Miles mailing list

I signed off the Miles Davis mailing list a few weeks back on impulse. It still feels a little strange – I can’t recall when I joined up, but it must be something like five or six years ago. My action was prompted by the distance between the ethos of the list’s patron and the narrow attitude of the majority towards the wider field of music, too many bashes at a particularly member with awful conservative views (not that I agreed with him at all) and too much noise about vines, trees, etc. Perhaps one day I’ll sign up again and see if things are more to my liking, but I think it’s unlikely. Still, I occasionally feel the absence from the group. It does seem that mailing lists in general have had their day, increasingly superceded by notice boards (yuk), ICQ (I’m too old), blogs (ahem) and wikis. The problem, as with the Miles list, is that the elders of the list have covered most of the subjects newbies are interested in and a sense of inertia gradually overtakes everybody, combined with an awful sense of being trapped in an old boys club.