David Peris - Digital Plumber
David Peris describes himself as a digital plumber. His customers are to this day, and always have been, a roster of bonafide A-level rock star celebrities.
David tells the story of how he became the webmaster for Michael Jackson, Celine Dion and Ozzy Osbourne before he knew what a webmaster was, how he’s remained the go-to guy when it comes to websites for rockstars to this day - and how he ended up with more than just the free CDs he was hoping for back in 1995…
AI Transcription
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
artists, website, music, people, called, cds, roger waters, napster, band, college, put, roger, web, mp3, working, aircraft carrier, david, sony, jeff goldblum, reo speedwagon
SPEAKERS
David Peris, Andrew Dubber
Andrew Dubber
Hi, I’m Dubber. I’m the director of Music Tech Fest, and this is the MTF podcast. Our guest this week is someone you probably haven’t heard of. David Peris is not what you might call a household name. But the people who have heard of him. Well, they’re household names. David’s beavering away behind the scenes pushing pixels manipulating HTML, and he’s been on speed dial for a level rockstars since before streaming before Napster before mp3 players. His is a fascinating story of how the son of an Indian immigrant went from watching MTV in his bedroom, to partying on an aircraft carrier with the Fugees, hanging out with Jeff Buckley and his office and managing the online profile of a bunch of people you’ve heard of, and whose records you own. I had the chance to sit down and have a chat with David Peris for the MTF podcast, a little while back. And just like I imagine he had with Tori Amos, Thievery Corporation, Sheryl Crow, and Roger Waters out of Pink Floyd before me. He gave me his business card. And it didn’t say what I thought it would. David, thanks so much for joining us. You business card says your digital plumber. What’s that? Exactly?
David Peris
Well, it’s a title I kind of came up with because, you know, sort of the, the web developer or web designer, you know, CTO, whatever those existing titles are, I don’t feel sums me up. So in essence, what it is, is the guy who kind of makes everything work, or the expensive guy you call when you’re trying to fix things, right? So you know, something’s broken on my website, my social media is glitchy this and that, you know, I like this word, plumber, because in essence, that’s what it kind of gets down to, right. I’m actually in the trenches, fixing things, as opposed to telling somebody else Hey, do this do that.
Andrew Dubber
Right. But the really interesting part to the story, of course, is the clients for whom you are a plumber. And you’ve got a fairly sort of, well, I mean, you’re gonna do some name dropping for us.
David Peris
Sure. So my main clients, we’ve been together 20 years is Roger Waters, formerly of the band Pink Floyd, who people might be familiar with. And Roger, and I’ve worked closely together for Yeah, 20 years for songs website, of course, and then came along this thing, you know, social media. So I do his Facebook page, I maintain his twitter and handle his Instagram with his creative director, Sean Evans. And yeah, Roger, text me emails be whatsapps me, you know, which is wild, because I drove to high school, listening to his music, you know, and I never in my wildest dreams, did I think I would be texting with the man who wrote the songs. Right, right. How did that come about? So my story is I went to college in New York City, I went to NYU. And in 1995, I was working in the computer lab, and I was playing with something called Netscape Navigator. And one of the first websites that opened up for me was, for whatever reason, the sony.com website. So I was looking at TVs and whatnot. And I clicked on their music division. And you know, they had a very primitive website back then. And there was a little blurb saying that their music division was looking for a webmaster. I didn’t even know what a webmaster was. But I thought potentially I could get free CDs. And that, to me was very, very exciting. That’s why I got into radio. Oh, my God, free CDs, 1899 each, you know, Tower Records. So I sent in an email from my college account, and they said, Yeah, sure, coming in for an interview. And I went to the Sony building 55th of Madison now now condos, I believe, but I went there and they said, you know, you’re great. And you know your computer science major, you’re perfect. But you’re still in school, you know, this is kind of like a real job. How would you do this? And I said, I don’t really know. But maybe I could be like an intern or consultant or something. So they say Good idea. We’ll give you $10 an hour, and we want you to make websites for our artists. So my classic story is, you know, half my notebook was like, calculus or whatever, from college, but the other half was meet with Ozzy Osborne at 4pm and sit down with Mariah Carey, and work on the website for Michael Jackson and Ricky Martin. And you know, it was ridiculous and it was the real people. It wasn’t like I was working at Madame Tussauds, you know, wax museum, these are tribute bands or something. So it was it was unreal to me as a music fan. You know, how old were you at this point? Just out of curiosity. 1920
Andrew Dubber
Yeah, so this is I mean, you’re still a student and impressionable young man.
