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Res Rocket by Jeff Kaliss As the world beats a seemingly boundless path into the next Millenium, it seems only right that there should be spontaniety in the music of the Global Village. Res Rocket has made it happen on the Internet, with inspiration from a couple of British musicians and technoknowhow from a pair of Northwestern University whizes. Born in London, where co-founder and CEO Willy Henshall had made his name as a songwriter and member of London Beat, Res Rocket has now landed in SOMA, right around the corner from the Be-In. But Henshall's brainchild is calling the tune which leads the victory over geographic restrictions. He cites the case of a piano player living in the Faroe Islands, a Danish protectorate off the coast of Greenland. "He's thousands of miles from anywhere, and he didn't ask to be born there, but he was. But this guy rocks, he's a phenomenal player! And our system means he can make music with other people." That's thanks to a free software written by Res Rocket, called Distributed Real-Time Groove Network, or Dragon for short: rather than waiting to exchange MIDI files via FTP, musicians registered with Res Rocket can log on to their site, find out who's there, and jam with keyboard players, drummers, and string players from any climate or genre. "The Faroe guy works regularly with a guy from Brazil and a guy from Britian. Then we have a jazz player called Riff, from Chicago, who can play anything but doesn't like dance music. He's developed this close musical friendship with a guy called F8, from Hull in the U.K., who's a pretty well-known dance producer. And these two guys have this weird hybrid drum-and-bass techno project. They never would have met, except on our system." Res Rocket also offers private services to professionals who, for a "premium" fee, can meet and record their meetings in "virtual studios" on the 'Net. "Dave Stewart could be in his house in Encino and, say, Brian Eno could be in St. Petersburg, and those guys could work together. . . And Mike Rutherford, from Genesis, has said that he could use our system to audition players without having to leave Surrey, where he lives. It's a powerful new tool that won't replace getting together in the real world." The real and the virtual will merge when Henshall hand-picks some of his best players off the Web to groove with him at the Be-In. "These guys together make astonishing stuff," Henshall assures, "but in other ways it will be like any jam: awesome, or not."