It’s kind of funny to say that one has a friend he has never met in person, but a friend nevertheless.

My first foray into the world of the Internet was the original “Music For A New Age” (MFNA) — this site (in its original form). The worldwide-web was new and promised to change the way technology was viewed and used. It fulfilled that promise. As someone in the field of technology, I was fascinated and wanted to learn how this new technology worked. It was easy! So, I hand-coded the site (HTML is just text with embedded “tags” that describe how the finish page should be rendered by the viewer: the browser).

At first, it was all about storing links I used frequently. Today, we use “bookmarks” to accomplish this, but I liked pulling up a page with clickable links that would take me anywhere I wanted to go. I had recently become a fan of what was then (and to some extent, still) called “new age” music. I found artist sites, publishers, streaming audio, and a wide variety of related content. I put them all into my site’s pages. I even started writing reviews.

My intention was not for it to become a review site, but since the ‘Net was still young, my site actually found itself on the new “Google” first page. As a result, it attracted the attention of a number of musicians, artists and like-minded fans. Before long, I began to get requests to review albums. As a result, I began to receive review copies, pre-release copies, and commercial copies of CDs. Some were even signed by the artist. Grammy award-winners such as Paul Winter and pioneers of the genre such as Constance Denby sent me their music.

While I was thrilled to be sought out by recognized artists, what really struck me was the quality of the music being produced by “unknowns.” To this day, I think I have a better understanding of the complex and mysterious workings of the recording industry. There are truly outstanding musicians out there who for reasons still hidden, do not get a shake from the big name producers.

Dino (“Dee”) Pacifici is one of those unheralded artists. A multi-instrumentalist, Dee has been self-producing his own CDs since the 1990s. He would send me copies of each release, sometimes even test pressings, never asking for anything in return. His music was tremendous, so I wrote reviews never knowing if anyone was reading them.

Despite his awesome talent, Dee was not a full-time professional musician. So, some time around 2004, he stopped producing albums. By this time, he and I had become “Internet friends.” I would send him Christmas cards, and we became Facebook friends.

Recently, I was listening to the weekly broadcast of Night Tides, a program airing live over the radio and Internet on Sunday nights, and the announcer mentioned new music from Dino Pacifici. I did the proverbial double-take, and fired off a message to him. He replied and said he’d returned to composing and had released some new music, called A Collection of Shadows.

True to his nature, he offered a Yum code (I had to learn this was how one downloads music from Bandcamp, which is one way music is marketed these days). I have thus downloaded his pieces (they may be heard on the site without requiring a code) an am once again enjoying some terrific music from a terrific talent, and a terrific human being.