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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! > Terribly frustrating spam filter (again)
Terribly frustrating spam filter (again)
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mlefree
384 posts
Aug 26, 2015
9:56 AM
I just have to chime in every few hundred posts to complain about the dismal spam prevention system on this forum.

I cannot explain how much time I've wasted trying to guess the code based on the apparent appearance and size of the obscure characters and getting it wrong -- more times than not. There is no "learning curve" with this beast. It's as much a crap shoot now as it was in the very beginning of my participation here.

Of course, I learned long ago to save my posts before trying to play the spam prevention lottery. Still it routinely takes me several tries to actually succeed in making a post.

You REALLY have to want to contribute to the Dirty South Blues Harmonica forum to put up with that frustration!

With the thousands of posts made here, one could estimate the amount of time we've collectively wasted with this problem. It would be staggering waste of time and energy by a group of presumably otherwise busy and productive people.

In this time of technological advancement it seems ludicrous that the administrators, after the years continue to tick by, remain unable to do something/anything about this issue. Something/anything as apparently simple as either fixing the spam correction filter or just doing away with it entirely would be preferable in my view.

Personally, I'd sooner rely on my "manual" spam filter and simply ignore spam posts. For that matter, has anyone ever looked into the amount of spam the filter avoids?

End of rant. :)

Michelle

(As always, copying this post and preparing to play the Dirty South Spam Lottery -- over and over and...)

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SilverWingLeather.com
email: mlefree@silverwingleather.com
nacoran
8634 posts
Aug 26, 2015
10:02 AM
I hear ya. The problem is it's baked into the software. We don't have access to the underlying code for the site, just the templates. We'd have to actually hack our hosts to change it (we've asked them to fix it).

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Nate
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First Post- May 8, 2009
mlefree
385 posts
Aug 26, 2015
10:10 AM
Only took me two tries this time! Happy Day!

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SilverWingLeather.com
email: mlefree@silverwingleather.com
mlefree
386 posts
Aug 26, 2015
10:11 AM
How about abandoning it outright?

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SilverWingLeather.com
email: mlefree@silverwingleather.com
Gnarly
1448 posts
Aug 26, 2015
10:26 AM
Oh, I don't think we want to do that!
I seldom need to enter the captcha more than once, and when I do, it is usually only once more--but obviously, your experience is different!
Without the filter, we would see a huge increase in junk posts, sunglasses and worse--it's a small price to pay for being able to keep things on topic (as such).
Owen Evans
84 posts
Aug 26, 2015
2:21 PM
I'm with Mlfree on this one. Lets get rid of it or at least make it user friendly. It's such a pain that I've not responded to posts when the filter bounced me and my response evaporated. If our hosts are unable to help, what's the opportunity for a new host?
Owen Evans
85 posts
Aug 26, 2015
2:23 PM
sorry mlefree for the spelling error previously, I was rushing not to miss the spam filter window.
Dr.Hoy
103 posts
Aug 26, 2015
2:25 PM
Why is this the only forum on the internet that uses this spam capture thing? None of the other forums I'm on do, and with those forums it's a lot easier to attach MP3's, photographs and the like.
1847
2719 posts
Aug 26, 2015
3:09 PM
several of my last few post got swallowed up by the filter.

when it was reposted i decided to just delete the post myself. i had planned on adding to it
but not after the being frustrated,

i just posted a new thread and it disapeared



There are some changes that need to be made.

The spam prevention code you entered was not right.



There are some changes that need to be made.

The spam prevention code you entered was not right.




There are some changes that need to be made.

The spam prevention code you entered was not right.



There are some changes that need to be made.

The spam prevention code you entered was not right.



There are some changes that need to be made.

The spam prevention code you entered was not right.



There are some changes that need to be made.

The spam prevention code you entered was not right.



There are some changes that need to be made.

The spam prevention code you entered was not right.



There are some changes that need to be made.

The spam prevention code you entered was not right.



There are some changes that need to be made.

