Those who aren't particularly new to this site and had followed its development since 1998 have, no doubt, had a chance to enjoy the marvelous site of Bryan B. in its prime. In its own way, it was rather revolutionary - when I fell upon it, it was the first time I'd actually encountered an intelligent, witty and subtle reviewer who was able to tackle so many subjects, ranging from music to MUD reviews, and come up with interesting and systematic thoughts on all of them, without turning the page into a dull, self-indulgent mess, as it usually happens with those who take on too much. Therefore, even if Bryan's music reviews were only part of that site, and he himself was far more of an 'album-oriented' person than a 'band-oriented' one (plus, his reviews came in horrible 'volumes', which was fun in that you could never predict what was going to come next, but also a terrible pain in the ass if you wanted to return back to an older review - you had to virtually dig it up from under the countless 'volume' layers), so, despite all that, his site immediately became one of the Web's major attractions for me and - no doubt - for most of the other readers and colleague reviewers.

For a certain period of time, everything was great - Bryan was eclectic and humble, we shared some great correspondence, discovered a new common interest in Sierra Adventure Games, and even quarrelled on whether the Beatles' vocal harmonies actually mattered or not. Then trouble came, as Bryan's Fortunecity server where he was hosting all of his reviews accidentally (or intentionally?) destroyed all of his files; to make matters worse, Bryan was the last person to have learned of it, because he happened to have some troubles with his Internet connection at the time. He was about to give up, but the gentle readers reassured him and mailed him lots of backup copies of his reviews that they happened to preserve (for some strange reason, Bryan never kept his reviews to himself - let that be a lesson to you, all ye worthy reviewers: always keep a backup copy of your stuff on your own hard disk! You never can trust those sneaky providers!). After that, Bryan was still active for some time, gradually putting some of the older reviews back onto his page and writing some newer ones. Later on, he started experiencing some troubles with his Internet again - the electricity went kaputt, the phone lines were broken, the E-mail accounts got closed, well, you know, everything according to the laws of Murphy. His last E-mail to me is dated April 13, 2000, where after a long interval he was complaining about all those things and expressing his consent to participate in a joint reviewing project of ours. Then he disappeared.

I really don't have the least idea on what happened. Of course, it could be possible that he just got completely sick of the idea of web reviewing and decided to pull all the stops. But his Fortunecity site is still active and running in its former 'bastardised' state, without a single word of explanation since April 2000. Moreover, his old E-mail account is still active, as I have been trying to reach him through his Opera E-mail, but never got an answer. What could explain such a radical change of attitude? I have no choice but to fear for the worst. Of course, there are several possibilities - he may not necessarily be deceased or completely disabled. Maybe his state of Mississippi has been deprived of Internet access. Maybe his computer has broken down and he still can't afford a new one. Maybe he woke up one day and felt like dropping out and joining a Krishnaite sect, like some Peter Green of our days. The possibilities are many; none of them are particularly joyful, though.

In any case, whatever the actual answer is, the reality is obvious: Bryan B.'s Reviews are no more, not for the moment, at least (well, not for the last half year, already). Therefore, in order for his excellent writing and subtle ideological approaches not to be lost forever, I have decided to incorporate those reviews of his that I did manage to save into my site. It might not be an exactly lawful thing to do because, for one, (1) I am somehow breaking the 'reprint without permission' rule, and (2) I am not even sure if Bryan (if he's alive, of course) wants these reviews to be published - maybe he's had a radical change of heart and completely despises this business now. But I have some excuses. On the matter of (1), in a letter addressed to me sometime in March Bryan himself stated that he wanted to open a mirror site somewhere, so this can easily function as a mirror site; on the matter of (2) - first, if Bryan now hates this business, he could have taken the Fortunecity scraps off the Web (these scraps, with error messages popping out at every second link, actually hurt his reputation far more than a full collection of working reviews), and second, he could at least speak up. I mean, if he finally re-appears and orders me to take this stuff off the Web, I'll gladly do so; but not until then.

Like I said, I did not save all of his reviews. Understandably, I was more interested in his music reviews than anything else, so his music review collection is left nearly intact, apart from a couple newer reviews. His reviews of Sierra games are also presented here in their entirety. The rest - books, movies, web pages, essays, etc. - is very scarce, unfortunately; I should have known better in the past, but heck, my hard disk isn't that large to save everything. Therefore, A SERIOUS REQUEST: if you're an old fan of Bryan B. and happen to have any more of Bryan's reviews saved locally, please mail them to me as soon as you can so I can add them up. But be sure to check the page carefully before you mail them - I don't want no useless duplicate copies.

The actual reviews are currently divided into three parts - two of them devoted to musical reviews, and a third one devoted to everything else. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I couldn't preserve the old 'volume' principle, so all the reviews are grouped in alphabetic orders. Also, while Bryan had a separate page for every review, I preferred to lump them all together for conveniency's sake (and economy - I took some time to edit out all the murky Fortunecity logos and ads). No edits have been made to the reviews - the only exception is that I edited out some of my own reader comments, notably those that deal with reviews of albums I have reviewed on this site myself (which would, naturally, look rather stupid and excessive). Warning: I only leave old reader comments and do NOT accept any further reader comments to Bryan's reviews, as it's something up to Bryan himself. So DON'T MAIL ME YOUR THOUGHTS, just mail me some more of Bryan's reviews if you happen to have them.

Some of these reviews can actually be found among the ruins of Bryan's site (you can access it through the link on my links page), but if I were you, I wouldn't go there. Most of the links don't work at all, and most of the stuff that works I have preferred to duplicate, if only for the reason that you can never trust Fortunecity. If it's deleted Bryan's collection without any obvious reason once, it can easily do it for the second time - so we'd better save everything possible.

Now just go and read the pages, to pay some tribute to the man who was once the pride of Web reviewing (and I still hope that one day he may regain that status). Also, any details or information on Bryan himself would be greatly appreciated - heck, I don't even know his real name or occupation. All I know is that he's from Mississippi. And Bryan, if you happen to be reading this, try to finally get in touch with me, woncha?