alt.music.ecto - the diverse music newsgroup with atmosphere!
The door's propped open, there are comfortable chairs on the porch, the smell of cinnamon cake is wafting in the summer breeze, and there's an eclectic selection of lovely female voices coming from the stereo all day long.
It's too hot to argue, and who wants to argue when you can have a conversation instead? Occasionally hotrodders might find the side road and scream silliness out the window, but the doppler effect will drown them out and we'll ignore them.
Bring your CDs and let us "hear" them through your reviews. Come over and tell us about that great concert you went to last night. Share reviews, tour dates, information.
alt.music.ecto is meant to be far more than just another music news- group. It was born from the mailing list Ecto, the busy, amicable and eclectic Happy Rhodes mailing list, which has been a chatty fixture of the Internet since 1991.
Ecto is a word that means "outside" in latin; It also happens to be the title of Happy Rhodes' 4th album. But as the Ecto mailing list got bigger and more popular, it became a music forum for a wide range of artists and musical styles. What do many of them have in common? Typically, the music contains a few of the traits below.
What GENRE is it?
Although it is often the case that an individual artist has strong influences from one of these categories, it's not pop, it's not alternative, it's not gothic, folk, rock, jazz, or any of the other famous musical genres.
This is "ecto music". Through Ecto-the mailing list, ecto music became a genre in its own right. We use the term to refer to the style of music that is most often discussed on Ecto-the mailing list, #ecto-the irc channel, and the newsgroup alt.music.ecto.
If lots of others use it too, we might add a new word to the dictionary! Then, it'll be that much easier for us to introduce this kind of music into the hearts and minds of our friends and associates!
We want alt.music.ecto to be a place where anyone will feel free to write about all kinds of music though. Female vocals are generally a.m.ecto's specialty, and even though the favorites tend to run toward "ecto music" we also like hearing about other types/genres of music.
For instance:
world music (Zap Mama, Sheila Chandra, Stella Chiweshe
etc.)
country/folk (k.d. lang, Iris DeMent, Nanci Griffith, Patsy
Cline etc.)
torch (Ingenue-era kd lang, Eddi Reader, Carmel etc.)
jazz (Holly Cole, Billie Holiday, Carla Bley etc.)
experimental (Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, Diamanda Galas
etc.)
blues (Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey etc.)
rock (Melissa Etheridge, Caterwaul, Fetchin' Bones etc.)
pop (Frente!, Darling Buds, HeartThrobs etc.)
That's just the tip of the iceberg! Tell us about your favorites.
Variety is the spice of life!
Reading and writing about eclectic women like these and so many others is what makes alt.music.ecto different from a more "focused" newsgroup such as alt.music.alternative.female. Yet, alt.music.ecto is itself more focused than a group like rec.music.misc.
At the request of mailing list members, the newsgroup alt.music.ecto isn't gatewayed to or from Ecto-the mailing list and the distribution of the newsgroup on Usenet is small and fragile, so it needs your input, readership, support and participation. Give it a try, and if you can't find it, politely ask your sysadmin to add it. Who knows? They just might, and you'll never know unless you ask.
alt.music.ecto readers want to be able to come to a.m.e. and read about different artists, and you'll be able to pass along reviews, interviews, thoughts and information about other artists without being told "hey, I thought this group was about Happy Rhodes! Get outta here!" (Happy's fans fans are a polite and eclectic bunch) or "hold on, that artist isn't XXX type of music!! Get outta here!" (which, in some groups, someone always seems to end up saying sooner or later).
And no, there's no reason for you to get flamed if you happen to post about male artists every now and then, or even the occasional non-musical topic.
Usenet newsgroups can be magnets for flames and we realize that. I vow to personally ignore flames, and I hope others will too. There's always going to be someone who wants to cause trouble and push buttons. I say forget 'em...let them talk to themselves until they get bored to tears and go elsewhere. Flames tend to beget flames, but they don't have to.
"Agree to disagree" is a handy and well-used phrase in the mailing list Ecto, and it's the guiding philosophy of alt.music.ecto too.
When reading News, our favorite keys are "n" and "k" and they certainly come in handy every now and then when there are posts about artists or topics one may not really be interested in. It's always better to skip or ignore a post than to flame someone else's taste. At the same time, eclectic posts will allow alt.music.ecto readers to learn about many artists they might not have heard of or be familiar with.
alt.music.ecto is a friendly place, small and intimate. Stop by and say hi, and let other readers know about the artists you like.
"eclectic" is the word.
Vickie Mapes / Alan Ezust