The spam prevention code you entered was not right.



i occasionally post on the gear page no issues there at all ever. no need to type code to post a link,
it is automatic. very easy.
nacoran
8637 posts
Aug 26, 2015
3:12 PM
Mlefree, it's baked in. Basically, the only way they could remove it would be to remove it from every site that they host, and unfortunately, most of the sites they host just use their forums for quick customer feedback kind of stuff. The reason (before the Captchas) that we didn't have spam stay around long was because we are a much more active forum and it would get reported quickly and we'd delete it. There was a time when a spammer could post a couple hundred posts before we could stop them (the user database is slow to respond, so it can take several minutes to find a member even although it's alphabetical by page). I literally spent hours sometimes after an attack deleting posts. (The tools for deleting are better now, we used to have to delete each post individually, wait for the page to reset and then delete the next one.) What I really wish they would do would be to let us whitelist members after a certain number of posts, so, say after 50 posts without spam you could post without having to use the captcha. I also wish they could turn off the spam filter that hides posts. In the 2 or 3 years that it's been active it's only ever caught maybe 2 or 3 real spam posts and it catches several real ones every day. It's also almost impossible to access the site from Russia or Eastern Europe or China without using a Tor Browser (which I suspect even having on your computer in some countries could get you in trouble.)

As for being easier to attach files on other forums, yep. Personally, my favorite site for that is Fark.com. They have little buttons on the bottom of the screen that put the HTML in for you, but again, we are an outlier, I think for how their software is used. We use the forum heavily, but their other clients don't seem to, so they put their upgrade efforts into other things, like making the site usable on mobile devices. I've submitted all sorts of suggestions for upgrades but they are putting their resources elsewhere. (They have been good about fixing some security issues we noticed, which is part of why the automatic password reset is broken- But Secure!)

One trick I've learned is that if you add a link in your signature you'll always have the html for adding links handy when you post. As for the captchas, you can always do like I do and post so often that almost all of the captchas now autocomplete because I've done them before. :) (I also use my TV as my monitor, so I see everything on a 37 inch TV which makes the captchas easier to solve. On a PC you can always hit the control key and your mouse scroll wheel to make the font bigger, which does make some of the questionable letters easier to read.)

edit: 1847, we cross posted. The spam filter got it, but I moved it back for you.




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Nate
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First Post- May 8, 2009

Last Edited by nacoran on Aug 26, 2015 3:14 PM
garry
589 posts
Aug 26, 2015
4:06 PM
I long ago adopted the practice of always copying my post before submitting, since I have to resubmit at least 50% of the time. What irritates me is that the feature is just broken. Most times I *know* I've entered the code correctly, and it still fails.

That said, I understand the reasons you can't fix it unless your hosting provider does. So I live with it, and only grumble to myself.

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kudzurunner
5616 posts
Aug 26, 2015
6:38 PM
You're right, Garry. I am the king of this realm, and even I get regularly screwed. I can't tell you how many times over the past five years I've had long, eloquent posts disappeared [sic] by the spam filter.

I use those moments as spiritual training. In some cases, I was intricately responding, with devastating precision and clarity, to somebody I disagreed with. Gone! Poof!

Pretty quickly I learned to walk away. Just.....let it go. You got it out; now let it go.

I also learned that the longer you take to compose your reply, the more surely the spam filter is going to reject your captcha submission.

Garry is right: the great majority of the time, you HAVE submitted a proper capcha code. But it gets rejected anyway--the first time.

I have come to believe that if you take more than 30 seconds to compose your response, at least your first response to a given thread (or the thread starter), the capcha thingie says "Fuck you" (yes, I just wrote that) and rejects it.

So you ALWAYS need to copy your submission before submitting. I do that every time now--especially when I've taken a long time to compose something thoughtful.

I'm going to do that right now.

The second time you submit something to a thread, it always goes through.

"It's a mystery, really."
--SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE

Last Edited by kudzurunner on Aug 26, 2015 6:40 PM
Komuso
635 posts
Aug 26, 2015
6:46 PM
In terms of UX (user experience) the spam filter on MBP is one of the best case studies in complete UX failure I've seen yet.

