(If you're already hip to the LOB, just click here to go directly to the archive page. If not, I strongly urge you to read on.)

New? An Introduction, Then

The Life Of Bryan is the cornerstone of the foundation upon which this sprawling website now rests. And it wasn't even my idea.

Back in the frontier days of the World Wide Web, Scott Chatfield was a true cowboy. When I met him in late 1993, he was already spreading the gospel about this Internet thing that was going to take over the world just as soon as everyone found out about it. By 1994 he was maintaining his own website, called Obvious Moose, and he happily showed it to anyone within ten miles of his pre-Chatfield Manor condo in Encinitas, CA. One early convert was Mike Keneally, whose own page on "Moosenet" debuted in 1994.

I didn't even have a computer back then. I was borrowing my roommate's when necessary, and in 1995 that meant using her online service, the quaint but almost-reliable Prodigy. Yes, friends, I experienced that same rush you did when I received my first e-mail, and something inside me stirred to life when I wrote Chatfield in particular; his replies were in a witty shorthand now very familiar to the masses. I had no such discipline, and would often painstakingly construct two-paragraph missives that were more communiqué than reply.

Chatfield put two and two together quickly and, seeing an opportunity for additional content on the Mike Keneally site, offered me a page of my own. Write anything you want, he said. Anyone with an Internet connection will be able to read it. (A brutally long conversation then ensued about how the Internet worked; he must have explained it eighteen different ways before I finally got it.) I'm pretty sure he came up with the name. He was, after all, a Promotions Director by trade.

The original Life Of Bryan logo, used on Acts One through Fifteen

"Act 1" of The Life Of Bryan made its first appearance on Moosenet in November of 1995, with four short paragraphs and a promotional gimmick of my own: a full-page shot of me in drag from Halloween of that year. (Click here if you dare.) The Keneally phenomenon was in its infancy back then, and I was only a tiny part of that infant, so I was concerned that no one would ever read it. When the e-mails began trickling in to my own Prodigy account, I was thrilled, shocked.and, honestly, a little spooked. Someone from Finland wrote me within days of the initial posting. Finland.

Freed from years of neglect, the writer inside me exploded as I began spewing mountains of text. When Frank died, I wrote about that. When the release of Z's Music For Pets got delayed for the tenth time, I wrote about that. Crucially, when Keneally and I left Z-you guessed it-I wrote about that as well, and after receiving well over 100 e-mailed responses to that piece, I finally understood what Chatfield meant when he said the Internet was going to "change the world."

After buying my own computer, I turned The Life Of Bryan into a professional web journal (long before "web journaling" was hip, I'm not too modest to boast), documenting tours, sideman work in Los Angeles, and everything else I could think of. By the time a truly life-changing event took place-my audition with Steve Vai in 1996-it practically occurred in real time for the readers, with the details spilling out for all to see in Acts 15 and 16. By this time I was so addicted to the act of writing that I set out to compose what I hoped would be a first novel, and locked myself in a room for the better part of sixteen months doing so.

The new, improved Life Of Bryan logo, with a picture of me in peak physical condition. I hereby reserve the right to use it forever.

Ultimately the LOB's topics moved from "all Keneally all the time" to
"all music all the time" to, eventually, whatever the hell I felt like writing about. What came out wasn't borne of the desire to post new content so much as a compulsion to write in some form or another, and it just so happened that I was the easiest thing for me to write about. You know what they say to aspiring writers: journal, journal, journal. Well, I did. By 1998, after completing 29 "Acts" and the manuscript as well, I was a different writer-and a different person.

I look back on some of the early Acts and cringe, but only for a moment; they feel like raw demo tapes to me now, the stuff from which an album eventually came in the form of a column in Bass Player, political commentary and other published work. It's safe to say that none of this would have occurred had Chatfield not proposed the idea back in what he calls the "wild, wild west" days of the Internet, and for that he deserves my unending gratitude. For taking the time to maintain the page all these years, he deserves more than I can provide.

An important note about navigation: The Life Of Bryan, has so much material in the archive-over 40 official Acts in all-that to re-do it in the bryanbellerdotcom look would just be a ridiculous amount of work, so we've decided to preserve it in its original state. Besides, there's something "retro" about its formatting that I think is worth keeping around. The bryanbellerdotcom toolbar will be available to you on the main index page, but go any deeper and you'll need to have your browsing skills about you. In other words, use the back button or scroll to the bottom for handy excape hatches.

Now that bryanbellerdotcom lives and breathes, new writings can show up in any variety of places-not just the LOB as in the past. But if you're interested in The Big Bang that spawned this website-and my literary venture in general-you've arrived at the right place. I hope you have as much fun picking through it as I did creating it.

CLICK HERE FOR "THE LIFE OF BRYAN" ARCHIVES.