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HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010
A little late for the "Happy New Year" you say? Hey, I've been trying to prepare
a set of GEPR updates since mid-November of 2009. Then my Mom passed away,
a big project at work started encountering problems, and a bunch of other general ...
uh ... stuff ... hit the fan and I found myself going from little spare time to zero.
The date kept pushing out and out, and now it's been just about a year since the last
update. Those of you who gave up on me, don't count me out quite yet. Hope you enjoy
what's new.
An interesting thing of note ... to me at least ... is that the last half of 2009 was
the point at which the number of digitally-transmitted promos I received for review
exceeded the ones I got that use hard media. (OK, I have to ignore my
Musea Records promo pack to be able
to say that, but it's almost true). I'm not sure that's a good trend, but it's
an undeniable one. Next time you go shopping for CD's in a brick and mortar store (if
you can still find one that carries them at all!), look around you. Is there anyobdy
there that's under 40 years old? Chances are there isn't. And guess what? Young people
buy the most music. Well, would you invest in a company that makes CD's for a living?
Neither would I. I always guessed that Progressive Rock would be one of the last genres
to switch over to digital, and it probably is. But even those old hold-outs have been
forced to concede that this is the way of things. Several of these releases aren't even
available as hard media (see reviews of The Coma
Cluster and Electric Sorcery
for example).
On the exact flip side of this observation is the fact that there's a lot of vinyl being
pressed again (hehe ... get it? "Flip side" of vinyl?). The new album from
Øresund Space Collective
is vinyl-only, and the new album from Gong had a 2LP
version released (with a CD also included). Of course, Porcupine
Tree and a few others have always had vinyl options on their releases, but it seems to me
like this trend is increasing. Playing an LP is such a pain for me these days that I almost never
listen to any of my LP collection. It seems like my only "quiet time" to be able to listen carefully
to music (and decent Prog must be listened to carefully, not just something going on
in the background) is in my car, and LP's just don't do well in a car stereo. Are there still people
my age (I just turned 55) who can lay on a pillow between loudspeakers and just listen to a piece of
music in their homes without interruption, like I used to do in college? If there are, I envy you.
That's so not what my life is like. So I'm afraid I have little patience for LP's. Except,
of course, that they provide a decent-sized canvas for artwork, unlike a CD. For that reason, I got
the LP of the new Gong album for an old friend for Christmas. But
when we went to listen to it ... you guessed it, we played the CD.
One more observation. A person whose name you would recognize from the Prog world mentioned to me
in passing that the GEPR had become irrelevant. In fact, he thought that most prog had become
irrelevant. Judging from the reduction in reviews I've been receiving for publication and the
reduction in fan mail, I'm tempted to agree. The GEPR is "so Web 1.0" in its look and feel.
I'll be the first to admit it's really become a blog of what I'm listening to and what I think of
it in the guise of being an Encyclopedia. I can't begin to keep up with all the progressive /
avant-garde / experimental music being made out there in quantities of 500 CD's (or, as I just
mentioned, no CD's at all, just downloads). Even when I had lots of outside contributors,
I couldn't keep up with it. Now it's just absurd to even pretend I can do it. I've been doing the
GEPR like this for 10 years now. Maybe it's time to re-think things. So, I would like to ask
the opinion of those of you who still stop by here from time to time to peruse my pages. Where should
I go from here with the GEPR? Write me at
webmaster@gepr.net and tell me what I should do.
Here's some ideas, or tell me your own if you have one.
- Hang it up. Kill yourself. The GEPR is a waste of disk space and you're a waste of air.
- Be like Axiom of Choice ...
stop adding anything new, but keep the old stuff here as a historical document.
- It's fine like it is. Keep on Proggin'.
- It's basically fine, but I'd rather see smaller updates more frequently instead of once or twice a year.
- Some format changes would be nice ... maybe it should look and feel more like The New York Times web site (but
without ads).
- Change to a Blog format, with links to the older material. This would allow some user interaction via comments. Maybe this could also look more like a newspaper.
- Make the GEPR totally interactive ("Web 2.0"), like ProgArchives. Hmm. Maybe without the excessive advertising or links to nonexistent ring tones or free downloads.
Oh, and one other question: Should GEPR have a Facebook presence?
- What's Facebook?
- Who cares?
- Only if you feel like it. I might look at it sometimes.
- I live on Facebook. Blow off the web site if you have to. You gotta be there.
I dunno, what do you think? Let me know.
Keep on Proggin',
Fred Trafton
Here's what's new in the 5/31/10 GEPR update:
GEPR Editor Fred Trafton (USA) contributed new entries, reviews, updates or
news items for
Agents of Mercy,
Aisles,
Algernon,
Apogee,
Astra,
Baraka,
Amin Bhatia,
Big Big Train,
Cazuela de Condor,
Cheer Accident,
Citadel,
Citadellion,
Citizen Cain,
The Coma Cluster,
Nick D'Virgilio,
Darwin's Radio,
Dream Theater,
Electric Sorcery,
Emerson, Lake and Palmer,
The Enid,
An Endless Sporadic,
Esagil,
Et Cetera (Canada),
Far Corner,
From.uz,
Glass Hammer,
Gong Global Family,
Gösta Berlings Saga,
Grey Lady Down,
Haiku Funeral,
Half Past Four,
Headspace,
Here and Now,
Horizont,
IQ,
Jerusalem,
Karen Cooper Complex,
Kopecky,
Pär Lindh Project,
Lord of Mushrooms,
Lost World,
Ma Banlieue Flasque,
Neal Morse,
Neuronium,
Øresund Space Collective,
Phideaux,
Phish,
The Pineapple Thief,
Porcupine Tree,
Radio Massacre International,
Random Hold,
Redshift,
Shadow Circus,
Sky Architect,
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum,
Soundscape (Rob Thorne's),
Spock's Beard,
Roine Stolt,
Slychosis,
Syzygy,
Tesseract,
Transatlantic,
TRIO (The.Rhythm.Is.Odd),
Univers Zero,
University of Errors,
Adam Wakeman,
XII Alfonso and
Yang.
Other contributions this release:
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