BOC/HW connection explained

[Stephen Swann]

J Strobridge writes:
>
> Jack W. Heffling writes:
>
> > I was wondering the same thing, but didn't want to offend anybody.
> > Frankly, I have no clue who Hawkwind is, but probably heard them at some
> > time or another, just never knew it. I'm going to have to find some now
> > though, just because this list has made me curious.
> >
> > Jack
> >
>
> Heh!   the memes spread...
>
> Actually this ques should be an FAQ by way of explanation.   It's all
> Steve Swann's fault (original founding moderator of this list).   He
> wanted a list to discuss BOC away from the normal gossip of the alt.
> boards and included Hawkwind 'cos he liked them as well and also 'cos
> BOC sometimes ran out of discussion topics!   Very quickly however the
> Hawkwind element grew in number to merit joint status.    There were
> many discussions about separating the two lists but too many people
> posted or read both to make it worthwhile so the current compromise
> holds where you can filter out anything prefixed BOC: or HW:

Heh, I should probably be paying Jill a salary for always answering
this question when it comes up (about every 3 or 4 months, I would
guess).  :-)

QUIT READING NOW, OR YOU ARE IN DANGER OF FINDING OUT MORE THAN YOU
EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE ORIGINS AND PRE-HISTORY OF THIS LIST!

:-)

What it all boils down to is that in the early days of this list (that
would be September and October of '90), we didn't have an automated
list server to re-distribute the messages, so I was running the list
out of my old VAX/VMS account, using a hand-edited distribution
(.dist?) file, and re-mailing every message by hand.

I couldn't handle the work of doing 2 lists that way, so I created the
Blue Oyster Cult discussion list, with other "imaginitive rock" bands,
especially Hawkwind, listed as "secondary" topics of discussion.
These bands included Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Rainbow, Dio, et al.
But it was obvious from really early on that BOC and Hawkwind were
the Big Two.

When the load of handling even this one list got to be too much (and
after we topped 25 or 30 members, it got to be), I moved it to an
automated listserver at the University of Buffalo, where I was a
student at the time.  When I needed to give a list a mailing address
of the following form: XXXXX-L at UBVMS.BUFFALO.EDU (where I had a
maximum of 5 letters to fill in the X's) I chose BOC-L as being the
obvious short-form address of the list.  But I *named* it the
"Imaginitive Rock Discussion List", to make it clear that this wasn't
a "closed-topic" list, and I wrote in the list's charter the
description above, re: "imaginative rock".

That worked great for a while, but the Internet was really just
starting to grow in those days.  We got a lot of new members.  They
wanted to talk about a lot of things.  The hardcore BOC and Hawkwind
crowds (the ones who made this list what it is today, of course)
started to believe that the other "off-topic" discussion was making
the list too crowded (anyone ever heard THAT complaint?). :-) Then
some newbies on the list started bringing in "their" definition of
"imaginitive rock".  Someone thought Paul Simon's _Graceland"
qualified, and wanted to discuss it on the list.  Things got ugly
from there.

I had to quell the flamewar by basically "going back to our roots".  I
renamed the list "The BOC/Hawkwind Discussion List", because the truth
is, that regardless of what you write in a group's charter, it's the
*name* that everyone pays attention to.  The BOC/Hawkwind Discussion
list has existed in its current form for several years now, and
despite the fact that it now runs on a different listserver, and it's
now moderated by the enigmatic :-) Ben Cohen (hi, Ben!), it's really
pretty much the same list that it was in 1990.

So, there you have it.  This list is the way it is for historical
reasons: because BOC and Hawkwind were two bands that were eminently
worth talking about, and because I didn't have the resources (or the
desire) to create two separate lists.  The fact that the list remains
the way it is today (now that computing resources are no longer an
issue), is because it now has a kind of history and tradition to it,
and a lot of people like it the way that it is.  There are many who
have been on this list for upwards of 5 years, and there are a truly
surprising number who, having signed off the list for whatever
reasons, eventually came back.  We must be doing something right.  :-)

Steve
swann at panix.com