I'm sorry that I got angry towards Catcher10 and Moshkito. I still do not agree with what you wrote and how you engaged me (and others), but of course this is a public forum and we are all free to pretty much do what we like.

I'll get back to focusing on the music. See you around!

Do you think that anyone who disagrees with the views you hold on these important topics is automatically evil? I think that for many of these matters (homophobia for instance) there is a range of opinions out there, and not all people that are incompatible with my views on the issue are "bad people". So at least for me, I don't feel anger towards them, or the need to insult them.

I miss these days when you could discuss different points of view even on controversial issues without necessarily reaching the name-calling stage at some point. Nowadays it seems like we reach that stage even before the argument begins, by people preemptively using pejorative terms on "them" to virtuously signal their position within the "us" group. Undoubtedly social media is partially (or mostly) to blame for this, making it much easier to attack people verbally without facing immediate consequences.   

Hi,

I think a lot of this had to do with the rise of the Internet. I was involved in the very early Fido threads about progressive music, and while there were a lot of folks there that knew their stuff, there were a lot of folks that also had never heard of a lot of things.

In general, the Internet became the place to find and learn about any band, from anywhere, which is something that was not available before, and only a few magazines touched up a thing or two, and this made room for bad reviews, like in one specific magazine, it trashed Van der Graaf and Peter Hammill for not knowing how to sing ... let me tell you that I think that magazine went down to the pits in the next year or so ... and that folks that were on the fringe, all of a sudden woke up and spoke.

The internet, has been massive, for the revelation of what "progressive" is, and has been. Things kinda died in the 80's because there was not a whole lot of publicity about any music, but the Internet around 1990, pretty much changed history right there.

In the mortal words of Albert Collins, "Nobody leaves this place without singin' the blues."

Hi,

It can be, and it might be and then again, maybe not. Some folks write within their experience, and others write from without. And regardless of how they do this, in many ways, we are still attracted to this or that person ... no one stops reading AEPoe because of the drugs. No one stops reading Rimbaud because of ... no one stops reading De Sade because it was written with/from poop. 

But there are times when these things hurt ... and the artist pays for it ... let's not talk about a few Spaniards that were put down because of what they wrote, and they were not the only ones. Some actors and directors and artists were also put down. 

Greatness, is a tough thing ... I imagine that it is grossly overrated, but there are times when it comes out really well and strong ... and we know some things from it ... I mean, can you really just think that Guernica is just an idea in a man's head? All the man had to do was look outside his window and see body parts all over the street ... and the same thing happened later in almost all of Europe, a lot of which was hidden, but has surfaced in a lot of film materials over the years, specially in France, where things were specially confusing as folks tried hard to survive troops going left, and then troops going right from the opposite camps!

It's easy to say that drama is a part of life ... I simply say, it's life, regardless.