Dave Emlen
I first became a Kinks fan in 1981 as a 17-year-old high
school student. Back then the Kinks were all over the radio,
with songs from Give The People What They Want, One For The
Road, Low Budget, as well as their earlier hits, kept in
constant rotation. If the Kinks were playing a concert near
by, you could be assured to hear about it because the DJs
would constantly be talking it up. If the Kinks were about
to release a new album, you would hear about it on the radio
or read about it in a rock magazine.
Fast forward to the late 1980s... the Kinks' media presence
had greatly diminished. I had no idea Think Visual had been
released until I heard it playing in a record store. And
although I had met people who said they were Kinks fans, I
knew nobody else who was as *into* the band as I was. As a
Kinks fan I felt rather isolated, and the lack of
information about the band in the media didn't help matters.
As a Computer Science student at RIT (the Rochester
Institute of Technology in western New York State), and
later as an employee of RIT, I would frequently search the
Usenet newsgroups for information about the Kinks posted by
other fans. In early 1990 I noticed a posting in
rec.music.misc with the subject "Kinks poll". Someone named
Neil Ottenstein was conducting a poll of peoples' favorite
Kinks albums -- he asked that we e-mail to him a list the
albums in order of preference. 22 people replied and two
weeks later he compiled the list and posted the results back
on the newsgroup. (Village Green Preservation Society topped
the list.)
At the end of his summary of the results Neil wrote, "By the
way, I was thinking of trying to start a Kinks mailing
list." I immediately replied to Neil and asked to be put on
the list. Subscribers to the list would send e-mail to Neil,
and he would forward those messages to everyone on the list
as soon as he received them. I no longer needed to scour
the newsgroups looking for Kinks information -- messages
from other fans were being sent directly to my mailbox!
The mailing list was started several years before most
people knew there was such a thing as the Internet. A
majority of the subscribers had university (.edu) address:
myself from RIT, Neil from the University of Maryland, Mark
Walsh from Stanford, Stefano Carro from Lehigh University in
Pennsylvania, and Doug Hinman from Brown University. There
were a couple computer companies represented, such as Stuart
Troutman from the Apollo computer company. Slowing we
started seeing people coming from AOL and Compuserve as the
Internet became more mainstream.
As the size of the mailing list grew, access to news and
information about the Kinks became easier and easier. We no
longer needed mainstream media to keep us informed about the
band -- we knew everything long before they did!
In 1994, traffic on the list got to a point where Neil had
to stop forwarding individual messages as they came in and
move to a (nearly) daily digest format. So here we are,
3000 digests and 13 years later... and almost 18 years since
the mailing list was started. Neil has moderated the list
these many years, occasionally having to smooth ruffled
feathers or making people cool off when discussions got
heated. The longevity of the list is a testament to his
fairness, level-headedness and dedication. So Neil, many
thanks for the last 18 years, and I'm looking forward to the
next 3000 digests.
-Dave
school student. Back then the Kinks were all over the radio,
with songs from Give The People What They Want, One For The
Road, Low Budget, as well as their earlier hits, kept in
constant rotation. If the Kinks were playing a concert near
by, you could be assured to hear about it because the DJs
would constantly be talking it up. If the Kinks were about
to release a new album, you would hear about it on the radio
or read about it in a rock magazine.
Fast forward to the late 1980s... the Kinks' media presence
had greatly diminished. I had no idea Think Visual had been
released until I heard it playing in a record store. And
although I had met people who said they were Kinks fans, I
knew nobody else who was as *into* the band as I was. As a
Kinks fan I felt rather isolated, and the lack of
information about the band in the media didn't help matters.
As a Computer Science student at RIT (the Rochester
Institute of Technology in western New York State), and
later as an employee of RIT, I would frequently search the
Usenet newsgroups for information about the Kinks posted by
other fans. In early 1990 I noticed a posting in
rec.music.misc with the subject "Kinks poll". Someone named
Neil Ottenstein was conducting a poll of peoples' favorite
Kinks albums -- he asked that we e-mail to him a list the
albums in order of preference. 22 people replied and two
weeks later he compiled the list and posted the results back
on the newsgroup. (Village Green Preservation Society topped
the list.)
At the end of his summary of the results Neil wrote, "By the
way, I was thinking of trying to start a Kinks mailing
list." I immediately replied to Neil and asked to be put on
the list. Subscribers to the list would send e-mail to Neil,
and he would forward those messages to everyone on the list
as soon as he received them. I no longer needed to scour
the newsgroups looking for Kinks information -- messages
from other fans were being sent directly to my mailbox!
The mailing list was started several years before most
people knew there was such a thing as the Internet. A
majority of the subscribers had university (.edu) address:
myself from RIT, Neil from the University of Maryland, Mark
Walsh from Stanford, Stefano Carro from Lehigh University in
Pennsylvania, and Doug Hinman from Brown University. There
were a couple computer companies represented, such as Stuart
Troutman from the Apollo computer company. Slowing we
started seeing people coming from AOL and Compuserve as the
Internet became more mainstream.
As the size of the mailing list grew, access to news and
information about the Kinks became easier and easier. We no
longer needed mainstream media to keep us informed about the
band -- we knew everything long before they did!
In 1994, traffic on the list got to a point where Neil had
to stop forwarding individual messages as they came in and
move to a (nearly) daily digest format. So here we are,
3000 digests and 13 years later... and almost 18 years since
the mailing list was started. Neil has moderated the list
these many years, occasionally having to smooth ruffled
feathers or making people cool off when discussions got
heated. The longevity of the list is a testament to his
fairness, level-headedness and dedication. So Neil, many
thanks for the last 18 years, and I'm looking forward to the
next 3000 digests.
-Dave
