About
EastcoastNRG: A brief history
Eastcoastnrg was created by founding members DJ JohnyMac and DJ Skully in 1999. It was born on the heels of the rave scene, when the electronic music revolution was really gaining traction in America.
Johny, originally from New Hampshire, attended school in Florida where there was a strong electronic music scene. He loved the Florida breaks but was always searching for something harder.
Brendon (DJ Skully) had been rave DJ (under the DJ name Lil Ravin’) and had discovered the UK Hard Dance scene as it emerged from it’s rave roots.
The two met at a Boston record store (Satellite Records). The store would get a small stock of UK Hard Dance records each week. Brendon and Johny kept wondering who was beating them to get the latest tracks. Eventually, they started showing up at delivery time, which is where they met (trying to get the latest records before the other). This is how ECN was born.
Building the foundation
In the days before WordPress (when many people weren’t even online yet), Johny built the original ECN website.
Through Hard Dance forums (Hard Energy) and irc chats, Johny met Drew who ran the site liveclubbing.co.uk. Working the Drew, they created ECN radio. At a time before Google or YouTube even existed, when Alta Vista was the main search engine and aol chats were still a thing, Eastcoastnrg had the ability to stream live audio and video with a real time chat, this was essentially unheard of at the time and gave ECN a unique position in the New England scene. DJ’s would travel hours to make an appearance on the show and demos started flooding in from all over the world. Johny strategically added DJ’s to the roster to increase audience exposure and grew the show.
the ECN era 2000 - 2004
This time frame was marked with rave appearances from Maine to Florida and many places in between. Shows in London, house parties all over the place and club residencies in Boston and New Hampshire. The ECN radio show grew in popularity, the ECN roster grew and the scene was alive and well. Johny worked with leading UK producers to make one track and have it pressed to vinyl. ECN001.
What's next?
After 2004 things started to wind down. Life got in the way, equipment broke, budgets dried up, etc. Although some of the DJ’s continued on different paths, the ECN site went dark and for all intents and purposes the crew disbanded. Although it will never be the same as it was, in the 2020’s and beyond we are looking to continue to share the sound via streaming and other possibilities the future might bring.