Hello Folks -
WOW!... now we are going back a few years when talking about On Reflection. I THINK I have my issues, in a box of MUSIC memorabilia, underneath my stairwell. If memory serves - On Reflection was perhaps eight pages, non-glossy paper, and really rather 'basic'. Thrilled, to put it mildly... when I received my first issue! Progression Magazine, yes I believe, morphed out of On Reflection and kept the 'basic' format for a period of time.
Anyone else???
Chris Buckley
^ The publisher was a big Gentle Giant fan.
Since I only succeeded in breaching the tight NEARfest security once, I only managed to visit your cafe once, but it was a memorable event (especially seeing as Robert John Godfrey was there). Anyway, people were always talking about it, so obviously you were much appreciated. You were the Dunkin of NEARfest!
I definitely remember Noteworthy. I can't remember how one of their catalogs first fell into my hands, but I ended up buying a lot of stuff from them. They were my source for a lot of Zappa CDs and hard-to-find solo albums by the various members of Yes. First time I ever heard of the Moraz/Bruford collaboration was seeing the album "Flags" listed in one of their catalogs. I also discovered Ozric Tentacles through them - they had an ad for Jurassic Shift and I thought the cover looked interesting, so I took a chance on it.
I never knew they had a web site, I bought everything mail-order via the catalogs. It was kinda sad when the catalogs just stopped arriving in my mailbox.
Another source of prog CDs for me was a book store chain called Encore. They used to stock some interesting stuff, but went out of business in 1999. They had a final sale where the prices on everything were reduced each week until all the inventory was gone, and I remember getting a ton of CDs and cassettes really cheap just before they closed their doors for good.
Another place that's gone out of business was Circuit City - the one near where I work used to have a surprising number of obscure prog CDs in stock.
And the late, lamented Media Play. I could spend days in there browsing the CDs, books and movies. Damn internet, putting brick-and-mortar places out of business.
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The internet was better before Berners-Lee let the riff-raff in.
The Culture Cafe, Sundays 6-9am on WWUH-FM
Broadcasting from the University of Hartford, CT at 91.3FM, streaming at www.wwuh.streamrewind.com and at www.wwuh.org
Mike Taylor ran the Gibraltar digest for several years.
This is sort of tangential, but back when prog festivals in the US were a rarity, I used tolove reading people's accounts of them - especially Peter Thelen's in Expose, and other ones like his. He would often include descriptions of his arrival at the hotel, meeting up with people, what they did prior to the fest - visiting local music stores, eating, etc. Part of me was like "Why are you telling us this?," and part of me found it fascinating and just fun to read. It's a genre of non-fiction literature unto itself: Prog Travel Writing.
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