The webhost company aren't doing their job if they are not listening to users.
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Paul Cohen aka Komuso Tokugawa
HarpNinja - Learn Harmonica Faster
Bringing the Boogie to the Bitstream
nacoran
8638 posts
Aug 26, 2015
7:46 PM
After you open the thread you have 15 minutes to post before the host resets the captcha. What this means is that the captcha on the screen no longer matches what their end says it is. In theory this is because once upon a time hackers would set up games and you could get new toys in the game by solving captcha (or you could see more porn, or whatever). Basically, they would have a little program scrape a picture of the captcha from a website and show it to a person. The person would solve it for a reward (a toy in a game or a free look at porn or a free download of something the hackers had stolen from somewhere else). Once it was solved the hacker would use the answer to post spam. Spam usually wasn't an ad for something, but a string of links. At the time one of the ways Google decided how to rank a page was to see how many links pages had on them to other 'good' links. A site like this, which might have links to harmonica manufacturers (and which may have links back from them) would rank as a respected site, which meant that if a hacker could flood our forum with links whatever site they were linking would go up in the rankings. Google has improved how they rank pages because they were basically causing forums to collapse.

The captcha is supposed to prove that a human is posting and be our second line of protection (the first being the only setting we have any control over, how we manage the membership- we have it set so we have to hand approve each member), because computers, for all their strengths, aren't very good at complex print recognition. Originally our hosts set the timer for about 5 minutes, but we complained and they moved it to 15 minutes. The idea is that doesn't give malicious sites enough time to have a human hack them. Usually, if the captcha is timed out you can just hit the back page button and you will see your message safe and sound waiting for a new captcha. Sometimes you don't. I'm not sure what causes that. I suspect it's a hiccup on their end.

If you type the captcha in and it doesn't tell you that you screwed it up but you don't see your post, you have most likely run afoul of our third line of 'protection'. That's an algorithm that looks at your post and decides if it looks like spam. Because spam usually is just a bunch of links or a short phrase like 'Buy Our Brand Shoes' posts like that get disappeared. Those posts end up in a folder. Once a day we take a look in that folder and hit a checkmark next to everything (there have only ever been 2-3 spams it actually caught in all the time it's been active) and we restore it. That's why messages disappear and reappear.

The last line of defense (or actually, maybe it's the first actually, one of 4, I guess it depends on how you look at it) is the IP blocking. As frustrating as our captchas are they are small potatoes compared to IP blocking. Basically, our hosts have a list of problem IP addresses and if those addresses send our hosts computers a request to see our site our hosts computers basically says, 'eh, not today'. They have two types of addresses on this list- some are specific addresses. The boss himself (Adam, not Bruce Springsteen) got caught by one of these once and couldn't access the site. I think Tom H. got hit on one of the places he accessed the computer from too. The problem is internet companies recycle IP addresses just like phone companies reuse phone numbers. They have two kinds of addresses, static and dynamic. Static ones is like having your own phone number. As long as it's clean when they give it to you it should stay clean. Dynamic ones are from a shared pool. When they started the internet they didn't realize how many addresses they'd need, so they didn't use a big enough set of numbers. They've run out, and updating is going to be a big hassle, kind of like Y2K was supposed to be, so what they do is they figure only a certain percentage of their users will be online at a time, so they rotate them around. If you happen to end up with an address a spammer used that got blacklisted you won't be able to access the site, but that shouldn't, in theory, be too big a problem, because when you try to connect to the internet the next time you should have a different random IP.

