What's a party? A party is network of friends, coming together to meet, greet, dance, sing, and enjoy each other's company. In the 21st century we all learn about parties through the Internet - with one simple email you can invite everyone you know to a night on the town.

It wasn't always that easy. Since the 1960's party people connected at concerts and clubs promoted through street flyers, posters, newspapers and radio. That gave way in the early 90's when computer networks appeared in homes, businesses, schools and universities.

In the early 90's people on the net began organizing fanlists. It happened in the big cities first - Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, London, Berlin, Tokyo - and quickly spread to include the entire industrialized world. Global Party Culture arose from this phenomenon, and California, with its massive computer industry, was there first.

SoCal's most respected forum, the SCR Calendar, appeared in '92 when some friends – Joachim the Underdog, Dana Watanabe, Tamara Palmer, Chris Nolan, Dan Bremmer, Mark Rudholm, Steve Shaw, and many others at UC Irvine and UC San Diego created a discussion list for the music and parties they loved. The email list gave a voice to anyone who chose to speak, connected people from Tijuana to Santa Barbara, and promoted artists and music that commercial culture discovered years later.

The underground, without the influence of the Mainstream Entertainment Industry, used the net to attract crowds in excess of fifty thousand people. Performing DJ's fueled the fire, turning us onto new sounds and whipping us into a dance floor frenzy. Bands like Orbital, Underworld, Skychurch, and Meat Beat Manifesto climbed onstage and brought the music to life. All cultures, people and languages were naturally represented. No corporations were involved; no marketing executives narrowly defined the audience by race and language. If you liked it, you were part of it. It didn't matter how you talked, what you looked like, or what neighborhood you grew up in.

As the culture exploded over the years, SCR Calendar moved from server to server, publishing a continuous stream of daily music reviews, party updates, and cultural commentary. To this day, the SCR Calendar archives exists as an important document in the rise of Global Electronic Culture. Every email, review, flame, party, debate and diatribe is in the archives. Don't believe the hype, check it out for yourself, and take part in the global discussion! Thank you SCR Calendar! Thank you SoCal fans!