pentagonal window catches a little 
light, but most of the illumination seems to come from the pixelated screens. 
A former closet is stuffed with digital audio tapes, a sound board, a stool, 
a computer screen and a microphone. It is a self-contained radio station.

"This is Hober," Markowitz says. An acoustic guitar selection is playing. 
Then it stops, and a calm, recorded voice tells listeners they are tuned to 
Hober Radio. "That's me!" Markowitz says.

Hober broadcasts from inside this dome. The place was built by Markowitz and 
Bonneville, 36, and a handful of other folks--Web designers, musicians, 
canoemakers and denizens of the blueberry fields of northern Maine, where 
many of them met as itinerant laborers who had checked out of mainstream 
society. They barely listen to the radio you listen to. There's just nothing 
on it for them.

Hober went online in December 1998, and broadcasts to anyplace in the world 
that has an Internet connection, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to an 
average of around 30,000 listeners a month. It has a library of more than 
3,000 songs, stored on digital audio tape and in computer sound files.

Wanna Hober?

You venture out onto the Web and log on to Hober.com. Up comes the station's 
home page. A button on your screen entreats you to Listen!, so you roll your 
mouse and click. In a moment, music is playing through your computer 
speakers. Whatever the genre, it is always quiet-like, non-intrusive, a 
soothing sound emanating from an unforgiving, cursed electronic box that 
crashes at the worst &%!$@* times!!!

Hober is not just an Internet radio station. It's a philosophy, an outgrowth 
of what Markowitz and everyone else in this dome believe about humans and the 
future and the world.

Imagine working not in a dull-toned cubicle under soul-sucking fluorescent 
tubes, but in a pleasing, quirky place--like a geodesic dome--filled with 
natural light and friends. The soothing music being played in the background 
is music you know people are simultaneously listening to all over the world. 
Yes, you've got all the 21st century hard- and software you could want, and 
yes, you're instantly connected to every place on the globe. But these things 
serve you on your terms. Not the other way around. They become merely the 
tools of evolution, not the end in itself, as alarmist sci-fi predicts. Now 
you are understanding the Hober Revolution.

Every movement needs a visionary, and the Hober movement is inspired by Neal 
Stephenson, a noted post-cyberpunk author. (Hober takes its name from one of 
his characters.) In the dystopian, dyspeptic future, technology does not free 
humans but instead enslaves them in dark, depressing, urban jungles of steel 
and video and plastic, with nary a tree or green thing to be found. (Think 
"Blade Runner.") Stephenson's vision starts there but evolves into something 
organic, where humans use technology to shape new societies.

Then again, Markowitz revels in odd juxtapositions. When he was picking 
berries in Maine, he outfitted the tailgate of his blue Suburban with an 
espresso machine. He traveled the dirt roads of the back country, stopping to 
sell the steaming beverage to the natives.

The portable espresso maker did not follow a standard business model, and 
neither does Hober. It isn't like many high-profile Internet radio 
sites--Spinner, Gogaga, ClickRadio, which trumpet the individual: Program 
your own station, they say, and listen only to what you want to hear. You log 
on, select your preference, say '70s disco tunes, push a button, and here 
comes Abba.

But that would be wrong, Markowitz says. (And not just because of Abba.)

There is an allure to listening to songs you like all by yourself, he says, 
but it can become an isolated, antisocial experience. Hober is meant to fight 
the aloneness of the telecommuting, stay-home-and-play-Doom-by-yourself wired 
world. Markowitz shows an e-mail from Canada: "Enjoying especially the folk 
music in my cozy igloo here north of the 49th" parallel.

"We want to make sure people know Hober is live," he says. "When you log on, 
you're joining the community."

Or, as Hartley says: "Hober is for the person sitting at their computer 
thinking, 'I'm the only one here. I'm all by myself in my lonely little 
room.' "


Online Early On

Markowitz grew up near Milford, N.H., the son of a schoolteacher mother and 
an engineer father who checked out of the mainstream. He quit his profession 
during the Vietnam War--his protest against the defense contracting he was 
doing. He became a full-time hand weaver. Later, his wife joined the trade. 
Hober sells their wares--"Mom and Dad's hand-woven mug rugs"--on his Web site.

The die was set for the son. In high school, Markowitz worked at a couple of 
local radio stations. After graduation he migrated to Washington, where he 
did some shifts at Pacifica affiliate WPFW. As a teenager, he'd helped repair 
lobster boats, so he started a hand-built canoe business at 15th and Church 
streets NW. One of his larger efforts stands upright in the Hober living room.

"There is something about the human will combined with a tree," he says. 
Imagine a rich, warm, hand-finished wooden computer. Markowitz has.

He made seasonal returns to pick berries in northern Maine--something of a 
gathering place for the earthy, smart fringe. Trading tapes with the other 
blueberry pickers, Markowitz accumulated an eclectic collection of music. It 
was in Maine that he met Hartley, who is now Hober's co-producer.