David Peris
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And this is Knew You have to understand like the web was, you know, just at its infancy, right. So the Sony artists websites, as I remember, was a great page with one photo, and a bunch of little links. And that’s all you could really do back then it was very primitive. So, you know, I would do things like build a contest form and in Perl, if anyone’s familiar with that old programming language. And, and, you know, it’s praying, it was working and stuff, and I would put it live on our on our website, which was one page, you know, you know, win two tickets to see Mariah Carey at something. And I’d put it live, and there’s like, I wonder if anyone’s gonna see it. And then I would look at the text file where I was collecting all the entries and 100 people had entered in a minute. And I was like, Oh, my God, you know, so I became not only a web developer, but in some ways, I was like a broadcaster, and I was broadcasting. So all these fans are these artists. And these are pretty popular. It’s whose fans have just started using the web. Right?
Andrew Dubber
Wow, this is interesting. Did the artists kind of embrace it as an idea? Or were they cautious about it? How what was the response? Like?
David Peris
I think there was a little bit of caution. And by the way, this is all pre Napster and all that stuff. There was no piracy per se going on before CD burners and stuff. But I think there was a sense of, number one, what the hell is this? But number two, because they’re artists, they always want to express themselves, you know, it’s the nature of it. So, you know, sometimes you hear from an artist, yeah, the I turned in my CD, and I’m so tired of it, right? You hear that idea, because they’ve been living with it for a year or something. And the the web I think, gave them a way to express themselves away from an album cycle or away from, you know, a song or going to radio or whatever, going to an MTV, if anyone remembers what that is going to those places and talking about themselves. And they could do it themselves without a gatekeeper. So the best artists that I would work with did blogging before it was called blogging, you know, I had bands like Cypress Hill, you know, write up these, we call them stories from the road, where they would basically write up what they did at Lollapalooza, and they would send digital pictures to me in a very small resolution, of course. And we would essentially do blogging, you know, for these hours, that that’s what was called content. You know, the, the big thing was, like, we need content for the website content content beyond the album cover, beyond the tracklisting. Beyond the real audio samples. We need content. So the largely the content came from directly from the artists. Yeah. And that was fun, because you were going to the artists website, and you’re getting exclusive content that you couldn’t find anywhere else.
Andrew Dubber
Right? Well, yeah. I guess sort of, if this is pre blogging, then blogging comes along. Blogging kind of comes along with RSS, yeah. Does that change the game for you?
David Peris
Yes, and no. I think blogging what was interesting is a lot of the artists sometimes went rogue, you know, and they would set up their own websites, because they could, you know, I don’t remember any cases where, you know, it was becoming a real problem, but oftentimes, you know, they would want access directly to their site. And they would post things without the record labels knowledge and you’re always kind of curious, you know, what are these guys posting and you know, hopefully we’d get notified I’d build something into a script saying, hey, send me an email whenever Harry Connick Jr. puts up x y & z. But yeah, this is the idea that they could control. They’re sort of, you know, it was like having a magazine, but they didn’t have to go the editor. They could just publish whenever they wanted, which is kind of terrifying when you think about it. And I remember some instances, like we had a band. I believe it was Toad the Wet Sprocket, if anybody remembers that band who broke up, announced their breakup on their website, without telling me, they broke up. Because they published with some script that I made, and it was up on their website before they told anyone,
Andrew Dubber
right without losing the record label. Yeah. And I guess the the you were in the employ of the record label, not the artist.
David Peris
That’s correct. At the time, I worked for Sony Music. Yeah. And then, in 2007, I left and went out on my own
Andrew Dubber
right. Before that 99 hits Napster comes out, you know, everything goes into a panic. How did that affect what you did?
