A.C.Douglas

[diegobueno]

Some of you who have been on other classical music discussion forums have undoubtedly run into A.C. Douglas. He was, well, a colorful personality, and self-appointed expert on everything having to do with Wagner. For those who remember the New York Times classical music forum and opera forums, he was highly opinionated and cantankerous. Later he established his own classical music discussion forum for those refugees from the discontinued NY Times forums.

I haven't followed him much since then, because he had a very limited range of interests, and his reactions on any given topic could be easily predicted. I do drop in on his blog Sounds & Fury from time to time to see if he's found anything new to say.

Today I found that Sounds & Fury "expired on 06/30/2017 and is pending renewal or deletion." He was posting prolifically on Twitter, but the posts stop abruptly at June 30, 2016.

Does anyone know what happened to him?

[jbuck919]

Mark may be too recent a member to know that A.C. Douglas was also a member here for quite some time. In addition to that name, he went by at least one sock puppet name which I cannot remember but would recognize if I saw it. I do not know why he left. I don't recall that he posted in any way that would have caused one of Corlyss's bannings, but I may be wrong. We had some exchanges about Wagner, in particular Siegfried, from which I am sure I learned much more than he did.

[diegobueno]

Mark may be too recent a member to know that A.C. Douglas was also a member here for quite some time.

Then we can date his departure as some time between Jan. 2004, when you joined and March 2005, when I did. I would imagine he left of his own accord, after some Wagner-related argument.

[arepo]

AC Douglas apparently left the internet in July of 2016.
He was quite an amazing character in many ways, albeit controversial, to put it mildly. Clearly a very bright man, his desire to be a curmudgeon `turned most people against him, a role he thrived on. His obsession for all things Wagner dominated his posts, with an occasional entry into Mozart and JS Bach's keyboard works, an area that caused me to have battles with him that frequently got ugly.
We attempted to find out where he disappeared to, checking his known address in Lakewood with no success. I assume he is either completely disabled or has died in apparent obscurity. He loved the role he played far too much to have deliberately retreated from the forums.
I do miss his cantankerous personality. He was truly one of a kind.
Some folks believe that AC Douglas was not his real name, since he had at least 6 different user names.





cliftwood

[diegobueno]

Cliftwood,

I'm sure you are right. I suspect he died, but I wanted to find confirmation. There are no obituaries on line for A.C. Douglas, but there wouldn't be if that was only a pseudonym.

[John F]

Never heard of him. When I saw the thread's header I jumped to the conclusion that it had a gay angle; Lord Alfred Douglas was Oscar Wilde's lover, and while his middle initial wasn't C, the expression AC/DC is slang for bisexual. Does this relate to "Douglas" at all? Of course he could just have been named A.C. Douglas; some of us use our real names online.

[diegobueno]

Never heard of him. When I saw the thread's header I jumped to the conclusion that it had a gay angle; Lord Alfred Douglas was Oscar Wilde's lover, and while his middle initial wasn't C, the expression AC/DC is slang for bisexual. Does this relate to "Douglas" at all? Of course he could just have been named A.C. Douglas; some of us use our real names online.

That's a plausible theory, but it's impossible to know. All we know about his personal life is what he told people online, and there's no way to test the veracity of that information.

In his later years I was gratified that he finally discovered there was some contemporary music worth listening to, and I was pleased that he had taken the time to listen and make that discovery.