Greg,
I hope that you read this in the maner it is meant - an honest view of how *I* believe you can add value to this website from your "position" and an opportunity to answer some real questions.
I don't see what you hope to gain by openly posting here. If anything, you are simply laying down a justification for why you believe *GREG* is being harshly treated within the Queen community of collectors. Surely your credibility would be better served if you hid behind an alias and ranted on abotu how "HE" is being stitched up. If you are happy with your lot and feel that you should not have to be subject to all the "stick", why not just ignore it in the same way that you have consistently ignored so many genuine questions from Queen fans since being "put in charge"? **And I'm assuming that people other than me have sent you questions in the past and been ignored.** Or, is it just simply an exercise in chest beating so that we can all be reminded that "you are the man"?
As has been the case for so many years, you are consistently failing to answer any questions / issues put to you by the "more knowledgeable" Queen fans. Ever since the Q&A section of QOL was added, we have had to put up with some of THE most ridiculous questions being actually uploaded to the site - presumably by yourself. Obviously, you felt that you had to publish a question like "Was freddie gay?", just in case we needed to see a written response from someone "in the know". I also remember one question about Brian's favourite breakfast cereal or something actually making it to the site. The astounding thing here is that, although the updates to the section are strangely infrequent, you find that you have the time to do al of that within your busy role of "Queen Archivist". There has been a lot of activity on this board in recent weeks regarding the Queen archive and you have not responded in a way that *I* would expect an archivist to respond - ie correcting mistakes or people's innacuracies. Or even adding value and *your knowledge* to the threads, yet you do still feel the need to contribute.
Therefore, seeing as this is a forum that appears to be populated with collectors and people that have a far deeper knowledge of the bands history than your Average Joe that visits QOL, I wonder if you could take the time out of your extremely busy schedule to answer a few pertinent questions (with as much detail as you can):
1 - How far advanced is the work on "The Anthology"?
2 - Having openly played some of the archive's gems at fan club conventions, why is there still so much "cloak-and-dagger" speculation regarding exactly what you have been able to uncover?
3 - Have there ever been discussions as to the creation of a site that will give collectors on-going updates ont he work-in-progress, a-la Pioneer's website detailing the restoration of The Who's The Kids Are Alright film?
4 - Will "The Anthology" be compiled only from material that exists soley within the Queen archive?
5 - Have the stolen master-tapes been returned - ie the ones that Brian openly requested to be returned and others that are known to have "gone missing"?
6 - How have private collectors been brought into the project in terms of QPL "buying back" tapes?
7 - How extensive is Brian's archive of Smile recordings - both studio and live?
I would have thought that QPL would be better served as an organisation in not having you contribute to discussion threads like this and *THAT* is more likely to be the reason why you don't actually answer anything of interest and is why I won't be surprised if you "can't" answer the questions put to you here.
I urge other fans / collectors to ad their questions relating to the archive here so that we can have a one-stop-shop for archive questions. As band archivist, I would h