Club Eclectica: The first decade
Forming an online group that connected music lovers in real life
Ten summers ago, I started a little Facebook group.
At the time, unlike now, I was overloading my friends with content. I filled my daily feed with music videos, and those posts began to take on a greater significance to me than sharing minutiae of my life (remember when minutaie was the primary FB content?). So I looked for a group of like-minded music lovers, found one, didn’t really fit in, and in a slight huff, created my own, the concept being to gather together fans of an eclectic mix of genres and eras.
It was a challenging time for me. I needed both the music and an outlet to share the love.
I know now that the summer of 2011 was seismic. Things changed that summer. Huge shifts in circumstance precipitated major changes in my life. The first rumblings of change came after the death of my sister in January of that year. The shock of her quick decline and death stretched the bonds of the family to a breaking point. Things were tenacious all around.
As he grew his career, my partner moved from our apartment in Washington, D.C., to the Bay Area to manage a wine-focused restaurant in Palo Alto. I would end up joining him to start a new chapter in our lives in San Francisco at the very beginning of 2012, but in August 2011, everything was still in “test mode.” We kept the D.C. apartment while I looked into ways that I could keep my job after I moved—a novel idea, and a slightly chancey assumption to make at the time.
Club Eclectica was born on Sunday afternoon, August 6, 2011, in our apartment, the Rodney on R Street NW. It was one of those super heavy, hot, humid, hazy days that I can still feel, can still smell — one of the days that punctuate what summer means in Washington, D.C.
The word “Eclectica” came to me in a flash, sounded a little Low-era Berlin to me at the time. Sounded like a word that really wasn’t a word. Sounded just right.
I created the group, added a few dozen people I knew who were into music, and it took off. I remember the first batch of Eclecticans, and how we’d side-message each other to complain about over-eager members who posted too often. I definitely didn’t want to moderate the content, but I remember being always a little on edge if I sensed someone was a little too active. I didn’t want anyone “abusing the platform,” I called it, which, given where social media has taken us all since, is both pretty damned funny and so ironically sad it’s almost crushing.
Turns out I had a lot more to focus on.
I didn’t realize to what extent I was at a true crossroads in life in August 2011 (Would we actually move to SF and start new lives? Would my job demand I stay in DC? How will I get rid of all this stuff we’ve collected in the Rodney? Could we leave our friends?). It was all set into motion very quickly when I decided to give the California thing a go.
Within four months, I had either sold or gave away most of our furniture, packed all my vinyl in super-strong boxes, and bought a one-way ticket west, where I joined my partner. Transplanted.
I left the union movement and grew a career in tech, somehow a cat got into the mix, and I gradually slowed down my Facebook activity until it hit a dead stop somewhere around 2018. I broke the silence to mark my turning 50, but from that day in early 2019 til now, I’ve been doing pretty well without it.
As it happens, I discovered I was one of those people who could be either super active on Facebook or someone focused on doing things rather than documenting them. I couldn’t do both, so I made my choice. I also recognized a brutal truth: I never left any Facebook page feeling better than I did before I logged on.
With the exception of this group.
Club Eclectica amazes me for a number of reasons. First off, I’m surprised it’s become so strong. And it’s surprising that it’s continued, with dozens of posts every day and nearly 1,000 members. I don’t know 90 percent of you, and that makes it even cooler. And looking at the activity feed from the past several weeks, I’m struck by the fact that it seems to have developed a personality of its own — a collective, inclusive voice that celebrates the power of music (and yup, I’m aware how cliche that sounds, but honestly, it’s what I observe).
This isn’t to say I’m breaking the Facebook silence to come join the Club again. I’m feeling great without the platform; of course I’m on Instagram so I can’t be that self-righteous about it!
So celebrate your collective love of music. Learn from each other. Because given the past 15 months, and the few years before it, and whatever comes our way in the future both seen and unseen, our relationship with music is probably one of the very few things we can count on.
Happy 10th anniversary.