David Peris
It was it was dramatic and swift. And I’ll tell you my first interaction with with Napster. It’s interesting. But I was 24 25 and I was dating someone who was, you know, in the midst of college, and I walked in her dorm room once and she was really busy on her laptop. And I looked as though Well, what are you doing? Like, I’m playing with this thing. It’s called Napster. I was like, what what’s Napster? She said to me, Oh, that’s great. You type in a song and you hit submit and you can you can download it, you know, mind you there was no streaming or anything at this time. So I know this sounds primitive, but you could download it. So well how do you pay for it? She said, No, you don’t pay for it. You just download it. And I immediately got on the phone I called my boss. I was like, have you heard of this thing called Napster? Oh, my God. And she was like, everyone in the dorm is using it. Because of the colleges. Obviously, it was one of the few places you had high speed bandwidth. Sure, sure. Even I think the bandwidth of the college was better than what was on the office. Right? I remember right. So yeah, I was just blown away, like, Oh, wait, this mp3 thing. You know, and I think this is a around the time of the real player and all this. So mp3 was still kind of in its infancy. But just this idea that kids were making playlists with music that they didn’t buy from iTunes, and, you know, it was it was it was wild. So the next thing that came along, of course, the the record label was, oh my god, you know, they there was some mp3 trading, of course, on the web, you know, click here to download the mp3 and we would have to call our friends at the web and shut that down and this and that. It was a whack a mole. It was you know, cat and mouse. But this changed the game because it was decentralised. Of course, as everyone knows, there was nothing to shut down. So the label and everybody else yeah, went into a panic. And it was it was crazy, crazy times. And before that, you know, the big thing was the CD and we were selling millions of Celine Dion CDs in a week, right? So I remember going to parties, like on aircraft carriers when the Fuji sold 10 million CDs, you know, crazy things. The the the money was there, right? So it was a it was very much a turning point. And it was very dramatic. And it happened out of the blue and quickly. And
Andrew Dubber
well, before we go on with that story. There’s the idea of you partying on an aircraft carrier, the fujis and and starting the story as a computer science student who wanted to just sort of build websites, because it’s a tech thing. Yeah. How did you get there, at least to that point, because obviously, there’s a design element in and web development and plumbing as you put it, but but so what does the child David want to be when he grows up that takes them to this, this place?
David Peris
You know, first of all, I’m not a musician, I I’ve never really played an instrument I I’ve tried but never really got into it. I don’t think it’s a natural talent of mine. But when I fully embraced music was probably 1415. And I watched a lot of MTV and things and one of my earliest memories of just really falling for music and sort of the quote unquote power of music, if you will, was I saw the video for Sunday Bloody Sunday by a band called U2. And, you know, this crazy guy and a with a mullet, you know, and a, you know, like wife beater shirt walking around the stage at Red Rocks and Colorado and, you know, he was so charged up and amped up and he was running around to the flag and you know, climbing things. I’m like, Oh my god, yeah, this guy’s crazy. And I love the song as many people do. And and it showed me that music was more than just, you know, the REO Speedwagon or whatever on the radio that, you know, parents would play in the background. It was, it had this power, you know, it had this thing in the sky, you know, young crazy guy with a mullet was like, he was you could tell like, he might have died that night, you know, for this thing that they were creating, I don’t know, not to be dramatic. But anyway, that really swept me in some music. And then I was very fortunate that I had friends in high school, who weren’t into sports, who, you know, we weren’t into girls for various reasons. Because, like, the high barrier or whatever, but we we didn’t have a lot of distractions, there was no internet, anything, but the one thing we really fell in love with was collecting music. And he would have to go to this record store thing or the mall, have 30 40 $50 to buy two CDs, you know, and we collected music, you know, on CD, and it was such a thrill. And then we would DJ and all this stuff. And, and that was the thing. So I am very grateful to the friends that I had, who really helped me realise like, this is what you like, you know, this is this is what you’re into. And it was I was very passionate about it. Yeah.
Andrew Dubber
You mentioned your parents. And other than their REO Speedwagon fandom, you know, what can you tell me about them? What did they do and how has that affected where you’ve ended up?
David Peris
My father was an anesthesiologist immigrated to this country in 1974, and was doing his residency at Yale University where I was born, but he immigrated from India and was at Yale and I was born in New Haven, Connecticut and My mom was a librarian at the college and yeah, then we lived there for a year and then moved to a cold place called buffalo new york. If anybody knows that OJ Simpson was my neighbour, OJ the murder. So yeah, it was a very good childhood, you know. But again, I was living next door to a murderer. Yeah, you know, I made it interesting. But my parents weren’t musicians or anything like that. But my dad had a very large vinyl collection that I recall, you know, he had a Marantz audio system, which, looking back on it, like, I’m not sure where the hell my dad had such fine taste and a hi fi equipment. But yeah, I remember very clearly, like he had
Andrew Dubber
at high end stuff. He had the good gear.
David Peris
Yeah. And I was oblivious. I was just, you know, playing with my, you know, Tonka trucks or whatever. But yeah, he was he was into it. And I guess it rubbed off in some some weird way. I’m not a super audio file, just because you can never, you can never have the right gear that you want. And you throw all this money at it. So you know, I’ve dabbled, but I’m not. Not my dad, I guess in that sense. But yeah, it was it was one childhood where they didn’t push me into anything. You know, even though I’m an Indian kids, like, you don’t have to be a doctor, you don’t have to be a lawyer. And I’m very grateful for my parents, that they allowed me to follow my passion, which was, you know, music and technology. I don’t think they ever quite understood what I did. You know, my mom was the tough one. She was like, What is this? You know, why can’t you do what your friends doing? You know, it’s like, I don’t care about what they’re doing. I just don’t care. You know, money is not why I’m here, whatever. Yeah, I want to do what I love, like so. But you know, I think that, you know, they were proud of me, because they knew I was happy. Yeah, very thankful for that. And, you know, they got a kick out of all the free CDs.
