To all the nights that never end?

Classical music has been to some degree made the victim of a terrible curse in being considered highbrow. Music for the intellectual elite as it were. Classical has not been helped when popified for office background music – a pure sound corrupted to appeal to no one, yet doesn't offend. What is now considered classical was the radical counter-culture of its day. Mozart, Debussy, and Beethoven were the iconoclasts of their culture. Even then it was primarily the elite that had the time or money to be patrons; perhaps we've inherited a case of guilty of elitism by association. Yet the visions of these powered wig rebels pushed music and it's meaning to new levels, they expressed feelings that were universal to mankind. Not always( think opera), but frequently It did not have lyrics, but that didn't mean that the music was any less emotional, provocative and manipulative as modern music. While classical music has several problems in trying to establish a market among modern tastes, one of the biggest is the corporate mass marketing approach that sees CD's that sell in the thousands as compared to millions as not worth the efforts of the marketing weasels that are more interested in pushing out product then pushing something that is a little different. Notice that I am not saying the mavens of marketing are pushing nothing but crap, that isn't true. It is possible for some music to be of high quality and sell in the millions, popularity has always been a mixed bag of music that stands the test of time and music that we're embarrassed to admit that we were into one summer long ago. The internet and modern technology comes to the rescue of the fans and artists whose tastes and music don't quite kick it for the mainstream, Why 'own label' releases are a vital tool for classical musicians

Anybody can hire a room or a producer. After some post-production in a professional studio, the CDs are run off. Then they go into the touring kit. One batch becomes part of the marketing pack, others are sold in the concert foyer. The rest are sold through the musicians' website. At this grassroots level they really can't lose; and the public gets to have recordings that otherwise wouldn't be available.

However, for the more ambitious, there is a role model in the cunningly titled ArtistLed label. This creation of the US cello-piano duo David Finckel and Wu Han started in 1997 and has released eight CDs. Because of the name it's guaranteed to come up in internet searches. Styling itself "classical music's first musician-directed, internet-based recording company", the founders say ArtistLed is "a means for musicians to record what they want the way they want, and to offer their records directly to the public"

I'm not keeping official track, but there is a game that the Kingdom of Wingnuttia loves to play where they find one or two people a month on the progressive side that says something a little over the top. It is game that they work awfully hard at, they have to. For two reasons; one is that we as a group are usually pretty rational and two, it is their interests to try and define us by those few individuals on the fringe. The deep irony of all this effort on the fringe right's part is that their entire movement is made up of different flavors of fringe. Patriotic rational Americans don't have to exert much effort to define conservatism as a largely fringe movement because they offer up their bizarre zealotry like a horn-o-plenty, over flowing with the strange, the hypocritical, and the finely ground rationalized,
Key Fact In National Review’s Global Warming Article Is ‘Completely Wrong’

Chewing tobacco isn't bad for you, the lack of advertising about responsible tobacco chewing is what killed Uncle Ed, Smokeless Tobacco: It’s Not Just for Rednecks and Ball Players Anymore

The right's eliminationists rhetoric has many times been lies pasted together with partial truths and distortions, their stock and trade, now they've taken after their leader Big George and just go for the Big Lie, Malkinite fact-check where two conservatives, supposed adults Malkin and Bryan Preston can't keep one lie straight between them.

It would be fun to say that the Malkin anti-MEChA contingent has finally "jumped the shark" with this pile of disinformation, but the truth is that Malkin herself triple-axeled over that baby a long time and has been playing in Fonzie's band with Pinky Tuscadero ever since.

"Unhinged" doesn't even begin to cover it.

Never underestimate the ease with which conservatives like James Taranto will tell the most audacious lies. Where it gets mentally kinky is when they start to channel O.J. and start believing their own lies, At Taranto's request, Media Matters debunks his theory of media bias . Suggestion to James, don't offer up garbage that is so easily debunked anywhere outside a dark backroom meeting with Tom Delay. The glare of reality must really sting.
Week in and week out there is a thin trickle of nuttiness from the left and a fanatical flood of craziness from conservatives. This is a game that the patriots will win.

The autumn wind
And the winter winds
They have come and they have gone
And still those days
Those lonely days
They go on and on
And guess who sighs his lullabies
To all the nights that never end?
My fickle friend,
The summer wind

lyrics from the song Summer Wind