Nostalgic for your mama

That's why that is still a funny joke. No, back when the internets* were new, you could get any e-mail you wanted. And so mine was yourmama@earthlink.net. I also had a web site like so: http://home.earthlink.net/~yourmama I called it "Your Mama's Scene," and I updated the page about once or twice a week. It wasn't a blog, because blogs weren't invented. It was a web site that I updated with personal thoughts on a semi-weekly basis. (I even learned some HTML, and still know what FTP stands for.) With rare exception, the topic was music. I wrote almost entirely about local live shows I attended, and I attended up to five a week**. A few times, I wrote about other things, but they were mostly music-related, like the time I threw away all my jewel cases so that I could get rid of the enormous piece of furniture I was keeping my CDs on and replace it with a couple leather binders. Sounds boring, but I think it was one of the better pieces of writing I've done. All that writing is gone, now, off in the stratosphere and memory. I might have a floppy disk with some of the writings, but I might not, and my current laptop doesn't even take floppies. So for all intents and purposes, they're as gone as the burning man gets gone every year. A personal creation that has disappeared. And that's okay. But for various reasons I have been feeling a little nostalgic for the damnable thing lately.

It started with Drummergirl. She complimented my purse. She asked where I got it. I said "Oh, you know Frannie? The DJ? You'd have seen her if you ever went to any, like, Troublemakers shows. Anyway, it was her garage sale." Drummergirl says "You have so much knowledge about the local music scene. You should write something about it." Well, it was a mostly undeserved compliment -- I do know some stuff, but when I was really involved was during two distinct periods; when I was Your Mama, and when I was a Gyna. And to be honest, although I met a lot of people as a Gyna and saw a lot of bands that we played with, I didn't go out to as many other shows. So most of my knowledge is from about seven years ago. Which, in terms of local music, is hopelessly out of date. Bands I follow have moved away, broken up, gotten big... the music scene as it was then doesn't exist, and all I know is a tiny brief portion of that history. But it was fun to know that bit, and I feel a little nostalgic for the time when I knew.

I've been a little nostalgic for Your Mama also because I looked at my hit counter and saw that it was nearing 1,000. On Your Mama's Scene, I ran a little contest -- the fiftieth person (I think that was it) to look at the web site won "a bag of plastic crap." I presented one to local music writer and musician Cary Rodda and another to guitarist (and coincidentally, my co-worker now) Phil Brann. I think Phil won it, but Cary wrote the next comment expressing his disappointment that he hadn't one. I gave them both pirate eye patches and silly noses and things. Anyway, I was thinking of running a little hit counter/comment contest on here, and it just took me backc to that.***

Also, I've been playing music again lately -- bass with my uncle and singing with the staff band -- and I enjoy playing a LOT, but it does feel different. Different than the Gynas, different than being a fanboy extraordinaire...

I love music. I was making a mix for a "New Wave" themed CD swap, and I was carefully plucking one song from each artist in my iTunes library, and I ended up with 4 and a quarter hours of music. My whole library is more like ten days fo music, but I've never put all my CDs on there because I got to the Es and realized I was running quickly out of room. I decided that I could listen to Erasure and most of everything else on CDs until such time as I get an external hard drive or something to store the rest of it on. Hmm... it's getting late. My nostalgia time is up for the evening.

*I am so addicted to saying "the internets" and "the interweb" ironically and have been using them for so long now that people are going to start thinking I don't know they're wrong.

** Thursday, Friday, Saturday, a Sunday matinee and Sunday evening, or with a Tuesday show or Monday Anton Barbeau at Cafe Milazzo gig, I could skip a Sunday gig. I did it all the time.

*** I'm sure my actual hits are much higher than 1,000, since I didn't add the hit counter for oh, about two years after I started the blog. But whatever; a number's a number.