Consortium Project

Band or not?

[www.ianparry.com] http://www.ianparry.com/CDConsortiumIII.htm offers conflicting evidence. The top of the page calls the album "Ian Parry - the Consortium III Project" but lower down it defines the Consortium Project III as a specific group of musicians and even differentiates between guests and members.

[www.ianparry.com] http://www.ianparry.com/Biografie.htm talks about the "band project" touring.

[www.rockreport.be] http://www.rockreport.be/review.asp?id=401 differentiates between members and guests.

(I confess I can't load the linked pages on ianparry.com, and I'm going off previous knowledge + your description)

I think this is an example of someone else's definition of a band conflicting with bandtoband's definition.

To me, the logical interpretation here is that Ian Parry thinks that the Consortium Project releases are releases by a group of musicians he leads, under the name "Ian Parry". Thus the group can have members vs. guests and be a "band" whose name is its leader's name: "Ian Parry". Unfortunately bandtoband does not recognize circumstances like this, and instead considers any band named this way to be a "solo artist".

Slightly contradictory to this, rockreport suggests the name is "Ian Parry's Consortium Project". If this is truly the case, then everything is fine and we just need to change the name. However it doesn't sound like that's what Ian Parry's site says, and I've seen at least one other site in the past that just says "Ian Parry" as the band name.

Rockdetector shows cover art from all three releases, which seem to suggest that the current DB name of "Consortium Project" is in fact the correct name, since those are the only words on the front cover of the first release, they appear in all releases, and "Ian Parry" never appears on any release.

Taking all the above into account, I conclude two things:
(1) Pretty much everyone seems to consider this a band to at least some degree, not just Ian Parry + studio artists. So we should not list this as a solo artist unless we must.
(2) The name of the band is unclear. The current "Consortium Project" seems as supportable as the alternatives.

I was going to say that it's just Ian Parry but apparently for this third album, it's really a band.

[www.centurymedia.net] http://www.centurymedia.net/bands/consortiumproject_III.htm is pretty clear about it being a band. The page also distinguishes between band members and guests.

However, the name of the band should be Consortium Project, not Consortium Project III. 'III' is just an indication that it's the third album.

I agree with Python. The change in the DB to add "III" to the band name seems wrong to me. There are two previous Consortium Project releases, and even if those only count Parry as a member, I think they should all be named the same thing. I think Century Media is wrong for putting the "III" on the name here, and I think they just did it because they didn't publish the other releases.

We originally did have it listed as Consortium Project (at PK's urging, back in the day, that the III should be considered part of the title), but then I saw a few references to the band/project as Consortium Project III on Ian Parry's site, so I changed it last night. Even the logo at the bottom of the album supports this.

Thankfully, I feel confident deferring to you two on this issue.