[ ] Later redefinition of history

Kevin Ayers And The Whole World play a gig, it gets recorded, and 28 years later released, but the name of the band the gig was played under does not actually appear on the cover:

[bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?PageField=Wiki&ActionField=var&AlbumIdFi...

How does this work? Can we credit it to "KAATWW" as that was the name of the band when it was recorded (well-documented) or do we live with the cover and say: compilation between Ayers, Oldfield, Bedford etc.?

Here's a pic:

[www.dbennett.karoo.net] http://www.dbennett.karoo.net/Covers/Garden%20Of%20Love.JPG

What if a so-far unconnected solo artist (for sake of argument Kate Bush) were to release a retrospective on which appears a track to which she attributes a band name to? Do we suddenly have a band where there was none before? Nice though it would be to finally connect her, I don't think this is what we do ...

IMO then the KAATWW case is the same situation except in reverse.

not sure if these are similar situations that have already arisen:

[www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/index.php?PageField=Wiki&ActionField=var&Album...
a live recording that is later released by Steampacket - a band that didn't really existed for another couple of years after this was recorded.

[www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=26722
Aaron Burckhard is removed from the 1987 lineup as the band were never called Nirvana while he was in the group but the tracks were later released and credited to Nirvana.
a discussion about it here:
[bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7345

[www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/index.php?PageField=Wiki&ActionField=var&Album...
a band record as The Jury and the tracks later appear on a Nirvana boxset but aren't credited to The Jury. therefore, the entry languishes in the queue - it's not really a Jury release or Nirvana release.

i don't really know what to do. your problem is different than the Steampacket example where we really can't add in a 1964 lineup when the band hasn't existed yet, but we do a similar thing with the 1987 Nirvana lineup. we can't really credit the album to Kevin Ayers And The Whole World if the band name isn't mentioned anywhere, unless we invent some sort of new 'released by' situation.

Not sure if this is a similar situation:

[bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=6434

Originally, the band was called "Violet's Demise" but the record was never released. Years later it was released under the name "Logan/Robertson".

So now we have it in the db as Logan/Robertson but with all four Violet's Demise band members.

i think there's a couple of options here:

(1) the album is entered as 'Ayers, Oldfield, Bedford etc.'' and gets a 1970 recording date. unfortunately that implies that 'Ayers, Oldfield et al' was a band in 1970, which it never was.
on the plus side - say a nameless band gets together and writes and records and bunch of tracks. The band continues playing shows under a couple of temporary names, and change lineups once or twice, until they finally decide on a permanent name. One year later, the album is release under this new name (see Nirvana - Bleach.). i'm sure it's pretty common that a group doesn't have a name during the recordings sessions. similarly, a band has a name (Copperhead) and records an album but the record company decide they don't like the name and make the band change their name to Minnesoda when the album is released (see Minnesoda - s/t). in both the Nirvana and Minnesoda examples, i instinctively want to go with the name on the packaging. it feels like the recording + plus the band name changes, and including the lineup changes, is one big process culminating in the release of the album. Copperhead 'feels' like the same band as Minnesoda and Minnesoda is the end result that releases the album.

(2) the album is credited to Kevin Ayers And The Whole World, even though the group's name doesn't appear anywhere on the packaging or...

(3) it's credited to Kevin Ayers And The Whole World (released by Ayers, Oldfield...).
pretty much the exact same problem arises with the Soupsongs entry. the band played a show billed as Soupsongs but the recording was later released by 'Julie Tippets, Ian Maidman etc etc'. if we allowed a new 'released by' rule, it might solve the problems created by options 1 (rewriting history) and 2 (crediting where there is no crediting). on the other hand:
would we create an entry called Pen Cap Chew - Bleach (released by Nirvana)?
what about The Jury (released by Mark Lanegan) and later (released by Nirvana)?
how would we determine what the name of a band was during the recording sessions?
we could create a 'live performance' clause whereby this situation would only apply to live recordings. it might be easier to determine what the band was billed as at a particular gig. however:
what if Bob Marley And The Wailers were just billed as Bob Marley for a performance but the recording was later credited to the full band?
what if Talking Heads played a halloween show as the Walking Deads, played a regular set, and some of the tracks ended up on a TH live comp?

i think (1) is most consistent with how we've treated these entries in the past (see Soupsongs) and seems the easiest, despite its inaccuracies. (PS i'm not sure if we need to look at adding 1987 Aaron Burkhard/Skid Row as a Nirvana lineup on the boxset...)

This seems simple to me:

We use the name that it is released under.

Yes, but is it a colab or a band?

Did they all have individual releases when this was released?

... I'm fairly sure not, so it's a band. I'll sort it out.

Haven't we previously deemed these kinds of tracks as being unusable for b2b purposes because we know that when they were recorded they were done as 'Kevin Ayers And The Whole World' and therefore any other name that they were released on is not correct? And equally that, since they weren't released under that name, we can't credit them to that original band. You can't revisit history. I think we're only tempted to make an exception here because the 'band becomes collab' issue has so many less b2b ramifications than the 'solo becomes band' or 'collab becomes band' variants. However, I'd say that we should have a rule and adhere to it regardless of the precise shape of the band-morphing that has taken place retrospectively.

This seems so simple to me. It was released under a certain name so that makes it a release by that "band." I don't really care what the band was previously known as.

I'm willing to bet we have 50+ releases in the dB where the band had a different name when they were recording the songs than what it was released under.

