[ ] Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Greatest Hit

We have various examples in the db of solo artists co-opting band songs on their own compilation albums, most obviously Neil Young's 'Decade' which includes a bunch of Buffalo Springfield and CSNY tracks.

But Springsteen's latest compilation does the opposite, being credited to Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band although all tracks (on the US version at least - let's keep this as simple as possible) originally appeared on albums released by Springsteen solo:
[en.wikipedia.org] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greatest_Hits_(Bruce_Springsteen_%26_the_E_Street_B...

So do we:
1) credit the album to BS&TESB and list all lineups therein, accurately reflecting the evolution of the band (this would get the early E Street Band lineup featuring Vini Lopez and David Sancious into the db, along with Ernest Carter on 'Born To Run'), or
2) credit the album to BS (released by BS&TESB) on the grounds that solo songs can't suddenly morph into band songs just because they're on a different CD

There may well be a 3) I haven't thought of.

To add to the confusion, that early track with Lopez and Sancious on it dates from 'The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle', released in 1973 - but according to Wikipedia "The E Street Band is considered to have started in October 1972, even though it was not officially known as such until September 1974" - so the band as they are known now and on the creidts of this comp didn't necessarily even exist at the time of recording.

Anyone have any thoughts on this mess?

The 'easy' part of the question mirrors the current Kiss discussion. If they were released by Bruce Springsteen as solo works - I'd struggle to find reasons to make new line-ups of bands that weren't credited first time round.

I also have a long-standing issue with people being credited as being in bands they didn't know they were in at the time. So if in 1973 you'd asked these guys - "What band did you record that for?", they'd presumably have said "We're Bruce Springsteen's backing band." (or some such). I think that defines that you can't retrospectively create bands that didn't exist at the time. That way lies a whole new kind of madness.

Ah, but they WERE credited first time round - but only in the liner notes, not on the front cover.

I agree that retrospectively crediting the 1973 track to The E Street Band would be problematic as they weren't called that at the time, but every other song on the album was always recognised as being by BS&TESB, it's just that TESB never got front cover crediting.

But he still does that - I saw what i think is his latest CD today, it was credited to BS as a solo CD but says 'recorded with the E Street Band' on it. If it was released solo at the time - wouldn't we need to be very convinced there was some hugely over-riding circumstance before we re-credited it as a band effort? Similar for stuff done 35 years ago (IMHO).

As I suggested in the other discussion ( [bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7747 ), I have no problem recognizing that a song or album can simultaneously belong to two bands under certain circumstances. Solo artists and their backing bands are especially susceptible to such circumstances, but others come to mind.

These are examples similar to the one at issue here:

Ozzy Osbourne / Blizzard Of Ozz:
[bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=9256
and
[bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&BandId=8295

Geza X:
[bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=12365 (originally released in 1981 by Geza X)

Don Dokken:
[bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&ArtistId=885 (check out albums two, three, and four)

These are examples of other circumstances:

Burning Starr
[bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&BandId=2721
and
[bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=9349

Dinosaur / Dinosaur Jr.
[bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=5538
and
[en.wikipedia.org] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_(album)

Shouldn't we interpret the rules to recognize reality?

OK. I give up. It's a function of the imperfection of the releases so what can we do but record it? I already fought this one and eventually caved in (Los Lobotomys). But should we try and frame some rules round it to stop rampant re-crediting and creating groups that didn't really exist (in addition to 5c)? Perhaps (suggestion):

1) Failure to credit specifically does not mean re-crediting; it has to be shown there's an intent to re-credit to a different band/artist name.

2) We accept re-crediting of band work to solo work unless we have a good reason not to.

3) We never accept any partial line-ups from the original; if band ABC included Rod, Jane & Freddie and the same music is released as DEF; Rod & Jane cannot exclude Freddie as a member. Similarly, we do not accept additional members re-assigned from guest status.

4) We only accept any re-crediting of solo release to band release where we are happy that the added band members were aware that they were in a band of that name at the time of recording.

Of the examples you quote:

Geza X. I think you've extended rule 5c from its original meaning in adding this. If a band 123 made up of Tom, Dick and Harry release an album and then re-release it as 456 but still made up of T,D and H - that, I thought, was the circumstance being catered for by 5c. Not for a different line-up to be credited with already released music. It doesn't look like a great entry in any case - see ev1 for possible line-up issues, it's got 2 tracks from '79 (different line-up?), needs rec date in any case. Certainly looks like line-up changed at some point from this 1980 review. [www.synthpunk.org] http://www.synthpunk.org/nervous_gender/3-12-80s.html
I do think this would probably satisfy the requirement that the (right) line-up did consider themselves to be The Mommymen when recording.

