In our wired world, the most obvious source of fandom activity in the 21st century is the online communities and fansites devoted to the celebrity of one’s choosing. Fans now have access to an unprecedented amount of information and interest courtesy of the Internet, and Trevor – always a friend of new technologies – is no exception.
Within the last three years or so the online world has seen a rise in fandom activity associated with Trevor Rabin. For example, the longest-running Facebook fan page is “Trevor Rabin Composer” which was created in 2008. But a dearth of fandom sites associated with Trevor makes the social networking hubs a more appropriate outlet in regards to interest and traffic. There are various MySpace pages associated with Trevor, for example, although his official page wasn’t established until 2008. Likewise there is an unofficial YouTube channel which was created last year and some Facebook pages (none of which are official). The entry for Trevor on Wikipedia (which remains the primary source of information for anything online in the minds of Internet users) was first created in 2004.
But there are sources and sites which go back even further than the creation of Trevor’s own website in 2005. Mike Tiano, one of the titans of Yesfan activity online, established his own website/fanzine Notes From The Edge in 1990 before becoming associated with the band as a webmaster for their official site Yesworld for a number of years. Utilizing contacts both in and out of official circles, Mike was a main source of current Yes information as well as for those who had done their service in the band then gone on to other projects. The precursor to Trevor’s website was a section of NFTE devoted to Trevor (created by Tom Lorenz and Bo Sease), which served as a source of information and access for nearly a decade, providing a total online presence for Trevor of fifteen years as of this writing (which is also the length of his career as a film and television scorer).
Another trailblazing source of information was provided by Trevor fan T.H. Cutler, who created a Rabbitt fansite in 1999 which remains one of the best sources of information regarding the band, as her research was bolstered by accounts from those who knew and worked with the band, as well as South African rock music historians. It appears another fan had created a site for Trevor, a site for Rabbitt, and a fan-based newsletter, but those pages are now lost to online history.
One continual source of fan activity and information has remained the Yesfans discussion forum, which was established in 2001 and has a membership of over 10,000 worldwide. Loyal Rabinites gather to post their latest discoveries in the subforum devoted to Trevor and sometimes might manage to scoop the official site when it comes to news! Other fansites have borrowed and passed along the information and images provided by the regulars of the subforum, proving the adage that information does indeed move at the speed of light. Likewise Henry Potts, a long-time Yesfan, maintains an unofficial news site for all associated members (called “Yes: Where Are They Now?”) and he often receives and shares news faster than official sources.
Interest in Trevor’s current career as a film scorer has resulted in the creation of a fan site by Fabrice Steurer in 2008 which is spotty at best. In the opinion of your humble narrator, if any good fanwork could reflect this phase of Trevor’s musical evolution, it would be a site which could provide a complete discography of Trevor’s scoring credits (even those which never received a soundtrack release) as well as those pieces created for television and other installations, news, and links to interview sources regarding Trevor’s work.
Despite a vocal presence on social networking and other online hubs, if one wishes to keep up-to-date with the latest information, the best bet is always the official site. There is much discussion online these days as to interest in Trevor, but the majority of it is unofficial and in many cases potentially superfluous or misleading. But hopefully this essay assists in separating the digital wheat from the chaff in regards to what a 21st Century Rabinite can hope to find in regards to his/her favorite musician.
