One whole calendar year have gone by since I received the sad news that my long time collaborator and partner in music reviews Vitaly Menshikov had passed away. Rather suddenly, but not all that unexpectedly, at least for me.
He had been in a challenging health situation for some time, and it was clear to me that his health was fading, to the point of affecting also his spirit. He lost his passion for music in the final months of his life. He still desired to read about it, but listening to music took second place to watching TV series with his beloved Nelly, at least from what he told me.
Vitaly was a stringent task master. If something was wrong he would be open and honest about it, to the point of being blunt. But he was also a great teacher in being that way. And while strict he was rarely if ever angry as far as I can remember. The one time he flared up in anger was when I sent him a monetary gift he didn't ask for. Mainly because it hurt his pride I suspect.
But Vitaly was also a worrier. A chronic worrier are the very words he used to describe himself. If he hadn't heard from me in a week I got an email asking if everything was OK. If that emails wasn't promptly replied he'd go to some lengths to get in touch. He even tracked me down on Facebook on one such occasion. As he didn't care at all about social media that says a lot about how worried he was I suspect. Worrying was also the topic in our final email conversation. When he learnt that I had stopped smoking tobacco and switched to electronic cigarettes, he tried talking me into going back to tobacco, as he had seen so many articles about the dangers of the electronic cigarettes. A conversation that also showed that he had a stubborn streak: He flat out wouldn't believe me when I told him that everything indicated that the electronic cigarettes were much safer.
I worked with Vitaly for almost ten years. Losing him was losing a large part of my life and my existence.
In the year that have passed, I have worked with Vitaly's son Dmitriy to continue the progressor website. The website is still as old school as it used to be. Jokingly I refer to it as HTML v. 0,5. I suspect it is one of the oldest websites from the 1990's that are still updated on a regular basis, using the tools that were available back then in the infancy of the internet.
We work in a much different manner, but are getting to know each other. In some ways we communicate better than what I did with Vitaly, as he was rather old fashioned in some ways while I have been a bit more of a modern person, at least to some extent. There's less of a generation gap these days, to put it that way. As we are a two man operation, albeit one with plenty of helpers doing important work in the background, it is obviously required of us to communicate very well too.
We have pretty much agreed on all steps on how to take this fine, old website forward, and that was accomplished the very first time we hit the Facebook chat to talk about what to do next. Individually we shared the very same thoughts on many fields. The first big decision was to stop doing the news on our internet page. That section had been Vitaly's playground, where he scoured news and presented them in his own unique and personalized manner. One he frequently used to comment on what he liked and didn't like about both bands and the directions he saw the progressive rock scene move towards.
In this age of social media, it was decided to open a Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/official.progressor.net, and that all news items submitted to us would be posted there. Hopefully labels and artists will start posting there of their own accord as well, as none of us really have the time available to scour the internet in search of relevant news. But Facebook is the arena for news these days, there's little doubt about that. We also post links to our reviews on that Facebook page, and artists and labels are now informed by way of tagging. A system that works rather well.
We do have plans to develop the website as well, but this is a task that Dmitriy needs to control, as I'm not tech savvy at all on such matters. We have agreed on what we want to do, but finding the time to accomplish this in a busy schedule remains the challenge. But at some point, the progressor website will get a 21st century look and feel to it, of that there is little doubt.
It is also more than likely that when we have a new website up and running we will also hit Twitter. Mainly because there are apps that makes sharing links to Twitter from a modern web page so easy and quick that we may as well be visible also on that platform.
What we so far haven't accomplished is finding writers with a desire to contribute on a regular basis. Good reviewers are few and far between, and we could use a couple of them. We live in an age where all genres of music see more releases than ever before in history, and even if we stick to the philosophy of only reviewing physical productions, we still receive more than most normal persons would be able to handle. There are exceptions, I know one of them, but those exceptional writers may not always review music in the more analytical manner that have always been the creed of our website.
It is cathartic to write about Vitaly and the website I have been a part of for so many years, as well as rather emotional. But at least I can conclude on a happy note: Progressor lives, and will continue to live. For the regular readers of our website, that is, after all, the most important issue I gather.