By the early '90s, Markowitz and his friends were waist-deep in this new 
Internet thing--there was no World Wide Web to speak of. On Tuesday nights, 
dozens of his friends would come to the canoe shop, plop down on used sofas 
and talk about the Internet. They called these gatherings the Internet Love 
Fest.

"The club broke up when the Internet went commercial and now all those people 
are the newly obscenely rich," Markowitz says.

He did okay himself--his Web design business, UAQA.com, has done work for the 
National Geographic Society, Adventure magazine and the Maryland Department 
of Education. Once he moved into the dome in 1997, where he runs both 
UAQA.com and Hober, he had the room and money to merge his two favorite 
things: the Internet and music. He grossed a cool million last year, which is 
why he could afford to lose $60,000 on Hober. On any given day, there are 
about five UAQA.com employees designing Web pages in the dome.

It hardly matters if Hober loses or makes money. It is a subsidized toy, a 
way to do all the things Markowitz wants to do. A vehicle to start a little 
radio revolution. Consider the live shows.

Half of the geodesic dome has a second floor; the other half rises to the 
arched ceiling, creating a grand space. Markowitz and Bonneville call it 
Hober Hall.

"None of us could play instruments so we thought if we bought a bunch of 
really nice ones, musicians would come over and play," Markowitz jokes.

And they do. Hober broadcasts regular live shows from the dome--they staged 
nine over the winter, and one aired just after Memorial Day. The musicians 
even take requests via e-mail. And if a band doesn't know the song, it 
searches the Internet for the sheet music.

Each week, Markowitz, Bonneville and Hartley sit down for dinner at the 
dome's kitchen table and pick the songs that will make it onto Hober. There 
is one requirement: "Is it too raucous?"

At the foot of the table is a large computer monitor. It looks like a TV 
screen, but there are no televisions in this house. That's another paradigm 
that Hober has evolved beyond.

The monitor plays Hober--gentle drumbeats drift about. On the wall to the 
left of the screen hang ancient wooden farm implements, a reminder of Hober's 
organic computer philosophy.

"Music is now something you hold in your hand," Bonneville says, meaning 
albums, tapes and CDs. "It's all a marketing scheme" where niches and 
subniches have been identified, created and flooded with product. The music 
has been watered down and homogenized in order to be sold, he says, sounding 
a lament familiar among indie rockers and Generation Napster.

"We're trying to reconverge a bunch of genres that have been split," 
Markowitz says.

So, unlike commercial radio stations, Hober has no Wall Street investors 
breathing down its neck. And no Internet venture capital. Therefore, Hober is 
under no pressure to play anything except what it wants.

That means no bang-bang jingles, no screaming deejays, no big-beat pop. No 
constant demands telling you to buy! To be the sixth caller! To keep 
listening!

"We're an opt-in, opt-out society now. Hober stays in the background, while 
you're doing other things," Markowitz says. "Commercial radio makes you pay 
attention. It's stealing time from you."


User Profiles

Who listens to Hober?

Markowitz and Bonneville consult the computers.

"There're 30 people listening right now," Bonneville says, clicking the 
mouse. That's the total audience, all over the globe. "Oh, wait--there's 32!"

Markowitz chuckles.

"The stock's up!" Bonneville jokes.

According to a January survey by Arbitron, 19 percent of all Americans say 
they have listened to Internet radio. That number is on the rise, but not 
enough to scare commercial broadcasters. Besides, the medium still has its 
problems. Computer speakers are by and large still tinny-sounding, the 
majority of PCs aren't portable, and most laptops require extra gadgets to 
play music. Most significantly, however, listening to Internet radio is a 
complex process. Turning on a radio is not. Twenty percent of the survey 
respondents said they'd tried to listen to Internet radio but couldn't figure 
it out; a full one-third called the process "difficult."

True enough. To listen to Internet radio, you have to: 1) go to the Web; 2) 
download the necessary software; 3) reboot after the computer crashes--often 
enough; 4) use a search engine to find the station you want to hear, or 4a) 
browse through hundreds of stations on a clearinghouse Web site, then 5) 
click onto the station's Web site.

Still, there's a growing number of listeners like the folks in the Hober 
dome. Markowitz says the site's audience would place it in the national Top 
10 of Internet stations, according to Arbitron's most recent ratings. (Hober 
can accommodate 100 simultaneous listeners on a typical day; 200 under heavy 
demand.)

Hober plays almost all the time in the dome because the Hoberites like it. 
But it also plays for therapy. The Hoberites have surrounded themselves with 
the tools of society's destruction, at least according to the doomsayers. 
That's why they need Hober music--as a reminder, among all the servers and 
phone lines and color monitors and computers--that they are organic beings.

There is a built-in paradox, and they get it: Hoberites use machines to save 
themselves from machines.

"We live a freakish lifestyle here," says Markowitz, gesturing around at all 
the electronics. "You're not supposed to fill your house with computers."


© 2000 The Washington Post Company