Dokken is similar to Ozzy Osbourne - there is a single off this album on Carrere from 1981 credited to 'Dokken'. That they were carrying no little confusion in their wake at this time is probably exemplified here:
[www.discogs.com] http://www.discogs.com/Various-Heavy-Metal-Thunder/release/1061386
"Tracks A4 & B4 credit the band name as "Dokken" on the sleeve and "Don Dokken" on the labels."
I guess my proposed rule 4 would allow our current treatment to stand.

The Jack Starr issue is consistent with our current rule 5c (the 1997 one needs a rec date of 1986 though). Dinosaur / (jr) is again consistent with 5c.

That all still feels less than perfect and I keep coming back to the feeling that people shouldn't be in bands here that they were never really in and 5c already allows this.

A previously proposed rule about not recognising already released music would get past this totally but that's not (I know) got support.

This will eventually resolve this discussion as well as these:

[www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8765
[www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9276

I reiterate my suggestion that (to use the Neil Young example):

There should be an entry for:
Band: "Buffalo Springfield"
Album: "Decade (released by Neil Young)"

... and similar entries for Crazy Horse, Stills-Young, CSNY etc.

Sameways:
Band: "Dave Cousins"
Album: "Strawbs By Choice (released by Strawbs)"

That way it all gets credited.

If the compilation is named for a band that never actually existed on any of the original track releases (is the Bruce Springsteen entry on those lines?) then you'd have:

Band: "Bruce Springsteen"
Album: "Greatest Hits (released by BS&ESB)

... and never actually submit an entry for BS&ESB as such.

That's my take on it.

Are the Buffalo Springfield songs in this compilation credited as such? If so, then we can easily add those songs as released by Neil Young. If "Buffalo Springfield" isn't mentioned anywhere then we could just ignore those songs. After all, listing the album as a Neil Young album isn't wrong. We're just not listing the fact that it also contains Buffalo Springfield songs.

No they're not. That's where we differ. I believe we should credit them to BS even if they're not *explicitly* credited as such on the album.

Reasons (a) we're mis-representing history, and (b) it's not always easy to see whether the band *is* credited unless you have the artefact in your hand (and even then you sometimes have to hunt for it).

I disagree on a). We're not mis-representing anything. We're just not representing it at all.

i agree with Python: in the case of Neil Young - Decade, we're not saying that Neil Young made all songs on the album, but that his solo stuff appears on the album and the album is credited to him. we're not commenting on Buffalo Springfield at all (and neither are the album credits). i think it is safer to assume that crediting does/does not occur for a reason.

Young writes some sleeve notes about each song on the album: in some cases he happens to mention the band in which he was playing, e.g. "I remember Crazy Horse like Roy Orbison remembers Blue Bayou", in some cases he doesn't, except obliquely: "We played it till 3 a.m. till we were tired enough to play it as slowly as I wanted it." (in this case referring to CSNY).

So there's no indication that Young had any reason to obscure the fact that these songs weren't him solo. Attributing the whole album to NY solo sounds dishonest to me - he himself didn't have any such agenda - and if we *know* who the band was who recorded the original (because we have it already in the DB) where's the problem?

So someone logs into b2b: "Wonder what albums Buffalo Springfield are on?" and thereby misses Decade - important because there's something on there that's released nowhere else.

I see your point but not including Buffalo Springfield doesn't equal claiming that Buffalo Springfield isn't on that album.
I've entered solo songs by Jon Oliva that only appear on a Savatage compilation album. I didn't bother adding the same album for Savatage since it doesn't add anything to the database that's not already in there.
In b2b terms the entry for Savatage is a different album than the entry for Jon Oliva as a solo artist.

The Neil Young 'Decade' album isn't analogous to the 'Joe Perry' track. We have a cop out with the Neil Young since we don't (by our rules) label it a multi-artist comp and we are therefore guilty of nothing but deliberate (and in my view unwarranted) silence. The Joe Perry track is different - there is no track properly credited to 'Joe Perry' on that album - it's just 1 track off a Joe Perry Project album erroneously re-credited.

Kevin and I talked about these issues at length and came back to the very same guidelines listed in my post at [www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7747 on March 27, 2010.

Matt, one of the things in that post is this: "If--and only if--the packaging of an album by one band explicitly credits a song or the entire recording to another band, then we have a 'released by' situation." One reason for this limitation is to avoid confusion among visitors, and another is simply to represent the release as it was presented to the world. I don't think this presents a terribly high bar; recall the recent lengthy conversation we had about the [www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/band/pink-floyd/a-fish-out-of-water-released-by-syd-ba... entry.

Aside from the Solo Artist / Band Including Solo Artist situations (which are especially prone to multiple crediting), I do not know of any entries in the database that represent new lineups for previously-released recordings. Does anyone else? Misterpomp, how does the Joe Perry example fare in 2) of your above post from July 1, 2009?