Thursday, December 08, 2005

indie list dead?

Sorry guys, I've been busy the last few hours. Let's see, I guess the indie list got taken down? Here's what John Pritchard wrote (it was posted on the chick list)

mark took down the sacto_indie account on yahoogroupsthis week because no one was really using it anymore. however, i thinkthere remains some utility in maintaining a salon in virtual reality/semi-realtime connecting the brother/sisterhood involved in doing whatever it isthey do in the context of underground music, film, eating, and getting wastedin the sacramento area. more importantly, i look at the archives featureas a documentation of sorts. essentially, we need to record what the bestburrito in sacramento was in APRIL 2002...for POSTERITY.a couple of things are going to be a little different.first off, i'm dropping the word "indie" from the title because ihate that word and i think it is too narrow with respect to what this isabout. ok, diy is kind of dumb too, but i think the term is generic enough toencompass all that cool crap we do that isn't even music. basically, iwant people to still bicker about dumb stuff and get tricked into going tofake shows i make up when i am bored at work. anyway, here's the link:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Sacto_DIYi'm also going to make a bigger effort to get awayfrom the "invite only" nature of the old list. i think in the early days,this served its purpose but one of the reasons the old list petered out isthat there just wasn't enough new blood coming on board regularly and theaverage age of anyone on the list creeped up to what i affecionately call"grampa". soooo, the list will be in the yahoo groups directory where anyschmuck surfing the net for "music that sucks" can find it, however all memberswill still have to get approval from a moderator. which will be me and iguess 1 or 2 other people i assume. that way we can regulate on the spammers andalso our sworm enemies: funruiners, cool hunters, and narcs like thesac bee.now where i REALLY need help is getting thisinformation out to people, basically i don't have a record of everyone's emailaddress from the old list. like not even close. i'm going to email this toeveryone else i can think of, even people that i don't think were on theold one or quit the old one. i would like to ask those of you reading this todo the same, even if you don't want to sign up or take 30 seconds to createa damn yahoogroups account for yourself. basically, don't leave ANYONEout that you think might even be a little bit interested.ok, hope to talk to everyone soon...jp

I would maybe be interested in joining the new one. I have been curious about it but as I've said before I tried it a way long time ago and didn't like the confrontational style. He seems to be saying that anyone can join the new one but then he sez you need approval. So not ANYONE. In fact, probably the exact same people who could join it before. Also, that crack about the age of the average poster is irritating. As a thirtysomething I don't see why that would matter. A lot of times whether someone is active or not in that kind of crap is just a matter of what kind of job you have, and often the late teens/early twenties types are still working cafe jobs or in college so they don't have a bunch of time to kill at the office.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

miller killed the indie list with that Kevin Shields joke. That was going too far.

Gbomb

Anonymous said...

It probably was time for the indie list to go, though I do wish Kaiser had said something first. I'll miss the archives. My public call-out by Charles over Sunshine Smile is now lost to the ages. And there were tons of email addresses in there. Mark Kaiser gets a lot of shit for just about everything he does because he doesn't disguise the fact that he thinks some people are lame. It was his list & if he didn't want Charles T.'s Cap G spam, that's his call. The list was a helpful thing for years but now, aside from getting Jed to the Halloween show, it pretty much existed solely for Rick Ele's KDVS playlists. I know Pritchard will put almost anyone on the list & it won't be the "exact same people as before". Very few people were denied access to the list. John decided to start something new because Sac 2005 isn't Sac 2000. There's finally some new kids, Fools Foundation etc. & I think he wants there to be younger people on it so maybe people can start working together. I met a pretty good amount of rad people as a result of the indie list. People being connected is a good thing even if there is the occasional opinionated elitist stinking it up. And those people suck so fuck 'em. And a note about being approved: when an email list becomes heavily spammed & a chore to dig through, everyone loses interest & the open-door policy becomes the death of the list. I think that might be Pritchard's only criteria. And that dude's 30, he's just joking about that grandpa shit. I always find myself sticking up for John! I can never figure out why so many people dislike him so much. I guess maybe his email persona is obnoxious but he's done a lot for the music scene here. He may have questionable music taste but at least he's doing something.

miller

beckler said...

aw, busted out! i am not bagging on pritchard. how will it not be the exact same people? he says that it's open to anyone but that they have to be approved by moderators, including him. does he mean that each remark will have to approved by moderators or who can join? cuz if it's who can join then it seems like the same criteria will apply. not a big deal, i don't think they turned that many people down anyways, but i am trying to clarify. and i'm just cracking jokes, too about the age-ist thing (clearly a joke in the hof brau post), but he does seem to really be stating that the posters are too old. he might be including himself in there but he still said it. so if that doesn't bug any of you grampas out there, it doesn't bug me. and, fyi, i already asked to join up.

