Rush fans on BOC-L

[Steven Tice]

My, isn't this an interesting thread!  I certainly count myself among the
Rush/progressive fans on BOC-L, and was also surprised to discover how many
of us there are.  Heck, I remember talking to Bolle Gregmar (Mr. BOC fan
club) on the phone one time.  I admitted to him that, while I was very fond
of BOC, it was not in fact my favorite band.  He asked me who my favorite
band was, and I replied "Seventies Yes."  Imagine my surprise when he said,
"Ah, a man of good taste!" and revealed that Yes is one of his favorite bands
as well!  I'm still a tad puzzled by the quantity of progressive fans who are
also BOC fans, since so little BOC music could be described as progressive,
but there it is.  Maybe it has something to do with the intelligence of the
lyrics the band bases their music around (Pearlman, Meltzer, Smith, Moorcock)
which is certainly up there with the best the progressives have to offer.
 Musically, however, BOC--even at its most complex--is far less sophisticated
than the progressive bands.

Now, as far as ignoring more recent bands goes, I only have this to say: I,
too, am someone who was born (1965) long before I became seriously interested
in music (early to mid-eighties), but (as is my wont) I gravitated toward the
more sophisticated music once I had discovered it, and (surprise, surprise)
most of the best music turns out to have been created in the early to
mid-seventies.  Given the limitations most of us have upon the amount of time
we can spend with our music, and the comparative lack of quality of most
music of the past couple of decades, why bother with most of the new stuff?
 I stick with the good stuff!  Expose me to some recent good stuff (like,
say, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones) and I'll latch onto that, too, but given
the musical wasteland of the eighties and nineties, I'm not going to go out
of my way to experiment with newer material.

Gee, I hope the above didn't come across as too strident.  I'd hate to have
my first experience with being "flamed." :-)

SET

P.S.  Here's something that always annoys me, and perhaps some of you too.
 Doesn't it drive you crazy whenever the general public equates seventies
music with disco?  Maybe it's that short term memory thing, and all they
remember is 1979 or something, but they conveniently forget they there were a
heck of a lot of years to the seventies before disco came along!  Of course,
disco did herald the downfall of most intelligent popular music, so I guess
its historical significance can't be denied, but still...