I’m back after 6 months without internet access… will be here more often now.
So happy! Realized that you hadn’t been online for a number of months and I was getting worried.
Glad to see you back, Billy!
There's nothing wrong with a relatively quiet board--it's clear that when topics that push past the well-traveled topics pop up, we have the same level of engagement as was more commonly the case in past years. As GF noted, fewer clashes and less focus on agendas involving revisionist history might mean fewer overall posts, but the peace of mind that has ensued is a welcome tradeoff.
We've been blessed with a tremendous amount of unreleased material in the past 5-6 years that has given us a much better sense of what was happening with the band in what is arguably its most interesting period: 1967-73. That in itself has resulted in a reduction of speculative posts/discussions that probably accounted for 20-30% of the overall traffic.
We are really in legacy mode at this point, with hopes that some kind of grand synthesis might occur from those who have more active control over things. We can hopefully look forward to a big project from Ed Roach, which will give us new access to "in the moment" events and a set of untold stories that can give us more context into the band's complicated dynamics. We'll see just how useful the latest "official" biography will be when it's widely available, and we can hope that some final kernels of creative fire are still at work with Brian as he retires for the second time from the road.
So it's all OK...and, as Mike sings in the last verse of that song: let's enjoy while it lasts.
Appreciate it… I’ve had some personal struggles this year and was without internet access for the past six months