):
it was the online shorthand chat symbol for the bass clef, back in the day the top barbershop quartets of the world used to practice on online bulletin boards between their actual singing sessions, so for example if you were a baritone or a bass singer of the olden days of www 1.6, you might post the following:
): dum dum dum du dum dee dum
then the others would join in. it was only when barbershop quartet music broke into mainstream that fans and other non-singers started frequenting the music boards, and it didn't take long until some pleb leaned his head to the right, probably to get water out of his ear, or maybe to pour water into his other ear? and mistook the symbol for a sad face. as if there could be anything sad about barbershop quartet music. anyway that's the brief history of why we have things like this:
hope all you music and emoticon lovers out there found this helpful.
