Severe Tire Damage is an American

rock and roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It originated from African-American music such as jazz, rhythm a ...

"garage" band from

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

, United States.

Innovation

Severe Tire Damage was the first band to perform live on the Internet. On June 24, 1993, the band was playing a gig at

Xerox PARC PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...

while elsewhere in the building, scientists were discussing new technology (the

MBone Mbone (short for " multicast backbone") was an experimental backbone and virtual network built on top of the Internet for carrying IP multicast traffic on the Internet. It was developed in the early 1990s and required specialized hardware and s ...

) for broadcasting on the Internet using livestreaming (known as

multicast In computer networking, multicast is group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast should not be confused with ...

ing at the time). As proof of their technology, the band was broadcast and could be seen live in Australia and elsewhere. On Friday, November 18, 1994, the Rolling Stones decided to broadcast one of their concert tours on the Internet. Before their broadcast, Severe Tire Damage returned to the Internet, this time becoming the "opening act" for the Stones. Instead of an obscure Australian researcher, the entire world press was watching this time, and Severe Tire Damage was elevated from obscurity to

Warholian Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the Art movement, visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore th ...

fame.

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...

magazine described Severe Tire Damage as being "a lesser known rock band." The Rolling Stones told

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

: "the surprise opening act by Severe Tire Damage was a good reminder of the democratic nature of the Internet."

Band members

The core band consisted of these people: *Russ Haines: guitar and vocals. Haines worked at

DEC Systems Research Center The Systems Research Center (SRC) was a research laboratory created by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1984, in Palo Alto, California. DEC SRC was founded by a group of computer scientists, led by Robert Taylor, who left the Computer ...

.
Mark Manasse
bass and vocals. Manasse worked at

.
Steven Rubin
vocals. Rubin worked at Apple Computer. *

Mark Weiser Mark D. Weiser (July 23, 1952 – April 27, 1999) was a computer scientist and chief technology officer (CTO) at Xerox PARC. Weiser is widely considered to be the father of ubiquitous computing, a term he coined in 1988. Within Silicon Vall ...

: drums. Weiser was Chief Technologist at

. Additional people came and went during the band's history: *Ken Beckman: drums. Beckman worked at

. *Lance Berc: tech. support. Berc worked at

. *

Bruce Donald Bruce Randall Donald (born 1958) is an American computer scientist and computational biologist. He is the James B. Duke Professor of Computer Science and Biochemistry at Duke University. He has made numerous contributions to several fields in ...

: guitar. Donald was a professor at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

. *Hania Gajewska: band manager. Gajewska worked at

. *Brad Horak: Tech. support. Horak worked at

. *Joel Jewitt: Drums. * Anna Karlin: guitar and vocals. Karlin worked at

and is now a professor at the University of Washington. *Berry Kercheval: Bass, tech. support. Kercheval worked at

. *

Dexter Kozen Dexter Campbell Kozen (born December 20, 1951) is an American theoretical computer scientist. He is Joseph Newton Pew, Jr. Professor in Engineering at Cornell University. He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1974 and his PhD in compute ...

: guitar, composer. Kozen was a professor at

. *Amy Lansky: vocals. Lansky worked at

NASA Ames The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

. *Ethan Robertson: sax and keyboards. *Daniel Scharstein: keyboards and drums. Scharstein was a student at

Music

Besides performing rock and roll standards, the band wrote a number of original songs that run the range from rock to punk. These songs appears on their two albums: "Who Cares" (a full CD album) and "Trial Starter Kit" (a mini-CD with only 4 songs). Both albums are out of print but are available on their collection CD "The Best We Can Do."

Downfall

On April 27, 1999, Weiser died,In Memoriam: Mark Weiser
and the band never fully recovered. For Rubin, this was the second band in which the drummer had died, making his life into a Spinal Tap-like experience. For a brief time afterward silicon valley drummer Joel Jewitt practiced with the band and played some local gigs; as of March 2010 Jewitt was believed to be alive. Rubin and Haines continue to keep score on dead drummers; currently (2020) Haines is ahead of Rubin three to two.

References

External links

Official band websiteComputer Chronicles episode "Internet" (1995) with Severe Tire Damage performing live at four minutes into the program
{{DEFAULTSORT:Severe Tire Damage (Band) Garage rock groups from California Garage punk groups