Saturday, May 5, 2012

The New Jerusalem

I'm extremely wary of what's available through the World Wide Web. It's not so much that I disapprove of what gets out there, though obviously there's plenty that's worrisome; rather I'm cautious of just how much wonderful stuff there is, stuff more than capable of eating up what little time I have. A simple example: all I have to do is key-in to youtube.com the name of an obscure band of my youth to find myself deluged with material that I'm amazed to find exists at all.

This evening, for example, there I was idling browsing through various performances by Van Der Graaf Generator, a band I find myself appreciating even more now than I did in the days when I saw them live, when I came across a link to early Genesis performing Supper's Ready. The sound and video were not of the highest quality, but good enough to take me back to a time when I thought the Apocalypse in 9/8 was about as magical as music can aspire to be. And, yes, I wasn't wrong. This does something that reaches beyond the clever theatrics and Steve Hackett's tragic jacket.

For a moment you know the new Jerusalem is really there.

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