So. What exactly is Belgian Man? Well, the short answer is that it’s a website where local musicians can share their work for free.

But, as with most short answers, there’s a long alternative explanation, too.

It all started in 2005. I was a young, hopeful 13-year-old, and I wanted to do cool stuff. Everyone knows starting a band is cool, so I got a few friends together, and we did. We were called Resonant Frequency—we didn’t know what it meant, but it sure sounded cool—and we played crappy punk-influenced rock. None of us had any idea what we were doing—this was 7th grade, so we didn’t have any friends in bands—but I got some equipment and we recorded some songs.

Unfortunately, nobody outside our immediate circle of friends (which was pretty much just us in the band) had any idea we were doing so, and much to our surprise, we weren’t exactly flooded by fans. So I got to thinking. How could we share our music with our friends?

Why of course! The INTERNET!

I was pretty self-satisfied with my internet-savvy at the time, so I set up a website, uploaded our music, and wrote some wishful copy about how we mere definitely going to start playing shows and release tons of albums.

Life was great. We could give links to our friends, and share our music.

We were SO cool, what with our band and all, that by the time we started high school, we knew some other people who were also making music. The problem was, most of these cool band people weren’t nerds like we were, so they had no idea how to get their music onto the internet. A few set up myspace pages, but that was pretty much it. A few totally isolated bands, sharing myspace links with their friends.

I knew a few of these kids, and I liked some of their music. I wanted more. I wanted to see what everyone in my community was creating. So, I looked everywhere. I googled “bands in Concord;” I searched Myspace for bands in Concord. I even asked Jeeves, and by this point, nobody was still asking Jeeves.

But, to my great disappointment, search after search was largely fruitless.

So, I got to thinking. Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a single place where creators and their fans could go? Where they could find music made by their friends and friends-of-friends?

Well, yeah. it would. So here’s Belgian Man Records.