Welcome, Shawn Phillips

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 Logan wrote:

First of all, great job on the addition.

And welcome back, it's those who announce their departures who seem the most likely to return often (or those are the ones we will most notice as it is most conspicuous). It's the ones who quietly slip away who most often stay gone. Speaking of slipping away, I don't see it as a slip as we discussed this and did our research, and I would expect that the team that suggested it to us would have thought about it carefully too before asking us to look into them. PR additions should be rare.

Every admission should be on a case-by-case basis, and I didn't see any necessity for both even to be decided on at the same time. In the case of Shawn Phillips, his involvement with Cosmic Debris which is included in Progressive Electronic (even if on only on one album) helped his case as Prog Related. It was quite a close call with Al Stewart and I can't say that he will never be included (I was most convinced by his "Nostradamus", which I found with my own research, which tipped me into a yes position, but I don't know anything else of his with comparable merit).

Normally we deal with one act act a time, in this case we were asked to evaluate both (I can get why that would be). The expectation has been that we don't decide based on listening to the music but based on the arguments that are presented to us. In this case we all did listen carefully and research. 

With Shawn Phillips, he had enough of a connection to Acid Folk, Progressive Folk and Chamber Folk for me to find him musically compelling.

Perhaps we should stick to doing things the formal way: CLICK

So, then part of it should be about how well and thoroughly a case is presented and argued to us (and we shouldn't have to know a note of the music).

I do think it's best when there's some vibrant discussion going in Suggest New Bands (SP had a fairly recent thread started by Lorenzo which I participated in somewhat, of course Al Stewart would get more response, sure he's come up before), then it's PMed to us as formal suggestion after there's been some sort of forum consensus on it being Prog, from an SC with a solid case being made. Of course it also helps that the Prog team that most closely associates with the style of music supports the case (as they did with Stewart and Phillips).   In this case we did use our own ears and do research of our own.

I found Phillips case rather more compelling on the whole, but I was okay with both and I was okay with including both and with not having both -- I do like to give the teams the benefit of the doubt as I would expect that they would know this stuff well if proposing it to us. But we wont include everything and we won't include everything related at the same time. I would have been okay with neither (I'd be more interested in discussing Donovan's relevance). I do think we should be careful with what is added, and if there are doubts, then not give the go ahead to add (later on one might reconsider if someone makes a good case for which it gains support and traction). By the way, not generally a very high-rated album, but I like Stewart's Zero She Flies considerably.

I like Zero also and Love Chronicles and Orange are also good.....imho more interesting than most of (if not all) Phillips work. Of course ..that's subjective.
;)