Deciding not to include these at all just seems silly.

I agree with Scott. Otherwise it just becomes too complicated. Once an album is released under a particular "band name" then that makes a particular historical artefact which can be referred to and cited. If we are reliant upon rumours, hearsay and personal knowledge along the lines of: "I happen to know (somehow) that when they recorded this (or performed this gig) they were known as blahblah ..." then it just becomes too unverifiable.

I think that exaggerates the issue, MattW. Here we have verifiable evidence that the concert was recorded by a band called one thing, but that much later, someone (perhaps the main player, perhaps accidentally) has simply decided to excise that from history. You can't do that. Let's go back to first principles here - what are we trying to do at b2b: establish the links between bands. So (assuming all our info is right in this instance) the participants on this CD played as a band called Kevin Ayers & The Whole World when it was recorded. No amount of re-jigging, re-crediting or post hoc adjusting can change that. The band that recorded that piece of music was not known as the unwieldy collab we currently have it as. Of the options available, I, like scott, would hate to see anything excluded where we can log it and would vote for
KAATWW||Kevin Ayers, Mike Oldfield, Robert Wyatt · David Bedford, Lol Coxhill, Six Beautiful Girls
but that seems a big change in what we've done before.

The quality and thoroughness of the crediting on this piece of tat is probably well summed up at:
[www.mikeoldfield.net] http://www.mikeoldfield.net/mike/guest.html
"For some reason, this is credited to 'Kevin Ayers And The Whole WIDE World'."

So it looks like the band name IS on there, albeit it's wrong.

Exaggerating the issue or not, it points out the need to apply a repeatable unambiguous ruling. In this case, fair enough, we (appear to) have an indication that the band name (albeit not quite the same) is on the record somewhere, so it can be credited to KA & The Whole Wide World (which they may well have gigged as during the course of their incarnation).

But the question's wider, which is why I deliberately exaggerated it, so as to indicate the need for a rock-solid ruling that can be applied in all circs.

I'll go through and rename it to "whole wide world" and we can take it from there.

I think that b2b has a consistent system. If there's any confusion here, I think it's because b2b determines band name and band members in fundamentally different ways.

1) For band names, we rely solely on the packaging. This is so even if the packaging does not reflect a band name that actually existed in the real world. If the "real" name of the band does not appear on the packaging, we can't use it. This is why we have albums by

* Rainbow and Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow
* Burning Starr and Jack Starr's Burning Starr (reissue of album by Burning Starr)
* Thin Lizzie and Thin Lizzy
* Lynard Skynard and Lynyrd Skynyrd
* Daemon (alternate version of album by Hard Stuff)
* Chuck Schuldiner (reissues of demos recorded by Death)
* Four On The Floor (band actually known as The Hollywood Horns)
* Green Bullfrog (band had no name during jam session)
* Adam And The Ants (US 2) (band actually known as Adam And The Antz)

There are some challenges when the packaging lists two or more similar but conflicting band names, but those are special cases.

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. I won't list examples here because we have tons of them.

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2) For band membership, we go by what was actually true at the time of the recording, no matter what the credits say. This is why

* we exclude Richard Wright from [bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=4450 even though he is credited as a band member on reissues
* we exclude Jon Oliva from [bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=438 even though he founded the band, recorded most of the material, and re-joined the band shortly thereafter
* we exclude Duane Allman from [bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=1448 even though he played on most of the songs and is credited equally as a band member
* we don't recognize lineups for songs, included on many Misfits compilations, recorded by Glenn Danzig and non-member Eerie Von after the original band broke up

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3) When band and membership issues collide because a band name changes or because one band's music is later credited to a band with a different name, we have three approaches:

a) If the band name change occurred during the lifetime of the band, we include only those members who were still in the band after the name change. This is why

* Dinosaur and Dinosaur Jr. have identical band membership
* Aaron Burckhard does not appear on Nirvana releases

b) If the band name change occurs after the lifetime of the band, all members transfer. This is why

* Burning Starr and Jack Starr's Burning Starr have identical band membership
* Logan/Robertson's album includes all members of Violet's Demise
* Four On The Floor's album includes all members of The Hollywood Horns

c) If the band name changes from a band to a solo artist, only the solo artist is a member. This is why

* Chuck Schuldiner is the only member credited on his solo album, even though the songs were actually recorded by his band Death

d) If the band name changes from a solo artist to the solo artist's backing band, we figure out who was actually in the backing band at the time of the recording.

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These rules aren't perfect, but they get the job done and, as far as I know, we have applied them consistently. If there are exceptions, I'm happy to fix specific them, but changing the rules now and applying them to the database would be a nightmare.

That sounds like my view is in error then. Apologies. I dislike the issue that we can end up with in applying the principle of 'whatever it's released as, that's how we record it' (if that's a valid synopsis of one of Mark's points) : that people can be made members of bands which, at the time, they didn't know they were in and which may not even have existed under that name.

just trying out an application of these rules on an oldy...

[www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/index.php?PageField=Wiki&ActionField=var&Album...
1) we use Jez And Vini as the band name.
2) N/A
3) "one band's music is later credited to a band with a different name" - the track was originally released by Durutti Column in 1980 and was re-credited to Jez And Vini.

from here i'm not really sure whether to apply a), b) or d) but i think whatever we do we're left was Vini as the sole member of the band Jez And Vini.
is this right?