rumurOG 2004

Arriving in June 2004 as the quieter alter ego of ballyhoo, Brett Holloway created this account with a singular mission: find bandmates. His very first journal entry was a recruitment post for a progressive punk rock project based in Monmouth County, promising prospective members compensation in the form of "great friends, good times, and 43 denarii an hour." He connected with aviator, violetboregaurd, and hunkpapap about joining up, and the connection with flomojopoanode — Todd Bastidas, who recognized Odd Man Out and Absolute Zero from the local scene — felt like exactly the kind of find eZabel was built for. The influences he cited were telling: Hot Water Music, The Mars Volta, Strung Out. This was not a guy looking to start a garage cover band. He wanted something ambitious, and he was willing to cast a wide net across central Jersey to find it.

When Brett was not recruiting, he was holding court in Music Talk with the kind of opinions that sound casual but reveal someone who has thought hard about what he loves. He championed Jimmy Chamberlin as possibly "the best drummer in the world" and pointed anyone who doubted it toward the Smashing Pumpkins' Vieuphoria concert film. On the sellout debate — a thread that could have devolved into the usual noise — he delivered what might be his most quoted take: "as long as the band is true to itself and doesnt compromise as far as their music goes, then whoever calls them a sellout can take a flying leap." He had a knack for puncturing pretension, predicting that any band without a "The" prefix and a brit-punk aesthetic was doomed to be "washed up and forgotten quickly" — a cynical observation that proved irritatingly accurate for a lot of mid-2000s acts. His interactions orbited fivezero, socalgal, thefunkyfresh, and rocksupastar, the same Stanhope-Hackettstown crew he ran with under his main account. By December he was using rumur to hunt for IT jobs, asking deanh77 about openings at Vonage and rocksupastar about a position at his company — real-life networking through a platform built for forum arguments and punk rock debates.

eZabel Personality Type: ISTP — "The Sideman." Where ballyhoo was all bluster and freestyle raps, rumur was Brett with the volume turned down — focused, purposeful, and surprisingly earnest. He used this account to do things his main persona was too loud for: recruit serious musicians, give measured takes on the state of rock, and quietly look for work when he needed it. His last comment was a perfectly Brett farewell — someone proposed an impractical road trip and he replied, "lets just take my rocketship. i was on my way to pick up santa claus anyway." Even at his most understated, the guy could not help being funny.