The next problem is that if the company providing your service has too many spammers on it the company that runs the blacklist (our hosts probably are buying a list from a company that specializes in that sort of list) that company puts a whole range of addresses on the list. In simple terms, that means if there were 100 addresses on the web they might block 81-92 because they belong to a certain internet provider, in which case if you have that provider you are going to have to contact us and run a little program that traces the route you take to the internet and whitelists you. At one point Russia, Eastern Europe and China where hotbeds of spam, so pretty much every internet provider over there is blocked from accessing our site, unless you use a clever trick like routing your service through Google. Sometimes even that doesn't work and you have to use something called a Tor Browser. Tor browsers were created by hardcore privacy gurus to let people anonymously browse the web. They are used by the paranoid, the criminal, and Boris. :) (They are often used by people in countries like China where the government censors the web to get around the blocks, but in this case the blocks aren't in place to keep spam out, not free media, and in this case it's an American company doing it. Hurray free press! Wait...

Sometimes, switching from a dynamic address (you call your internet provider for this) to a static address will fix access problems (when their pool of dynamic addresses is blocked by a range filter). Sometimes switching from a static address to a dynamic address works (when the range isn't blocked but your specific one is. If I was a spammer I'd definitely use a dynamic address. Sometimes using a public DNS works (that's when you route your internet through Google instead of your internet provider) and sometimes it takes TOR.

The interesting thing is I don't think I would know any of these things if I didn't have to deal with it on the back end.

Komuso, the thing is, they are probably listening to most of their customers. Most of their customers, I suspect, are people who only use their forum occasionally, to get comments from customers. I think we are special, perhaps even unique, in having a large community built on this software platform. Even although numerically we are a larger group of individuals we still amount to one customer, Adam, out of however many they have. Most of their customers probably like the spam filter. Ideally, they'd let each site have control over that aspect. I'd turn the spam filter off instantly, and probably the IP filter as well, and the captchas I think I'd set up a rule that 3 days after your 50th post you would no longer have to solve them (that would prevent someone from solving a bunch all in one day and then going crazy with a bunch more spam). I'd also let us set members to no captcha mode in the manage members section. (I'd also like to see an overhaul to the manage members section so you could search for a member just by typing their username, and make it so we could also search by real name or email. We have problems on the back end sometimes where someone hasn't been on for a while and they can't remember their username and it would be nice to be able to search by another method.

One last thing, a reminder to everyone to keep your email we have on file current. For security, we require that you email us from the email we have on file to reset your password.

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Nate
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First Post- May 8, 2009
kudzurunner
5617 posts
Aug 27, 2015
7:41 AM
Michelle & everybody: Now you can see why I am a huge fan of Nate's. What other forum has a moderator who would give that sort of detailed answer?

This forum has frustrating elements to it, I will be the first to admit. Quirks! But is also a very lively place, and it has so far demonstrated an endless ability to reanimate itself with the help of fresh blood (ah, I mean, newbies) and sustain itself with the help of longtimers who truly enjoying sharing what they know.
Komuso
636 posts
Aug 27, 2015
8:42 AM
I'm not saying spam filters are bad - I'm saying it's just a badly implemented spam filter Nate - compared to other ones.


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Paul Cohen aka Komuso Tokugawa
HarpNinja - Learn Harmonica Faster
Bringing the Boogie to the Bitstream

Last Edited by Komuso on Aug 27, 2015 8:42 AM
isaacullah
3069 posts
Aug 27, 2015
1:24 PM
The forum software has issues. This forum isn't the easiest one to use by modern "net 2.0" standards. But why must everything in life be "easy"? Aren't some of the best things in life the hardest to attain? Also, I think that the added annoyance of having to enter the captcha acts as a "psychological spam filter" in and of itself. What I mean by that is that it likely cuts down on the frequency of pointless one liner replies (that clog other forums). Well, most of the time, anyway. Some memorable past forum members obviously had the psychological "fortitude" to buck that roadblock.
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Last Edited by isaacullah on Aug 27, 2015 1:26 PM
garry
591 posts
Aug 27, 2015
3:22 PM
Interesting, Nate. That would imply that one should always reload the page before replying, to avoid that 15 minute timeout. I'll have to try that.

But I'll still copy my post first.


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The Iceman
2646 posts
Aug 27, 2015
4:49 PM
If replying to a post and the capcha says incorrect, I hit the "back arrow" key and it returns me to where I was before entering the code, with my comment intact.

