Another victory in the Prog Wars?

Guardian columnist Will Byers wrote a piece praising Pink Floyd which also contained a lot of ill-informed and clichéd dismissals of ‘prog’

Not only did a large proportion of the Guardian commentariat take a dim view of this rather than agree with him, but the piece got widely linked from various prog forums, attracting visitors who came and took his poorly-argued piece apart.

I added that what really disappointed me was that his previous posts had been well-argued and thought-provoking, and seemed to show a respect for a much broader range of genres than many of the ex-NME types that write for that site. So to see him descend into parrotting punk-era journalistic clichés was rather sad. I suggested that his piece pissed away a lot of the respect he’d built up in previous postings.

Given the blatantly trollish natures of far too many recent Guardian Music Blog posts from the likes of Stephen Wells, Alan McGee, Caroline Sullivan etc., I have to wonder whether there’s been an edict from on high to ‘be controversial’ in order to provoke more comments and thus generate more advertising hits.

In the comments, he posted what can only be described as a grovelling apology.

I accept that I am guilty of judging a whole load of bands by the small amount of music I have heard by them. For that I apologise.

To end, if anyone is still paying attention, I tried to write a love letter with spite in my heart. Never again will I try to celebrate something I love by belittling the things that other people love.

We never managed to get an apology out of Tony Naylor.