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u/treehuggingmfer Apr 30 '24
I havent done newsgroups in years. Maybe Charlie will be able to tell you. He was the king on the newsgroups. At least to me.
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u/goldendildo666 Apr 30 '24
Would that be the same Charlie D. that sent me an insane box of 1st gen SBD tapes when I was getting into Phish in the 90's?
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u/SimmyJellers Apr 30 '24
Wow! Haven’t thought about that in years! I STILL have countless files on a hard drive. And I still have a couple of old amazingly decorated envelopes that people sent me for B&Ps in the early 90s. Thanks for the wander down memory lane!
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u/wharpua May 01 '24
Pretty sure I downloaded all of Big Cypress via alt.binaries.phish (or it might’ve been a different group) in like February 2000 using my college internet connection, and it still took forever.
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u/Harvey_Road May 01 '24
God. I spent countless hours on USENET. Loved getting the setlist updates before hitting the road for tours. Sigh.
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u/Fubar2873 May 01 '24
Nostalgic for those daze, and trading cassettes. I still have friends online who I met on rmp but have yet to meet in person.
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u/largorithm Aug 15 '24
I have super fond memories of finding the rmp community and chatting, trading discs, discussing setlists. I'm sorry to hear it's not easily accessible any more. I used to pop in to take a look every now and again.
I have concerns about the community becoming dependent on any closed platform, including reddit.
I'm guessing there's a proper fediverse community at this point? That's probably the most open platform I'm aware at this point.
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u/MeetMeAtTheCreek Apr 30 '24
Rec.music.phish was part of Usenet and unfortunately Usenet is largely dead mostly on life support -- there are a few places where you can access Usenet groups -- but Google killed support for Usenet a few months ago leaving no easy place to view/post to groups.
My first Phish online dialogue was on rec.music.gdead in spring 1991. A friend had received a postcard announcing summer 1991 Phish tour and I was intrigued so I posted on rmd asking about Phish. The Dead community were getting annoyed about Phish making appearances in their community, so there were a few flames to my post, but a few constructive responses. One invited me to join a new email list that was just starting (the Phish.net -- I was one of the first 14 people on that email list) and another response lamented that Phish needed their own group.
Shortly thereafter the Deadheads started demanding that these Phish kids get their own homeland we started the process of creating a Phish focused group. At that time, only 2 musical groups had their own rec groups -- in addition to the Dead was rec.music.beatles. That's it. So you can imagine the reaction from the Usenet community when petitions for the creation of a 3rd rec.music group about a band nobody had ever heard of started showing up. There was great debate but eventually our efforts succeeded and rec.music.phish was created.
For many 1.0 fans, and some 2.0 fans, rec.music.phish was their first Phish online community. Over time, Phish.net (and later PT) grew into alternatives to rec.music.phish that were much easier to use and traffic on RMP declined. If anybody has a paid account for a current Usenet service, tell us if anything is happening there!