Dave, I didn't join the Forum until August of last year so I may have missed it when you told us how you came to be the Web Master of mikeportnoy.com. I'm just curious as to how you were chosen since based on your story of your trip to Mike's house over Christmas, it sounds as if you didn't really know him before then. Could you fill us in?

DaveH -

OK, I'm gonna try to type this out really quick, hope you're not expecting anything TOO awful exciting

I probably don't remember all the timeframes correctly, but here's the basic jist of it...

Back in 1996 I created the Dream Theater Doom2 level and I joined the Ytsejam mailing list. By mid 1997 a couple members of the band had at least heard about it, as I believe Mike had started reading the 'Jam by that point. (i used to be known on the list as "buster" way back then) I'd also aquired some of the popular DT boots from Mike Bahr on the 'Jam sometime in 1997...

Anyways, at some point in 98 I'd attended one of Mike's drum clinics, and after his clinic I met him to have one of my DT boots autographed and have a picture taken with him, and when he saw the boot (When Dream and Today Unite) he goes "hey, are you on the Ytsejam list?" and I was like "yeah man, I'm the guy that made the DT Doom2 level" and he said he'd heard of it but never played it. I just so happened to have a copy of the level on a floppy disk, with instructions, in my pocket  and I gave it to him. A couple weeks shortly after, I wrote him an email to see if he had any comments on it, and I ran the idea by him that he should have a web site. I basically volunteered my services and we started a little email exchange.

There were 2 DT shows I went to that year, the first was at the Alros Villa in Columbus, but I didn't have a chance to meet him at that one. At that point everything was still just in email talks, but shortly after that they had a show scheduled at Annie's in Cincinatti, and Mike sent me & email offering me some passes to the show, and inviting me to meet with him after the show to discuss the possible "mikeportnoy.com" that was at this point, still just an idea.

At the Annies show in 1998, I was nervous as hell... I knew I was going to meet Mike, and I had my ideas for the site all outlined and printed out on paper for him to view. The shows was totally kick-ass BTW...
The show ended, the crowd bailed, and about 30 minutes later Mike wandered out into the club to greet about 15 of us fans who were lucky enough to have passes. My throat got dry as he approached the table that Melissa and I were sitting at. He was obviously cooling off after the 2 hour performance, and was drinking a cold Corona. (I'd had a couple brews myself to calm the nerves). He came over, we shook hands and said hello, and talked about the show for a few minutes. I mentioned that I was amazed at the way they managed to work in the entire ACOS in little peices between other songs throughout the show (still amazes me how they hold it all together!!!), and then he was like "so, ya got something to show me here about the web site?". I pulled out the 2 page outline and told him about all the ideas I had, and what we could do with it. He was really into it, and he basically left it at "well, this sounds good, why don't you just put something together online and let me see it, and we'll take it from there". At this point, there were still no guarantees, it was kinda like an "audition". Somewhere around this time Mike and I spoke on the phone for awhile to discuss the content of the site, and he shipped me a box of magazines, posters, and CD's to use in the creation of MP.com.

Well, the coming months presented me with hardship after hardship, and the project was constantly delayed. It got to the point where I'd apologized to him several times in our email exchanges, always explaining what had gone wrong now and delayed the prototype. In November of 1998, just when I was coming out of the woods and was ready to tell Mike we were rolling, my close friend Don "Donski" Robinson died from an asthma attack at the age of 31. This incident crushed me inside, and again mikeportnoy.com was placed on the back burner.

In early 1999 I eventually started the true "build" of the site, all the while dropping Mike an occasional line. At this point he had other people offering to build the site for him, and although I could have been in danger of losing the opportunity, Mike continued to show me understanding and gave me the benefit of the doubt. In one of the emails I explained all of the cool features I had planned, like the chat room and the wire that would be on the site, and his reply included "if you can really make this all happen, it will have been worth the wait".

Then it happened, the break I was waiting for. I'd hit a point in my business where I was able to take the loss of a couple weeks off, and in May I did just that. I sat there for 2 or 3 weeks day and night putting this thing together, and after a few more phone chats with Mike and some more emails, we set a launch date for June 11, 1999.

Sure enough, June 11th rolled around and I was ready, I was stoked up! We went live at 9:00PM, and I noticed that Mike hadn't called in a message to the wire yet... I hated to invade his privacy, but I called his house and said "hey man, sorry to bother you, but we just went live and there's no wire message from you!" LOL!! About an hour later, after a few tries, the message was finally there... here is a copy of it: http://www.mikeportnoy.com/openingwire.ram

The site was announced everywhere in the fan community, and word travelled fast! Within 2 days we got over 5000 visitors and we were transferring almost 3 gig a day!! It's safe to say that Mike and I have been in contact almost daily since then and became more friends than aquaintences along the way. By the time Christmas rolled around and I was invited to his house for dinner, I'd say we knew each other pretty well

The rest is history...

[Note: This message has been edited by DaveH]