It is mildy disingenuous for you to state that you don't care what is discussed on this board and to decry other posters for attempting censorship when you follow that up with a call for perspective, a core focus, and a rather liberal interpretation of Andrew's remarks.

I don't make any claims that my years of visiting this site give me any kind of special license to speak on behalf of all the other lurkers here, but I am here strictly for the purpose of harvesting information. My interest in melodic rock is not full-time, yet I am capable of reading everything that is posted here and applying my own personal interest filters to determine what I'd like to further investigate or ignore. I much prefer an "anything goes" approach to sharing opinions about music. The idea of creating, enforcing, or striving for some kind of sanitized discussion that includes only "pure" melodic rock artists is self-limiting. Everyone's definition of pure, melodic, and rock varies somewhat. I'd rather read everything and decide for myself.

I don't worry that digression toward a discussion of the bands that are given the upside down label of peripheral by this board will prevent me from hearing about some absolute gem. I'm too careful in my reading for that. I worry more that a discussion that is limited to some kind of core focus on modern, unpopular melodic rock will be little more than a retread of some lame press release from a dismally average European label or its surrogate magazine trumpeting the virtues of previously rejected artists and previously rejected demo material. There are plenty of sources of information available to a hard-core melodic rock fan about the traditional artists on the rosters of Z, Frontiers, Now and Then, MTM, Escape, and other similar labels that discussion about them here strikes me as somewhat redundant. I tend to filter a lot of that out, but that's how I'd prefer it work. Anyone should say anything he or she wishes and any reader can take from it what they value according to their own system of musical values.

The debate about music and different artists is healthy. I don't even mind a good bashing or two of specific albums or artists. Lack of disagreement generally portends lack of passion. When the debate shifts into personal attacks of other posters and stupid little games of spot the nazi, it generally indicates that the sender of those messages has run out of intellectually compelling material. This also provides useful information to an average board lurker such as myself because it helps me identify which posters I can ignore altogether.

To conclude, I prefer a free-for-all type of format. Primitive partisans go away eventually, and all recordings that are gems get their due over time. There's too much good music in the mainstream and in the undergrounds of every genre to just ignore one half or the other. Over time, everyone learns that lesson on their own.

The Other Joe (who thinks it's impossible to speak too highly of The Corrs or Savage Garden)