User:Shawnphase
Shawn Phase is Shawn Douglas Phase, of Baltimore, Maryland. Tssbay01. Earth, Alpha Centauri.
The following outlines the primary reasons why Shawn Phase is the most important person in IP2 history, not to mention the internet.
A Legend is Born
He was born at Franklin Square Hospital in the White Marsh area of Baltimore at 10:33am on Febuary 13th, 1978. An interesting tale recounted by his mother depicts her waiting in Room 13 after delivery, when a baby that was due to be brought to a waiting mother was brought down the hall and promptly and inadvertedly dumped out of the cradle that was holding him. Shawn's parents, having seen this and thinking that this baby was their child, was sussed out by a nurse, and Shawn's parents went to get him, a procedure that would not ever be allowed in todays hospitals across the country. A few years later it was uncovered in a newspaper article that this child grew up with birth defects as a result of being dropped by the nurse.
The Saga Begins
Shawn's early days were spent learning to read by picking up letters and abbreviations off of street signs, menus, and labels of anything and everything. He learned to read at the age of 3, and was put into first grade aged 4 at Harford Heights Elementary School in the Gifted and Talented Education program, where he soon met close friends such as Nick Bertling, drummer for seminal Baltimore funk band puddle., as well as ex-The Idea Men band mate Gary Barrett's Gary B and the Notions.
An Orchid Blossoms
Shawn attended middle school at Hamilton Middle School, in a part of the 'Advanced Academics' program. Ahead of most kids his age, he had a clamoring sense of using his energy for the sake of good, and promptly picked up playing in the school's jazz ensemble and orchestra, choosing to focus on percussion as well as repair of a large cache of equipment that was in bad shape, learning his way through how to use equipment that other students may have been reluctant to pick up. They released 2 cassettes between the years of 1988 and 1991, with 1990 seeing Shawn Phase's first statewide award, best jazz drummer in his age group. It was the performance of the song 'Drum Machine' that led the jazz enseble to this victory, led by conductor Alvin Wallace. Alvin, embroiled with scandal in his final years as a teacher, passed away in 2014. Shawn was able to reconnect with him mere days prior to his death.
It was at the now defunct Towson Catholic High School that Shawn experimented with many different ethics and moods to his music, ranging from electronic pop, to folk, to 'emotional' (or emo, which is not to say that the music he made was definitive of 'emo' by today's standards). He started a publication newsletter in his sophomore year called 'Powar' that was released on 11"x17" paper, limited to 20 copies of each of the 8 yearly issues, produced pro-bono in exchange for significant library computer assistance. With the advent of early iterations of the internet, as well as other early successful archival tools such as gopher, lynx and webcrawler, as well as online WWIV BBS systems and networks, Shawn volunteered his time to help other students access online information for reports and assignments when it was not easily available in the constantly expanding library. With Mr Sharkey the librarian, he worked as an 'unspoken aid' to assist in archiving both hard copy of printed materials as well as maintain and deliver a/v equipment used in classrooms and for school demonstrations.
The World's Only College Graduate
Shawn graduated in 1995, with accolades such as being a member of the National Art Honor Society, pioneering the music program for the school in his junior year, graduating with a 2.9 average, and also had volunteered in excess of the required 160 hours at Meridian Nursing Home in Baltimore, now repurposed and is in the infancy of being a drug treatment center. It was at this time between 1992 and 1995 that he was dubbed 'The Golden Boy' by many of the nursing home's inhabitants. Shawn graduated in the top 90th percentile of his class.
Ascension to Brilliance
As Shawn's life continued, the desire for complete musical coherency and consistency plagued his existence. This came at a large cost, both with time and financially, and necessitated fairly large sums of money for a modicum of recording equipment at a young age. He was able to make money with his visual art, often painting commissioned artwork of different anime characters in school, mounting the painted art on foam board and selling at a local anime shop. Shawn also was notorious for winning valuable magic cards in ante game rules, or playing the odd paying show in a bar underage without a fake id, even booking the shows himself. 'What could we do, he was bringing the talent from out ot state. These kids(sic) would help bring 500 extra bucks to our bar per gig!' one ex-bar owner who prefers to remain anonymous has went on record as saying.
Through the mid 90's years of writing and recording music, Shawn saved and worked to build backlines of equipment for his bands Grandizer and The Idea Men. It is speculated that Shawn earned and spent in the area of $4000 by age 17 for recording time and equipment, most notably the mammoth liverig that was used by [[The Idea Men]], which consisted of 2 cabinets sporting 2x10" speakers and 1x18" speaker each driven by a 400 watt amplifier sold to them by Eric Axelson of The Dismemberment Plan, a full guitar stack, as well as different guitars and recording equipment. A large amount of 4 and 8 track cassette material was recorded and of course digitized, as well as the odd 7" and compilation songs under various monikers such as The First Prototype, Glorious Fourlane, and Autospy. Several demos were made, but never shopped or released, with exception of the 'Heart As Far As Hands' 12" by The Idea Men, released in 1995. This was a trend that would plague him as his work continued, the essence being the struggle with simple engineering and completion of a project or task in order to present it with a modicum of respect to the art that was the same as envisioned, but doing so much, much later.
A "Nobel" Individual, Indeed
Shawn Phase won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for Economics, when he created the absolute theorum for making the most beautiful music that any human ear could ever perceive. Because of his works' immense appeal, it caused an incredible upward spiral in the economy as nearly 3 billion records were sold of Shawn's jazz drumming alone, most notably the epic Cheater Stick Fetish. He has not slowed down since, making over 25 releases a year, each with 63 or more tracks. All of them are called by even such critical musical reviewers as Pitchfork as being "the musical equivalent of shitting doves".
The Golden Boy Reigns
During the years of 1997-2006t, over 185 releases were written and recorded under mainly the 'temp sound solutions' imprint, but several other releases such as Grandizer, The Idea Men, Horsetaint, as well as more memorable live recordings and much older recordings were released. A majority of these releases that were committed to CD or CDR were limited to 500 copies, and the music has been released on cd/cdr, 7", cassette, as well as compilations or distributed on netlabels or via the soulseek, bandcamp, chiptune, and video game remix communities. Shawn Phase and Temp Sound Solutions have written, recorded, and released over 300 albums to date, with no end in sight.
Back to the Future, or Shaping it?
Shawn Phase is currently looking to win his second lifetime Nobel prize, this time shooting for the Nobel prize in literature. His grand plan has been self-described as looking to reshape the way the people perceive feelings on the internet. Shawn limits his live stream endeavors to a 'once a month only' effort. In mid-2022, Shawn Phase will begin the 'Total Information Awareness' campaign, a livestreaming effort combined with a book tour. One of his main plans is implementing a new emoticon system as well as building and marketing the first true 'Neural Net' to be implemented in the first version of what he calls 'Subnet 2.0'. His sponsors include many of the founding fathers of the modern internet, including Albert Gore and Steve Wozniak. He plans to have these efforts fully completed by the end of 2024.