This month we spoke with the team working on the Biscuits Internet Project at Discobiscuits.net.
The BIP started in late 1998. As with most other bands, The Disco
Biscuits had reached a certain size and had played enough different songs
and places that people needed a reliable place to get all of that
information. New Market Productions donated the server space, and Andy
Adelewitz put together the site and started collecting pictures, reviews,
tape trading lists, and all other necessary resources a growing fanbase
needs. Naturally, Jesse Jarnow handled the setlist file. 🙂
You can see an old version of the BIP on the archive
Andy eventually graduated, and had less and less time to keep up with
maintaining the site, especially when the rapidly growing fan base
constantly demanded more information, faster setlists, etc.. He put out
the call to the group’s mailing list, Discuss Biscuits, and asked for
someone to take over. A group of us quickly had some discussion about
whether we could handle it, and everyone specialized in a different area,
so no one person had to go crazy taking care of the whole site. The deal
was sealed pretty quickly, and discobiscuits.net was born soon afterwards.
The site’s main purpose is to be a database. As far as we can tell, the
2000 relaunch of the BIP was the first site of its kind to display
setlists as a collection of hyperlinks instead of just plain text.
Emphasis is always placed on linking from one piece of information to the
next. If you were to look at the most recent setlist, with one click, you
could see how many times and when they played that venue before, how many
times they played in that city or state, how many times they played each
of those songs and when, if they played a particular segue before, and the
list keeps growing. Our goal is to be able to get in to the fans’ heads
and figure out what other pieces of information are relevant to them, and
come up with an easy way of accessing it.

The one thing that really stands out about the BIP is that it has remained
true to its form almost from the very beginning. We have never sought
after an overdone design or to make information difficult to access.
Everything is right there for the taking, and that definitely sets it
apart from other bands’ fan sites.

That said, the BIP is just that – the Biscuits Internet Project – and it’s
an ongoing project that will continue to grow as fast as the Biscuits
choose to. We’re enjoying the ride.

-Evan Lucchesi Leon, Ericalynn Gruenberg, Jesse Jarnow, Yancy
Davis, and Rich Steele