Andrew Dubber
Was it? Was it deliberate, this idea of merging tech and music together?
David Peris
Um, it wasn’t deliberate. I mean, I really fell into it. And I am so so grateful, because people will ask me what I do. And I’ll give them the quick spiel, and they’re like, Oh, my God, you know, how did you how, you know, they’re just kind of in disbelief. Not only the the, the celebrity aspect, of course, but the, you found your calling, you found the thing that you love, you found the thing that if they stopped paying you, you probably want to do it anyway. Right?
Andrew Dubber
Yeah. You know, don’t tell him that.
David Peris
Yeah. But, but you know, there, there is a such a thing as people who never really found their calling, or their passion, or you know, what they love, but I’m one of those people, I got very lucky. And there’s some people in my life, who I’m very grateful for, you know, sort of career level, who gave me trust, you know, to work with these artists, and, you know, trust that I wouldn’t screw it up, and I wouldn’t embarrass the company or embarrassed the artist, or the management or whatever, there was a lot at stake, you know, with a lot of these high pressure live events. And, you know, we signed this band for $10 million, and we’re releasing the single on the website, blah, blah, blah, you know, I have all these stories of those things. And, you know, if, yeah, and it’s not working in a hospital, but with any job, there’s stress, you know, there were definitely stressful moments, you know, you know, we’re not launching nuclear bombs or anything, don’t get me wrong, but there are times where it’s like, oh, my God, you know, there’s,
Andrew Dubber
there’s a serious economic impact on some of these things.
David Peris
Absolutely. We have the brand new single from Michael Jackson, you know, are playing it on his website, you better not let that website crash. David. Well, you know, there are some times where things were crashing, there was no cloud. Right at the time, there was no, you know, so you were running the servers. Yeah. You know, do have servers. I was doing the plumbing for all this stuff.
Andrew Dubber
Yeah. Okay. So you’re no longer with the labels. You’re actually working directly with the artists now.
David Peris
That’s right. So you know, Roger is one of my main clients. other websites that I maintain and host and developed are for the great artist, Tori Amos, the band Thievery Corporation. The artists Sheryl Crow, a terrific band called Lucas Nelson and promised to the real, it’s great, and does it help to like their music? It does. But I’ll tell you if you really like their music, it’s kind of terrifying because you’re, you know, you’re sort of help you’re shaping the the image and the public persona of someone you have a lot of respect for because you love them. So in essence, sometimes it helps. I won’t say not like their music, but not be so into them because it gives you this leeway where you’re not worried or stressed out like oh my god, am I representing them in the right way? Because you’re kind of fun familiar with them or whatever, right. So yeah, when I work with certain artists like that, My favourite artist, one of them is a guy named Jeff Buckley and meant the world to me, I knew him, he would hang out in my office typing, again, you know, pre blogging, sit in my chair for three hours and this and that I did a website, you know, it’s first official website. stressful man. Like, he loves this guy, and you want to represent him and I’m not a designer. I’m not a, you know, an artist. I just kind of put things together based on people much more talented than me. I take assets and I fuse them together, okay, like Jeff Goldblum in the fly. Remember that movie? He had a great speech? You know? He said, Uh, yeah, I’m not, I’m not really that smart. I just take things that are built by people much smarter than me. I just kind of put them together. I feel like Jeff Goldblum.
Andrew Dubber
Be very specific about which movie you’re talking about. Like,
David Peris
yeah, I’m not, you know, I’m not an artist. I’m okay with Photoshop. But I really just take things and put them together. The
Andrew Dubber
thing that surprised me when we first met, and you’re talking about what you do, and you’re doing this kind of sort of, you know, with these phenomenal clients doing web development, and you said, Oh, yeah, I use WordPress, I went, hang on, I use WordPress, why? Why are they my clients? So what what is it that you do exactly? From a, from a technical perspective? Yeah.
