From: malcolm@wrs.com (Malcolm Humes)
Subject: Re: Prog Rock Isolationism (Was Re: Welcome to alt.fan.peter.hammill)
Organization: Wind River Systems, Inc.
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 05:14:06 GMT

jester@crash.cts.com (Ken Bibb) posted this stuff I am excerpting:
>I question if there is a need for this group: don't get me wrong, I'm a
>big fan of pH and vdgg, *BUT* ....

>There *is* a need for fans worldwide to keep in touch with each other, but
>how are we to attract new Peter Hammill/Van Der Graaf Generator fans if we
>concentrate our posts in a new newsgroup? 

>This is not just a criticism of this newsgroup, but of all these isolationist
>groups.  

>The other problem is that the alt hierarchy doesn't penetrate many sites
>which have fans of progressive music.  Instead of creating these splinter
>groups, there are a couple options available:

>        o mail lists.  This has worked well for Genesis, Marillion, etc.
>        o working towards rec.music.progressive. 

I agree. Though I'm sure Marco has good intentions (BTW, I like The
Other Room newletter he's been helping with, it's a fine effort) but
I fear that the limited alt. distribution will make this just a small 
group of dedicated fans, and without some regular publicity for the 
newsgroup few new people will find it, and quite a few people who
would read it may never find it. 

In a way I feel the same about a.m.progressive! There is/was a great
Progressive music digest, Gibraltar, which has seen traffic of posts
die off greatly since the a.m.prog group started. But Gibraltar has
a number of subscribers that maybe can't get the alt. group or who 
can't even get Usenet news. These specific groups limit the potential
audience at the same time as they allow a closer focus for those who
care. But the end result is less people and less exposure. I tend to 
crosspost alt.m.prog posts to rec.music.misc because I assume there's
many prog fans who can't get the group or don't bother, or people who
may have an interest in bands being labeled as prog even though they 
might not consider them such. 

I encourage people to keep Gibraltar alive despite the other venues
with more limited access where we can discuss these things. I encourage
anyone interested in Hammill to post to r.music.misc too, and to the
Gibraltar list. I tried to get the new Hammill group and can't, at 
least not yet. Unless the intention is to have some EXCLUSIVE Hammill
club, prog club, etc, please use the existing broader groups where
more people can participate. 

I would consider a mailing list dedicated to Hammill. The plusses of the
mailing list is that if archives are kept and a good FAQ is made it
reduces repeat posts or info and questions and it allows new readers
to go back through the older posts to "catch up" and to explore more. 
With a newsgroup history is repeated incessantly and there is less of 
a sense of history, and thus community - at least for me. A few months
ago I nearly tried to start a Gong mailing list, but I realized that 
Gibraltar, though not specific, was a broad enough venue to reach a number
of fans, and I though the idea of a splinter group was unneccessary 
unless members of Gibraltar started complaining about a high volume of
Gong posts. Given that Gibraltar was basically founded in some discussions
of Gong, Hammill and Van der Graaf I'd suggest using this existing 
mailing list unless there are a number of people interesting in subscribing
to the Hammill list but not to Gibraltar. I think you'd find that just
about anyone interested in subscibing to one would be interested in 
the other. The disadvantage is that Gibraltar is distributed only every 
couple of weeks or so depending on postng volume, and thus it doesn't
have the immediacy of followups - plus it too has a limited readership
like the alt. groups that will never reach the potential audience of 
a rec.music group. 

For those unaware - Gibraltar, is the progressive/classic(al) rock digest, 
which tends to cover a lot of symphonic stuff, but also things like
Univers Zero, Canterbury music, and exploring obscure music too. 
You can subscribe by mailing a sub request to 

gibraltar-request@maestro.mitre.org

or you can just browse the archives via a mail server at

gibraltar-server@maestro.mitre.org

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- malcolm@wrs.com 
 
Newsgroups: alt.music.progressive