dekalborama

In memoriam Rick Calderon/E X Rator, May 01, 2013

dekalborama.com is devoted to the performing arts fringe culture that once flourished in DeKalb, Illinois. Three decades on, artifacts from the period are showing their age. “New media” and documentaries made in the day are becoming unplayable. A number of performers have left the stage, some for personal reasons and others for good. Think of this site as a media conversion project dedicated to those who made it happen. (More at Raison d’être.)

Blog

dekalborama blog

dekalborama.com/blog is for thoughts, commentary, and discourse. Currently implemented in WordPress, the blog domain allows members to log in and post from anywhere. Anyone can comment any time, or contact us for full blog access. We are moderating the site, but only to keep spam out.

Wiki

dekalbowiki

dekalborama.com/wiki (dekalbowiki) is our media repository. Members can upload image, audio, or video files and create or edit wiki pages cooperatively. Again, and only to curb abuse, we ask that you contact us for a login with file upload privileges; logged in users also get to skip the CAPTCHA challenges.

Getting around

We’ve tried to make this site easy to use and inviting to contribute to. Selecting Home from the top menu bar should always return you to this basic landing page. You can head to either of the two content areas from here or navigate using the menu bar.

Selected projects on the wiki

Let’s make a book: dekalborama.com is seeking contributors to a compilation of Neoteric Ensemble artifacts and memorabilia, working title Ephemera. If you’re a Neoteric alum or collector, or have something to say regarding the Ensemble, you can help this project attain critical mass: have a look at progress on the wiki and contact us for details.

Diaspora project: In the “where are they now” department, we’re tracking down the former band members, composers, authors, supporters, and descendants of the dekalborama scene. As links to their activities today are unearthed, we’ll post them here. Dave blogged a bit to explain the impulse.

Site launch and mission status: Getting any site off the ground is complicated. Things are planned and some of them happen, while other things happen, some of them planned. We’ve posted a list of things done and those needing doing, and are glad to report that we still seem to be gaining altitude.

More to come…

As we amass more material, this front page will present some more interesting jump points. Things we’re particularly interested in:

  • Bands
    • Bee Cubed
    • Bokar Blues Band
    • Brain Damage
    • CoNoHuRaSo
    • EAGERE
    • High Tension Orchestra
    • Liquid Frequency
    • Mimesis
    • Neoteric Ensemble
    • Penzerelli Experience
    • PiCaNoHu
    • Potato Engineers
    • There were many more….
  • Institutions
  • People
  • Performances

So stay tuned.

4 Responses to dekalborama

  1. Susan Ung says:

    Hi there!
    Chinary and I have fond memories of all of our dear friends from the late 70’s. we’d love to see some of these materials!
    Susan Ung aka Sue Lee Pounders

    • gongmaster says:

      Susan: It’s fantastic to hear from you. Let me know whether you want to be able to post directly to the site, send things to me to post for you, or just stay informed as we post more materials!

  2. Damon Short says:

    Just heard about the site, very cool! Can’t figure out a way to actually create a login.

    I think maybe ‘Brain Damage’ refers to a duo I did in 1979 with JPinzarrone, but then, given the title, perhaps I can’t remember.

    There’s a picture in the Blickhan collection w/ Tim & Chinary with 2 ‘unknowns’. I’m pretty sure the guy on the left is Dennis Maxwell, but I’m absolutely sure the one next to Chinary is Michael McFarlane (who passed away a few years ago.)

    great to see this!
    Damon

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