The Umm mailing list is a forum for discussion regarding, or relating to, the work of Dave Dobbyn, one of New Zealand's most respected recording artists.

The list began in August 1996, as a splinter group from the Crowded House e-mail list Tongue in the Mail. The idea for a dedicated Dave Dobbyn list was realised because whenever Dave Dobbyn posts were sent to the Crowded House one, it always seemed to be the same people who replied. Due to the increased traffic over there, it was decided to create a break-away mailing-list, and hence stop sending the Crowded House fans information in which the majority were not interested. Dobbyn's name still pops up over there quite regularly, due to his involvement with Neil Finn and the ENZSO projects.

The membership of the Dave Dobbyn list, which we named Umm after a track on Twist, is made up of subscribers from the US, England, Ireland, Canada, Israel, Australia, Japan and New Zealand. Surprisingly, most of the non-New Zealand members are not ex-pat Kiwis. The list has about 50 subscribers at present.

Umm is informal, and up until mid 1999, was manually run; posts were sent to the administrator and "cut and pasted" into a longer post, then distributed in digest form to the whole group. If you think you might be interested in joining this on-line discussion of Dave and his music, have a read of the early threaded list archives.

In mid-1999, with the advent of on-line free automated mailing lists, Umm got upgraded. You can subscribe to talk or digest style Umm discussion, and have access to the list archives (since the changeover to automation).

If you'd like to join in our worldwide discussion of Dave and his music, including what "Whaling" is really about, then visit the Umm subscribe page at http://www.onelist.com/community/umm and sign on board!

You can also manually subscribe via e-mail; Just send a blank e-mail from the accout you wish to sign up.