Biographical details

Announcing Gram Parsons as Cecil Ingram Connors, and of course the issues surrounding the "real" name of Gene Simmonds, made me think ...

We all know Gram Parsons as Gram Parsons, as that's what his adopted name became before he became a rock star. Therefore citing him as Cecil Connors doesn't seem to sit right.

So how about (as if you guys don't have enough to do!) putting him in the database as Gram Parsons, but at the same time, introducing a new feature to b2b that displays some biographical details on a particular artist, which would be displayed when you select that artist in the Search Tree.

It would, I suppose, entail a new field in your database, and someone dedicated, knowledgeable and interested in a particular artist to add any such interesting biographical details, e.g. "Born Archibald Flatworthy on 24th December 1960 in Poole, Dorset, UK, son of an industrial chemist and international community relations officer, first went on stage at 4 years of age ..." etc. etc.

Just a thought. Then poor old Cecil Connors could go back in the database as Gram Parsons, and all those other artists whose true identities have been laid wide open for public perusal can retreat once more behind their stage personae, the true nature of their beings made available only when a punter specifically opts to view the more detailed information displayed when selecting "Gram Parsons", or "Captain Sensible", or whatever, in the "Search Tree" box, in the same way that the Band Statistics appear when you select a band.

The fact that there are now over eleven thousand artists in the tree should not deter - only those artists who are particularly "interesting" would receive such treatment - "interesting" in this context would mean "interesting enough for someone to take the trouble" - and for Gram Parsons, that *is* an artist of such particular interest. To me, at least ...

I have long felt (and commented, in another location) that "real name" should be done on a per-album basis just as "stage name" is. That is, Gram Parsons' "real name" at time of recording is, in fact, Gram Parsons, regardless of what his real name was at some point in the past.

This isn't really a direct response to your question -- it doesn't address the issue of whether someone might like to know what name Gram Parsons was given at birth, regardless of what we was called later on. I suppose my reaction to that is that it's somewhat reasonable, but it seems like an allmusic.com sort of a feature; if it's info that doesn't really relate to linking bands or anything, I suppose I'd rather not have it in the database, mainly because if there was a slot for it I'd feel obligated to go and start filling in that info on every artist on the site.

... this website seems to have moved on somewhat from just being a "linking bands" website. I'd like to see this site (just my personal view of course) as being a fairly comprehensive (within the constraints of band linking) repository of information about the whole rock and roll thang. And as the issue of the real name of a performer is (in db terms) a minimal piece of info to hold (and would not be efficient to be done on a per-album basis, it's definitely a per-artist thing) it might be worth while to hold. And who wants to have to surf onto allmusic? Not me.

Uh... "real name" most definitely changes from time to time and is not per-artist. See Alice Cooper for example.

I guess my personal opinion is that there's already plenty of (maybe too much) info on the site right now, and I'd really not like to add more -- it makes it that much harder to be correct or complete in any area. And the more info you add, the heavier your DB, bandwidth, and UI demands become -- until you have allmusic.com again :D

I'm always down for improved details on the site however I currently don't have the time to dip into new areas like this at the present time. Don't think I'm avoiding the issue but trying to juggle too many things at once will result in everything crashing. I'll get back to this and everything else when I've got the time.


Kevin