On January 20th, 1993, I posted a message to the Internet newsgroup alt.guitar. I was looking for other acoustic guitar players who were interested in chatting over email, since the newsgroup was dominated by discussion of electric guitars and amplifiers and the like.
Twelve people replied that day. One of them, Kev Smith from Warwick, England, had access to some mailing list software and so the acoustic guitar mailing list was born. From the original 13 people, the list gradually grew to over 200 members, after Kev and I had posted a few times to the other groups to publicise the new list and I had written to Acoustic Guitar Magazine.
Larry Corbett suggested that it would be fun to do a tape so that we could hear each other play... this led to the ill-fated Tape 1, which was lost by the British Post Office, somewhere between me and Sam Hutton. Tape II was much more succesful, thanks to Larry who compiled the master tape and made all the copies.
The music itself is very impressive - we have a mixture of Jazz, Blues, Folk and other instrumentals and a fair smattering of original songs... if you haven't heard Tape II yet, do try to get a copy. Larry is going to have a well earned rest from the job of tape-copier-general, but a plea on the newsgroup should bring the appropriate response from somebody. Anyway, back to the story...
By the summer of 1993, the list had grown enormously and our mailboxes were overflowing. I decided that acoustic guitarists deserved their own public forum on the internet, instead of a private mailing list which could exclude many of our fellow pickers so after a few weeks of bureaucracy and organisation, a vote was taken and rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic was created. Chris Eveland did an excellent job of setting up the mail-news gateway for those list members who did not have news access.
Now we have "AcousticNet" Tape III: an even wider variety of music, judging by what I've read in the liner notes. I've really been looking forward to hearing it all. Thanks to all those who have contributed and to Larry for all his work (again!) - I hope someone with the appropriate recording equipment will volunteer to compile Tape IV.... this is a wonderful opportunity to broaden our musical horizons and it would be a shame to let it pass.
Enjoy the music - perhaps you'll be inspired to record something for yourself next time!
- Guy Snape
(guy@harlequin.co.uk)
Tom Loredo / loredo@spacenet.tn.cornell.edu