NEWS
The site has been refreshed for 2025!
This site was first put online in 1993, in a very Web 1.0 sort of way. Actually, more like Web 0.5. While it received some updates along the way, it predated CSS, Javascript, and a host of other things. Well, it has finally been updated.
While the overall look is nearly unchanged the underpinnings are all nice and new and updated. It's faster loading, responsive to resizing, and just generally the way a current web site should work. A bunch of stale information was removed in the process, a keen eye may notice sections that are gone. But, they didn't work, so they had to go.
DISCUSSION
Historical Information
The discussion information we had was totally outdated. Rather than provide dead links here is some historical information.
Mailing List: From approximately August of 1995 to Febuary of 2006 this site ran a mailing list called tmbg-list@tmbg.org. It was available in individual message format, and in digest (once per day) format. Majordomo software handled it.
Unfortunately it went away because the site owner had to hastially move, which included moving all of the web site, mailing list and so on to a new machine. For reasons lost in the mysts of time, the mailing list did not make it. There is an archive of the Digests that runs from August 1995 to July 2004, but we don't have any idea why the Digests from July 2004 to February of 2006 are missing.
News: Back when Usenet was big there was alt.music.tmbg. For a time it was also bridge to a mailing list called alt-music-tmbg@tmbg.org. Alas, Usenet faded off into obscurity.
AOL Cowtown: America Online (AOL) had a TMBG discussion form called Cowtown. It actually consists of two separate but related areas. There was a discussion area in the Music Message Center (keyword: mmc) called 'TMBFolder'. It was a typical discussion forum of the day. The second part was 'Cowtown' in the chat section. It was held every Wednesday night in Private Room 'Cowtown' from 9:00 PM Eastern Time on into the night. Closing time ranged from 10:30 to 2:30 depending on the interest and stamina of the attendees.
Internet Relay Chat: IRC was once the way to chat online. While it still exists, it's no longer as popular. The channel #tmbg was present on both the EFNet and Undernet networks. There was a bot named Lincoln that could do a number of things. It also for a while ran a trivia channel.
Official Chat: After www.tmbg.com arrived on the scene a chat function was added to that site. It was fairly short lived.