On November 18, a 20-minute segment of a Rolling Stones concert was piped onto the Internet. The first live online performance by a major band, it was a cyberspace event, though not the best showcase for the Stones.
Ground zero for the event was the Jersey City offices of Thinking Pictures, a multimedia firm that approached the Stones with the idea in order to demonstrate the Net's possibilities. Using a conventional video feed from the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Thinking Pictures digitized the video, then relayed the images onto the Net. One problem, though. The footage had originally been full of the movement and energy that make a Stones show worthwhile. Mick Jagger skipped like a schoolboy across a windy stage; Ron Wood crouched in a quiet moment, smiled at the camera, and flicked a guitar pick out into the darkness. On the Internet, though, the Stones didn't roll. They froze into a series of still photos running at around five frames per second across an area about the size of a 3-by-5 card. A sorry state for the world's liveliest middle-agers. Meanwhile, the eight-bit audio on songs like ''Tumbling Dice'' and ''Not Fade Away'' made it sound as if the band were playing over the phone.
For this compromised quality, viewers needed a $10,000 work station and a $1,000 phone line. About 200 sites were logged on to receive the concert — mostly universities and businesses with high-powered hardware. All in all, it was hard to get excited if you remembered you could get an infinitely better vantage point for $25 on pay per view.
And yet, the evening wasn't a total loss. After Thinking Pictures finished its work, someone at the company's office noticed that other sites in this multimedia mini-Net were transmitting video. A small crowd began gathering around the Thinking Pictures monitor to watch two bearded guitarists belt out an unplugged cover of the Wild Cherry song ''Play That Funky Music'' from one of the sites (bercPanther.pa.dec.com). It was then that the real beauty of the Stones concert became clear. The Internet is the great leveler — the only place in the world where the Rolling Stones can be your warm-up act. Now that's something to get excited about.
