[Dixielandjazz] Old-Jazz Mailing Lists, Forums, Social Networking

[Don Mopsick]

Gerard Bielderman queries:

<<Can anybody give me some lists on the same line as this one where I can 
read, ask, discuss about traditional jazz, dixieland, new orleans and then 
worldwide? I tried to find news groups with this kind of music, but didn't
succeed...>>

The DJML uses an antiquated bulletin board technology (for example, my
message works much better posted in Plain Text rather than HTML, something
I have to keep reminding myself to do when posting here), but it still
works just fine. In fact, its simplicity and small bandwidth use is a plus.
I'm guessing that the disk space taken up by the DJML operations on the
islandnet.com server is miniscule by today's standards, another plus.

Mailing Lists, Forums, Social Networking all boil down to online
communities, people sharing a common interest. So the "hot thing" these
days for online communities is Facebook. Yah, it's seriously skewed toward
youngsters, but you see more and more of us "seasoned to perfection" folks
on there. I've been spending more and more time lately there, and for good
reason. The features available allow you to share all kinks of media,
photos, videos, blogs, messages, discussion forums, event invitations,
everything that you need for a community in one place. And, I have come to
the conclusion (shared by many) that Facebook is better than MySpace. It’s
much simpler and easier to use, but more importantly, Facebook encourages
you to add as "friends" only people that you know or have some kind of
connection with. The result is that you wind up with a true network of
people you care about communicating with. Often on MySpace one winds up
with a list of imaginary friends that are only interested in self-love.

I feel like I have expanded my jazz horizon using Facebook, and so can you
if you limit your "friends" list to people that mean something to you. Let
me give you an example: DJML listmate Sue Fischer, whom I did not know
previously, requested me to add her to my "friends" list. From her profile,
I discovered that she is currently writing a book on Leon Rappollo, which
of course I am very interested in. But also, she had installed on her
profile a little "helper" app written by a third-party developer (Facebook
has a lot of 'em) that allows you to share books you've read or want to
read on Amazon.com. Now, reading books is an important activity for me, so
after I installed the application (less than 10 seconds), I spent a lot of
time yesterday listing books I've read and enjoyed and think my Facebook
"friends" would also be interested in. And it's tied into Amazon's
recommend feature which gives you lists of books you would like based on
what you've already listed. Wow, talk about a community of shared interest!

Here are a list of the old-school-jazz Facebook groups of which I am a
member. Keep in mind that the vast majority of the folks are 25 and under,
which is encouraging.

Riverwalk Jazz: I started this one. 21 members.

Adrian Rollini Rocks My Socks! 39 members.

Bix Beiderbecke was the Greatest Jazz Cornet Player, 29 members.

Jelly Roll Morton: The Original Jazz Giant, 124 members.

Django Reinhardt Is God, 501 members!

New Generation Hot Jazz, 46 members. Mostly young Brits.

The Hot Jazz Appreciation Society, 163 members.

Benny Goodman: The King of Swing, 260 members. 

We love jazz, 12 members.

I ♥UTSA JAZZ, 137 members, refers to the University of Texas, San Antonio
jazz program, so it's kind of a school network group. 

Having listed these groups, I should point out that the daily traffic on
all of them is not nearly as much as on DJML, BUT whenever someone posts
anything (and if you configure your notifications to get them), you are
alerted via email of new traffic.

We also have the new Classic Jazz Forum at http://forums.riverwalkjazz.org.
(I invited you all to join in a previous post). A Forum is again an older
technology supplanted by social networking, but we have had a lot of
interest related to our public radio show. We are using phpBB, an open-
source bulletin board (another name for Forum) software. It's easy to post
text (and it's HTML-enabled), but photos are harder to do. We had to
restrict memberships to admin-approved only since we quickly discovered
that Russian porn spammers were using robots to post porn photos and links
to porn websites. I am told that the porn is not really what they're after,
they want you to step in the hole of visiting the website which then
installs a keystroke logger on your system, gaining access to your credit
cards, financial data and passwords. 

As a result of this restriction, traffic has gone way down, so The Powers
That Be are contemplating opening it up again but with multiple moderators
whose job it will be to delete the spam as it is posted. I am also told
that the reason Russians are so good at this game is that a whole
generation of their geeks were trained to specialize in hacking. Having
visited Russia last year, I can testify that a LOT of very, very
intelligent people live there. 

Yahoo has a bunch of old-jazz discussion groups on which you can post
photos, but I just don't have time to check them all out. One that I visit
occasionally is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RedHotJazz, hosted by Scott
Alexander of the great Red Hot Jazz Archive. If you are a record collector
wonk this is the place for you. 

Usenet has rec.music.bluenote, but I haven't been there in quite some time.
I remember it being quite a violent place, pitting all sorts of jazz
factions against each other in bloody flame wars. The last time I checked,
it was populated mainly by shills for smooth jazz. Hal Vickery may still
inhabit that space (report to us if you wish, Hal!), but if you are after
an old-jazz group, don't bother with this one. 

mopo