DREAMWORKS.COM 

MTV.COM

      As we sat outside of the Brick Works, on the side step of a white box-shaped trailer hitched to a mid-eighties van to match, Papa Roach front man Coby Dick and I talked about how far the band had come in the six years they had been together. 

      The fidgety singer was amped up, rocking back and forth, signing autographs left and right and giving thanks to old friends and new fans for coming to see the soon-to-be rock stars play. Papa Roach was still two months away from blowing up on MTV and rock radio stations across the nation, with its first single "Last Resort." Its first major album release, "Infest," had another month and a half before it was to be released. 

      In four short months, "Infest" would hold a steady top ten position on the Billboard Top 200 charts. 

      This was an interesting conversation. Dick couldn't stay still and was apologetic for that. After all this had been one of the band's most successful shows to date, playing in front of over 600 fans crammed into the tight Chico club. He used colorful language consistently, amounting to one word that begins with "f" and rhymes with anything that has an "uck" at the end of it. And he kept asking one question: "Can you make a mention of PapaRoach.com in your article?"

     What's the deal with the Web site, I wondered. Would it help the band or were the public relations people at Dream Works telling the members to plug it as often as they could, which Dick would never fail to do? 

      I talked to him two more times before Papa Roach hit the "big time," and in both conversations he asked the question no less than three times.

      Not a word I have written on the band has mentioned PapaRoach.com, until now. 

      It turns out that Papa Roach didn't need my plug. It made it, but there are thousands of bands across the nation and a number in Chico that are trying to get their music heard by a wider audience. The Internet is a tool for those bands, as it was for Papa Roach. The Net allows those bands to be heard anywhere at anytime.