David Peris
So good question. The technical perspective, honestly, is everything from the domain name, of course. So there was a time in my life where I was, I had a portfolio of, gosh, five 6000, domain names, you know, all Sony related artists related, record, label related etc. So anyway, I got very familiar with the world of domain names. So you know, with an artist will come in with a domain or I’ll register it or whatever. Or, you know, there are cases where you have to get the domain and have it transferred. And I have all kinds of stories, like, I got Billy Joel .com back from a fan, you know, Roger Waters .com was with a fan. And it was a very careful negotiations. So anyway, from a tech perspective, the domain, I’m very familiar with the world of web hosting, which is obviously gotten easier over the years, but, you know, had had been tricky. And then finally, it’s, it’s a case of the website infrastructure. So back in the old days, you know, everything was flat, there’s like, one HTML page, some images and things, but, you know, this content management world afford press and things has made things much easier. So yeah, I’m involved in setting up the the hosting and the, the, you know, the CMS and the, you know, what this thing’s gonna look like. And either working off a template or doing something from scratch, and making sure it’s responsive, of course, these days, and, you know, everything can be visible on a phone, etc. And then finally, the day to day maintenance, you know, Roger Waters calls and says, Hey, I want this on my website, or this on my Facebook page, make it happen, and do it right now. Right? So
Andrew Dubber
yeah, I guess when you’re Roger Waters, you can you can do that. And I’m happy? And are you doing the when you say you’re sort of doing the Facebook page and the Twitter? Are you actually the social media? content creator?
David Peris
as well. Yes, no. So working with Roger, you know, obviously, is a very, very clear and precise vision when he says I want to put this up, and I want it to be about x. And I wrote this text, and can you go in, either he’ll supply an image that he found, or shot or whatever, or he’ll say to me, hey, go find an appropriate image for it. And I’ll go and look, and if it meets Rogers approval, it’s part of the post. Or I’ll work with his great, you know, creative director and he’ll supply something to me. So I don’t mean to ever make it sound like I’m doing everything or you know, this and that, but no, it’s it’s it’s very much a team effort. These artists have teams, you know, and nothing just kind of happens. But what’s amazing about Roger, and that’s keep going on about him is you know, he’s he’s a he’s a star, he’s a superstar. And I have this one to one relationship with him. I’m not going through a manager, I’m not going through, you know, any middle person or his publicist or anybody. He’s actually reaching out to silly, stupid me. And, and kind of kind of crazy when you think about it, right.
Andrew Dubber
Is there any point at which you say, actually, actually, I don’t think this one’s a good idea.
David Peris
There. There have been cases, but you know, pushing back on somebody like that is not not really what you want to do. But no, I think in most of the time, like, he’s right on, you know, and his stuff that he posts is largely political. If you’re familiar with Roger Waters, and sometimes polarising, but that’s his point of view. He’s an artist and he does not take kindly to people who say, you know, Why are you mixing politics with music? How dare you? And he’s like, well, that’s what it’s for, why can’t I. Yeah. So it’s a fascinating argument. But yeah, working with Roger is a treat. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Dubber
Fantastic. Is this some insight that you could give to people who, for instance, if they’re artists, but they’re not modules is what they should be thinking about on the website? Is this sort of like one top tip? There you go, you know, what you should think about doing this?
David Peris
Yeah, that’s a good question. I think the number one thing, honestly, is try to put some personality or quote unquote, content on your website that is straight from you, and is not part of your album package or publicity pack or what have you. It’s your freakin website, make something do something put up something that somebody can’t get elsewhere. You know, whether it be on Amazon, you know, you’re the retail page for your album or fan site or whatever. I think the key is to, to have things that make you know, there’s a lot of talk, oh, well, artists don’t need websites anymore. And you know, nobody needs a website anymore. Is the web dead? Well, it’s kind of like saying scooters are in the new car, you know? You know, it’s it’s people. Yeah, of course, people always need websites. And they’ll always be looked at and this and that, but you have to make them attractive. Because if you’re putting all the quote unquote, good stuff on your social media, yeah, your website’s gonna die. Like, you know, a plant dies if you don’t water it. So you have to give your website some love the way you give your Instagram feed love. And these people give, you know, all their social media, lots of love, because obviously, they’re getting instant feedback. But people are still going your website, you know, you might as well put some good stuff. They’re
Andrew Dubber
still getting invited to aircraft carrier parties.
David Peris
No no. I am not. Yeah, but I still have some fun for sure.
Andrew Dubber
Yeah. Very grateful. David, thanks so much for your time today. Of course. Thank you, David Peris, digital plummer to the stars. And I really love that kind of modest view behind the scenes of some of the biggest artists on the planet through some of the biggest seismic shifts in recorded music history. But I guess that’s one of the real stories of music tech. And that’s the MTF podcast, if you enjoyed and why wouldn’t you? Make sure you hit the subscribe button, go like, share rate and review and tell someone you know, gun water your website. Have a fantastic week and we’ll talk soon. Cheers.
