The Old Disappearing-Reappearing Band Trick
Between 1997 and 2000, a band from San Jose released two albums, an EP and a couple 7"s of slow, spacey rock, then more or less vanished. Not that the disappearing act took much effort. Duster wasn't exactly a band with a public presence, playing few shows, lending few interviews and releasing little information about its members. The members of the trio went on to play in other bands and work on other projects. In 2000, the founder of Up Records, who released Duster's music, died; operations at the label ended shortly after, and Duster's records went out of print. Duster drifted towards the edge of the abyss.
Just over a decade later, across the country, Mike Hagerty was in high school in suburban Massachusetts when his older brother played Stratosphere, the band's 1998 debut record, for him. He was hooked. Hagerty went digging for more of Duster's music, but it was tough to find: certainly not on the radio and sketchy on streaming; the LPs were largely unavailable. The search only increased the mythology of the band for Hagerty; he says he's since thought of Duster as "mysterious and kind of legendary — like real legends."
Eventually, he made his way to a Duster oasis of sorts: a 4chan offshoot pastebin. "/dust/ is like 20 people on 4chan's music board with an obscene dedication to Duster" it reads by way of introduction. It has downloads of Duster's whole discography, demos and live sets and links to download an assortment of photos and lyrics. The page has an eerie sense of anonymity, like you've stumbled into