When I start a thread, I always copy the post. If capcha rejects me, it also erases my message.
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The Iceman
nacoran
8643 posts
Aug 27, 2015
5:25 PM
Komuso, I agree.

Isaac, yeah, although sometimes I wish we had a simple like button. Sometimes someone posts a clip of their playing and I enjoy it enough I want to say something but I just can't think of the right comment!

Garry, yes, if you hit refresh you'll get a new captcha. I sometimes do that if I've spent some time reading a long thread and am about to compose a lengthy reply, although it's not perfect. When the server is in 'hiccup' mode you can still get caught out if you actually do miss the captcha.

Iceman, yeah, that's my experience too. I forgot to mention that about starting threads. It won't backpage like other posts.

I get the captchas right about 95% of the time, but like I said, I've got a very big monitor. I usually am sure I've typed it right 90% of the time and almost never miss it when I'm sure, but there are a few letters every now and then that I'll be torn on because they could be two different letters. When it could be two different letters I get it right about half the time. I think sometimes enlarging it helps. Control/mousewheel is your friend.

One last thing I really don't like about the captcha is that there is no audio option. I have an email saved from a visually impaired harmonica player who can't post on the site because of it. At the time they were busy dealing with the switchover with Google rankings and mobile access. I think I'll give them another poke about seeing if we can get audio captcha options or the ability to override the captcha systems. According to my posts I've now solved 8639 of these (assuming I get this one right).



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Nate
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First Post- May 8, 2009
nacoran
8644 posts
Aug 27, 2015
5:28 PM
Lol. It wouldn't really work, but it would be funny. We could set up a site just like the hackers do to solve our captchas internally, but with harmonica porn... you solve 50 captchas for the system and you see a little bit of a Blue Moon comb. A hundred, gets you a picture of a Kalamazoo amp, and five hundred and you get to see a picture of one of Greg's custom wood bullets! :)

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Nate
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First Post- May 8, 2009
garry
592 posts
Aug 29, 2015
6:51 AM
FYI - the "back" button trick on a failed post doesn't work on my browser. all the text is lost. i have seen it work, a long time ago, so i suspect it's browser implementation specific.


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mlefree
393 posts
Sep 02, 2015
9:53 AM
The problem with dated software is that it is like an old car. You know the old beater won't get you all the way to where you eventually want to go, but at what point do you stop throwing good money after bad? You've already invested lots of time and money in it and don't really want to scuttle that investment, especially knowing that would mean finding a suitable new car and figuring out how to pay for it.

Do you let it nickel and dime you to death or do you wait until there's some sort of catastrophic failure and hope that it doesn't happen at night on a deserted stretch of highway? And then do you save up for the inevitable failure or do you just throw caution to the wind and hope for the best? That depends on how much of a gambler you are.

The issue is that it is one thing when you are travelling down that dark road at night -- by yourself -- knowing the gamble you are taking will affect only you. But it is another situation entirely when you're driving a busload of passengers who have had no part in that fateful decision. Then you are gambling with their wellbeing.

At least that's the way I see it.

Michelle

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SilverWingLeather.com
email: mlefree@silverwingleather.com

Last Edited by mlefree on Sep 02, 2015 9:57 AM
florida-trader
766 posts
Sep 02, 2015
11:28 AM
I'm with the Iceman on this one. I use Chrome and if I get the captcha wrong or if it times out because I took too long to post, I just hit the back arrow. My text is still there and there is a new captcha. Apparently it doesn't work for everybody but it is worth trying once to see if works for you. If it does, problem solved.

Also, I tend to create my posts in MS Word and then copy/paste them into the forum. I am a bit anal when it comes to grammar, spelling, punctuation and syntax. It is a small pet peeve of mine that with the advent of abbreviated language of texting etc. we are slowly moving toward illiteracy.

Another benefit of composing in Word is that on a few occasions I have typed a lengthy post – perhaps in anger – and by the time I have finished it the emotion has faded, so I simply delete it without ever posting it. The act of writing the post helps me purge whatever thought is polluting my brain at the time – even if I never publish it. It can be cathartic.

