about 25% of the mail i receive concerning classical guitar tablature contains new tabs to be added to the page (or corrections to existing ones) - about 25% asks me for information i don't have - and about 25% consists of lists of pieces for me to tab (although i haven't had time to do a tab request for years)
the rest are mainly suggestions for improving the page and generous praise for my efforts (tho i usually reply pointing out that the real heroes are those who do the tabs) - this encouragement helps to keep me going, and more than compensates for the extremely rare email (less than 1 in 1000) which contains abuse and condemnation - tho ever fewer guitarists now believe that tab is an abomination which should be banished from the net
the following correspondence isn't abusive about tablature per se (at least not initially), but is a fine example of arrogance, rudeness and ignorance -
From: "Daniel Bentley" <Bentleys@members.v21.co.uk>
Subject:
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2003 18:01:52 +0100
i cannot believe u do not have any work of villa lobos on this web page what sort of classical guitar organisation are u.
Please reply to peaches_and_cream006@hotmail.com with a reply to this complaint
thankyou
Mr Bentley
given the lack of a Subject and no reference to which page/site he'd visited, i wasn't sure whether he was talking about tabs, MIDIs, MP3s or sheet - so i replied in what i thought was a fairly jocular vein -
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 18:56:16 +0100
To: peaches_and_cream006@hotmail.com
Subject: your complaint of 1st august
Cc: Bentleys@members.v21.co.uk
Dear Mr Bently,
> i cannot believe u do not have any work of villa lobos on this web page
Thank you for informing me of your belief that I have work of Villa-Lobos on the page you were looking at. However before being able to confirm this, I need to know the address of the page. I look after several sites hosted on various web servers in the UK, US and Scandinavia. Some of the thousands of pages I act as webmaster for may well feature works by Villa-Lobos; some certainly will not.
> what sort of classical guitar organisation are u
I am neither a classical guitarist, nor an organisation.
Regards,
Weed
unfortunately i was at the end of a 6 hour session answering email, and i misspelt his surname, something which he seemed to take as a personal insult (tho at least i paid him the courtesy of addressing him by name) -
From: "dan bentley" <peaches_and_cream006@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: your complaint of 1st august
Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2003 09:43:01 +0000
i don't think handling your complaints with sarcasm and cockyness is the best way to go about the matter, (look up rhetorical questions in a dictionary)and please do me the common decency of spelling my name correctly,
as a result of your ill manered ways i will not be using your service again, i prefer to spend a bit more money on buying the correctly written sheet music than some sketchy tablature version.
Thanks for your time
Daniel Bentley
presumably Mr Bentley, for all his pedantry re the spelling of names, was unable to find any of the 19 Villa-Lobos pieces on the Tablature page because he was looking under "L" for Lobos
the eloquent and insightful Nigel Charles, a student at the University of Tasmania, suggests i remove all the tabs, and change the contents of my personal home page -
From: Nigel <ncharles@postoffice.utas.edu.au>
Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2005 10:12:00 +1000
Subject: website
u know. if u left the links opening the midis, it wouldnt be such a
piece of shit website..
heres a thought for you too...dont u think, if someone WANTED your opinion of things, they'd ask! get over your trying to save the world morality and try and be a bit more fuckin positive.
and nice name loser. whats weed supposed to be anyway, do u want people
to think u smoke. oo the big man smokes.
in fact "Weed" is my legal name and is how i've been addressed for nearly fifty years, since long before i'd even heard of marijuana, let alone smoked it
[civilised requests from authors for the removal of emails quoted on this page are always considered sympathetically]
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