Skip forward fifteen years or so, to the early days of dub-dub-dub and the world wide internet thingy. A young, or at least younger, technology lover who had spent a great deal of his misspent youth following the music and career of a band called REO Speedwagon decided that, like so many other bands, REO needed a website. So he picked up the torch, cobbled together some html and jpegs, and The REOphile website was born. (Incidentally, REOphile is pronounced RE-file, all one word, with the emphasis on R-E-O. Definitely NOT pronounced r-e-O file. If you say “audio file” you’re close).

REOphile was a labor of love. Or a hobby. It wasn’t long before another UK techie named Richard Fincher came along and established another site, which still lives, at http://www.speedwagon.co.uk. Richard was eventually recognized by the band and produced a really great site. Some places on the internet list this as “the original REO Speedwagon Site”, but on his own site Richard graciously acknowledges my site as being the original, although it was no comparison to what Richard did. (Incidentally, when I finally met the band, Neal Doughty told me that he had seen REOphile in the early days, and had attempted to email me. Who knows what could’ve come of that. Richard’s site later became REO’s “official” site, for a while.)

Eventually, REO produced their official site, but I think most fans would acknowledge Richards as being the best, for providing so much information and for being actively maintained for so many years. Several other sites related to REO, or her individual members, have also come and gone through the years, many of which can be found through speedwagon.co.uk.

Ok, REOphile is me. James Messick. (shy grin) And now I’m leading the way again, with the first REO podcast. As soon as I get the technology figured out. I’m not sure what it will be, but hopefully you’ll come along for the ride, and we’ll figure it out as we go. I want your help, ideas, suggestions, etc. So hop on board, watch this space, and most of all. Keep Pushin’

How’s it work?
Well, the easy way is to just come to this site and click on a link to listen. The more elegant way (which turns out to be even easier, once you have it set up) is to subscribe to the podcast, via iTunes or other podcast “aggregator” software. Then, new episodes will be downloaded to your computer as soon as they’re released, along with episodes of all the other podcasts that you subscribe to. Believe me, once you start, it’s hard to stop.

Feed? What the #!$%?”
A RSS Feed is an XML file that has all the information about a podcast. All you really need to know is the address, or URL, of the feed. Something like http://feeds.feedburner.com/reophile. You’ll take the address and feed it to your software, so that it knows where to find information about new podcast episodes, so that it can download them, and episodes of older episodes, so you can decide if you want to download those, too.