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Tom Halchak
www.BlueMoonHarmonicas.com
sydeman
144 posts
Sep 02, 2015
11:38 AM
My old beater 71 Chevelle will take me to the end of the earth! The site works just fine.
nacoran
8652 posts
Sep 02, 2015
2:10 PM
When I have a long post sometimes I'll compose in a word processor, not so much for the grammar issues, but because it's much easier to move sentences around and see the whole document than it is in the tiny little comment box.

Tom, I don't know if you were being intentionally ironic, but "with the advent of abbreviated language of texting etc. we are slowly moving toward illiteracy." It's "et cetera". :) (Although it's spelled out so infrequently I had to Google it to make sure I spelled it right!)

Plato, in one of his works, but a story in Socrates's mouth. Basically, it was the story of when the written word was first presented to the King of Egypt. The King was incensed. He didn't like this writing thing at all; it was going to destroy the minds of future generations. They were going to rely on it instead of memorizing things! I don't know what to make of texting, but they do somehow manage to communicate with it, and more quickly, apparently, that those of us from previous generations (anyone over maybe 20?). Once upon a time I used to get very upset with my brother that he couldn't read an analog clock (as late as high school, and I think he still can't read it if it's got Roman Numerals). Then, one day, my mom told me a story about how her mother used to insist that she know how to use this little hook thing to buckle her shoes, insisting it was an important life skill.

It worries me that Steinbeck and Hemingway may be virtually unreadable to kids, lol, roflmao, but idk if that's any different than how much we struggle reading the Bard or Chaucer. (I majored in English and I still couldn't get through Chaucer.)

I think the big thing with the site, to borrow Michelle's analogy, is this site got out on a road trip, and we managed to pack everything in the car (all the old archived comments and such) and it's very, very, very, hard to unpack and repack the car. Sure, the radio doesn't work all the time, but the car still seems to have some miles under the hood.


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Nate
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First Post- May 8, 2009
Frank101
117 posts
Sep 02, 2015
3:37 PM
I look at the spam code as a special little treat - a lagniappe, if you will - to reward people for posting.

"Hmmm ... now, is that an x or an X?"

It's a fun puzzle to solve!
indigo
151 posts
Sep 02, 2015
3:43 PM
Frank the captcha isn't case sensitive.I didn't know that for a long time.
SuperBee
2789 posts
Sep 02, 2015
6:24 PM
hey indigo, i met a fellow from auckland the other night; he told me he knows you...said he plays in a band which you once were part of...he played some nice minor blues in the jam at our club...i think his name is Marcus? but i'm really not sure...
Frank101
118 posts
Sep 02, 2015
7:21 PM
Oh.

Well in that case the hell with it.
indigo
152 posts
Sep 02, 2015
7:26 PM
Hi Bee,the only guy in Tassie that could be is guy called Darren Hogwood used to play with me in a band called Riverhead slide about 20 years ago.Meet an aussie girl over here and moved to Tassie to marry her.The marriage broke up but he stayed over there.Say hi from me if you see him again.
Tasty guitarist and a Blues lover for sure.
SuperBee
2791 posts
Sep 03, 2015
3:32 AM
Hi Rick, it's kind of the other way around. This fellow lives in NZ, but was born here and his sister still lives here; their mother is in nursing care here. He was here to visit his mum. He told me he currently plays with Riverhead Slide, maybe a casual thing.
indigo
153 posts
Sep 03, 2015
3:03 PM
Ah..yes Marcus of course ,sorry 'bout that lapse of memory.Only met him a couple of times,he sits in occasionally with the 'slide if the gig suits some Harp.
Nice guy reasonable solid player.
The band had a reunion gig about two years ago where everyone who has ever been a member over the last 25 years was invited ,there were at least 20 or so of us who turned up.
Lots of pot bellies an bald heads.
A great night though for everyone,sorta like a school reunion with music.


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