Anonymous said...

this was posted to another list, kaiser's explanation of why-

"yeah, i thought about the archives of soriano rants and rick lists from the early days, those are great, but mostly i was thinking "put the sick dog down". i
seriously doubt rick will have any problem revising and reposting his burrito and PDX top 50s.

i really don't think age had much to do with the lack of interest, as you pointed out a few weeks back, the only people coming out to most of the shows are
the same 30 people, all in their late 20's or older, who had to work the next day or who had other obligations like families, spouses, careers, etc. the
"kids" people wish to show up in droves never do, and i've invited lots of people in different scenes over the years and they weren't interested or they
lurked and never spoke up.

all in all, 5 years of that list was enough. it was named "sacto_indie" because it was a direct rip on the "sf_indie" list that was huge and a lot of fun in the
late 90's and early 00's, but its open door policy ended up ruining it in the end. it was exclusive because i didn't want spammers, parasites and people outside
the immediate group of showgoers jumping on there with stupid questions, unrelated threads, whining about "scenesters" and other dumb but totally
typical topics, etc. i killed it 'cause it served its initial purpose, but with the adding of Undietacos and its web-board, What's Up Sacto mailing list,
Indie_chicks list, Heckasac and a bunch of other fragmented pieces of the same scene, the Sacto_indie list just seemed to be one more thing people
had to check and one more thing spreading people's attention spans and patience too thin. I think Sacto needs to pick one and stick with it for the sake of focusing everyone's efforts to one place everyone sees.

Also, its not exactly the most rewarding thing to run. Have a couple of years of people bitching about: people that aren't allowed on - people who are
allowed on - too many emails - not enough emails - this thing is elitist - this list is stupid - this list is useless - i don't like the name - can you add my other
email - can you add this person - why did you add that other guy - can you switch me to digest - i can't see the pictures... dude it gets old and i've got
about a million other things on my plate so fuck it.

clean slate, about time, something new for people to get jazzed on for awhile."

Anonymous said...

Well, yeah sure, the same people who are currently on the old list will most likely be on the new one, but the hope is that a bunch of new people will join as well. People who were maybe not around or too young when the first one started. I thought maybe you were suggesting that only a set group of people were allowed on the old one or something & that was the same group that would be allowed on the new one. The list was annoying but hopping when it first started & it slowly got more & more & more dead as people unsubscribed from the list - and I don't really think a whole lot was done to let newer people know about it. Hopefully by kick starting a new one, it will gain some new life & maybe once again have some relevance. I really wasn't trying to bust you out! I guess I'm defensive about it because of the the amount of animosity that's been felt over the years towards a sometimes informative, often boring, & occasionally hilarious email list.

miller

beckler said...

oh yeah, I meant to write "as a thirtysomething fan". love that elliot! and michael, or course.

Anonymous said...

Charles A vs. Smiller was the only reason I joined. That was one of my favorite arguements ever. After a while of being an elitist pain and annoying Soriano, I dropped off the list. Besides, Pritchard was just using the list to get down my pants.

Although it would've been a good spot to mention Jim MacLean's wake (Sewer Trout and Elmer among 80 different bands). I don't have contact with lots of people, and some of us "over-30s pushing 40" crowd almost didn't find out about Jim's wake. I don't know who missed it because they weren't there.

werenotdeep said...

I rarely paid attention to the list. Nine times out of ten, it just went straight to the trash, or would get a breif skim-over and then sent to the trash. Once in a great while, there'd be some information worth hearing, or some funny stuff.

A lot of times there'd be somebody raving about some insane show in Davis where the most extreme thing happened, like somebody threw an empty beer can and it touched somebody's guitar. Wow.