Hi There,

Is the cowabunga yahoo goup dead? I was hoping to search the archives (i know, needle in a haystack) but couldn't find it on yahoo groups.

Thanks,
Spanky
023

It's probably 'cause of all the cussin' and fightin' (flame wars) that go on. At least if it's anything like what it used to be when I was a member before. Maybe it stopped when I left though.

thanks,
Spanky

Brian
It is still there. For some reason they have it listed as an "adult" site so it may not show up in a general search.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cowabunga/

I still get several people a week signing up for the Reverborama group. A while back I changed the welcome message directing them over here for active conversation.

video killed the radio star and surfguitar101 killed the email groups. Change happens.

Spanky

bigtikidude
sometimes I refer to it being deadsville. meaning a ghost town.
its still on the map, and a few posts a week, but not the 20 to 75 a day it used to be.

Its funny as new people still pop up on there from time to time.
I tell them to stay there and read the archives and new posts, but to also join us over here at sg101.

Jeff(bigtikidude)

It's funny, there are a few people over there, who I know are members of SG101, but never post here, only on Cow. And, there are enough people on that list who are not members of SG101 that still makes it worthy to post show announcements.
The guy (Brian Ehrmantrau) who started that list gave Jamie the "Hall Monitor" moniker, but didn't give her the "keys" to the store, so no adjustments can be made- ie. shutting it down or redirecting new members. I haven't heard from Brian E. in years...
There is a lot of great info and conversation in those archives, it's too bad the Yahoo search sucks so bad.
--fd

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Actually I think Cowabunga only goes back to sept 27th 2000.

I think I joined around 2002 or so.

There were 2 other servers for cowabunga before the yahoo groups.
one was actually from UCSD where Clint Beachwoods radio show is from.

I tried to access that recently , from a link I found on the Big interview that is in the front news pages here, and it was a dead link.

I have thought about periodically going thru cow and sg101 yahoo groups,
and copy and pasting cool posts here, But I spend to much time on the net as it is.

The Mermen and NESMA yahoo groups get a bit of traffic still.

I heard recently that a few of the Mermen fans lurk here.
they prolly love the Prog bashing.

Jeff(bigtikidude)

Jeff(bigtikidude)

I think I was briefly on one of the email based ("egroups") Cowabunga incarnations. Then I quit and joined back up again when it was a Yahoo Group.

So yeah, Jeff, you are probably right about the archives on the Yahoo Group not going back super far. It would be really awesome to get a hold of the original mailing list archives.

Fun fact: I started SG101 as a YahooGroup not to compete with the mighty Cowabunga and Reverborama, but to take the gear and musician angle on the surf scene. I posted a question on Cowabunga about strings and someone yelled at me because they wanted to discuss surf music, not gear. So I started my own group. After the group had grown quite a bit we sort of stopped the gear and musician only mentality and discussed everything, as by that time the moderator (or lack thereof) problems had made Cowabunga a mess.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Cowabunga is how I found most of you! I haven't looked at those yahoo groups in ages!

-K

"Turn the knob to 10 and break it off!" -Baja Marty

zak
That's funny...I remember Cowabunga (c. the mid 1990s) being chock-full of gear talk, particularly of the "if you don't play a Dual Showman with JBL speakers you are not a real man" variety.

Yeah I know, I thought it was odd too. That's where the Cowabunga Gear FAQ came from, after all.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Way back when, I posted on either alt.guitar or rec.music.makers.guitar (remember Usenet?) asking where I could find more music that sounded like the Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet and somebody sent me to Cowabunga. One of the very first messages that came through after I subscribed was from Mel Waldorf announcing the Mel-Tones' Powerwagon cassette. That was released in 1995, so Cowabunga goes back at least that far.

(Incidentally, that tape was the thing that inspired me to try making music myself. Mel, you're my hero! )

Yes, Ivan!
I have many of the old archives on .pst files. No doubt, these will be considered "the Cowabunga vaults".

I think I've also been on Cow since around 1994. And as was mentioned, many great early contributors. I'm not the grand historian, but I give most credit for the formation of online community to Moon Dawg and John Blair. This when folks like yourself, Mel Waldorf, Phil Dirt, Dave Arnson and fans like Laura X showed up, it became an educational exciting and vibrant place. Bands like The Mermen were always controversial, but others like MoAM and The Bomboras were also being discussed. I remember reviewing many shows for Cow and loved hearing about new CD releases from bands. My fave local Bay Area instro/Surf band in the 90's was The Torpedoes. Lots of good memories from this period and Cow was a big part of it.

Another piece of trivia: When I worked at Sun Microsystems in the mid-90's, while doing a piece of product collateral, I used a screenshot of an email reader which happened to be displaying the Cowabunga emails. And so permanently inked in tech history are views of Cow emails and phrases such as Phil Dirt Surf's Up (when he used to publish his playlist). This was cool when "Surfing the internet" tied the concepts together.

bIG wAvE Dave
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