The Petra Zone

Check it out. John is listed as a former member and Greg is listed as a current member. This is going to up some people.

Why, those dirty rats.

facebook.com/petraband

Except they have the dates wrong. Greg, Louie, John L. and Mark were not in Petra all the way from the 70's or 80's until now.

This is NOT an official site... it's a FAN PAGE site posing as an official site.

There are Facebook SITES and Facebook PAGES. A PAGE is a website that's an offshoot (basically) of someone else's main site.

The first post is dated August 2, 2008, WELL before ANY Petra decided to reunite.

Sherri A., who's in charge of John's Facebook site & page, has been corresponding with this guy regularly. I'm not sure who it is, but I am going to find out and have a few words. I've already gotten a few emails questioning John's 'former' involvement with Petra.

More proof:
RECENT ACTIVITY
Petra edited their Members, Influences and Band Interests..Petra edited their Website, General Manager and Booking Agent..Petra changed their General Manager..Petra changed their Members.

If you edit - that means it was something else before.

The original name of this fan page was PETRA, not Petraband.
Petra is also the name at the top of the site:

Petra is on Facebook
Sign up for Facebook to connect with Petra.

...aaaaaaaaand awaaaaay we goooooooo......

If Petra does a new CD and full blown world tour for a year, and a partial remake of the "Farewell" Petra does just a few shows, then I think it will be very fair to refer to Greg as the "current" lead singer....when it happens. But, then again, who really cares!!!!

Okay, this may sound like a dumb question, but admittedly I'm not an authority on this. What exactly constitutes "official"? How do you go about determining that when anyone can put anything on the web? I'm not debating which website should be considered official or who should be considered current members or anything, and I don't feel that's up to me or my problem anyway. I'm just honestly curious. Maybe someone could fill me in. I did read Sue's post and that did define what a website and page is, but doesn't really clarify to me how you go about deciding what's official or not.

Official should mean "authorized", real deal site, BY the artist and/or the artists representatives.

Facebook sucks in that they added the "like" feature in place of the "fan" feature. There are groups, which are different than pages that you can "join". You don't typically "join" an artists page. You "like" the page. This is how you can tell some of them apart.

Okay, that pretty much answers my question, but like you said, it might be sort of hard to tell which is which when anyone can put anything on the Internet. The Internet has its good and bad points like anything else.

You're right, Brent - unless someone in the new management took over this page - whoever is running the page is acting/pretending like they are part of the band - especially when someone is writing "we" and "us" on the page.

Shell - Yes, it IS very hard to tell at times. On Facebook, you can also tell a real site from a fan page in that there is no way to email the fan page admin. There's no link on the left to send a private email.

This Petra page began in 2008, and that's easily verified by the first post on the page. There was NO incarnation of Petra at that time, other than the one show on Dec. 2007 trip to Argentina by the band. So there is no possible way anyone sanctioned that page at that time, because the only one working with Petra or John or Bob in any official capacity (up until now)..... was me.

fcollazo wrote:Ok, but it's official, the only touring and recording Petra is the Classic Petra with Greg as lead singer.

Was there some kind of issue here? The Farewell line-up is doing a few shows and 1984-1985 Petra is reuniting. They're both Petra. They're both 'official'.

Who cares what some Facebook page is saying, lets just be glad Petra is back.

pfreak -- there's no issue, per se.

The only issue is when a fan page is posting info that's not accurate while posing as an 'authority' (read: official); it creates more confusion than there already is.

sue d. wrote:pfreak -- there's no issue, per se.

The only issue is when a fan page is posting info that's not accurate while posing as an 'authority' (read: official); it creates more confusion than there already is.

I know there are some fans out there who think it's a good idea to have a myspace/facebook/whatever-page without making clear that they're not Petra, which is basically not a good idea.

I was merely responding to fcollazo's remark.

fcollazo wrote:Ok, but it's official, the only touring and recording Petra is the Classic Petra with Greg as lead singer.

I don't get how suddenly the Volz line up becomes official. As if there is some kind of competition between the Farewell line up and the classic Petra line up over who is the most official Petra. As far as I'm concerned they're both Petra and they're both official.