I believe you but that's a shame*. There is something that really appeals to me about someone spending ages learning about a scene in the name of pure scholarship. Someone unselfishly doing all this work simply to fill in the gaps in the world's musical knowledge, their task unsullied by any mercenary considerations such as being interested in the music they are drily studying and filing away. That kind of things is - I suspect - rarer in musical study than in other fields as music tends to be something that touches the soul, melts the heart and, ultimatelhy, just matters to people - meaning that people tend to fall in love with it and then dive into that love before spluring out what they have found on to the page. Far from ideal conditions for genuine objective scientific reportage. Music history as a field was doomed before it began due to the sheer passion that it engenders in people. A field that burns too bright to be studied¹
*in one particular sense that happens to be appealing to me right now in this intoxicated second
¹The other day someone told me that valium is good for taking the edge off crack. Unrelatedly this whole post might be total utter bollocks, either way I will stop now while I am, if not ahead, at least more ahead than I will be later, if you see what I mean.
