[x] Gerry & Simon Laffy

Does "Gerry & Simon Laffy" qualify as a band? It's not a collaboration between two solo artists because then the name would have to be "Gerry Laffy & Simon Laffy". Right?

[www.interq.or.jp] http://www.interq.or.jp/rock/dinexion/gerryandsimmon.JPG

Cherie and Marie Currie has been bouncing around in my head ...

I'm still pondering a good response to this thread, the 2.0 thread, and PK's ideas at the end of the thread on the old Rule 8c.

I'm glad that idea of mine didn't sink unnoticed. Sorry for all the rambling that preceded it, but I really do think it's by a good idea. English has "and" and "&" to indicate two separate items, so why can't the database have it too?

I've got another one that's rather unclear:

[rateyourmusic.com] http://rateyourmusic.com/album_images/o49233.jpg

When you quickly look at the cover, you'd say it's an album by "Kotzen/Howe". However, when you look closer, their first names are written above their last names. In my opinion it's obvious that the main focus is on "Kotzen/Howe" and not on "Richie Kotzen/Greg Howe". Just wanted to know what everybody else thinks.

I would allow it; after all, the Cacophony cover also has clearly Marty Friedman/Jason Becker written on it...
[bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=1402

I can't view your link for some reason, but the one on this page looks like a collaboration of two solo artists to me:

[www.guitarnine.com] http://www.guitarnine.com/image/tilt.jpg

I don't know if the Cacophony example really helps your argument--many albums have the full names of the band members right on the album cover. The Cacophony album also includes a distinct band name / logo.

It's not the "Tilt" album; the first names are indeed much larger on that one. The album I'm talking about is "Project".

[www.richiekotzen.com] http://www.richiekotzen.com/

I can't give a direct link since the site's in Flash. Discography -> Kotzen/Howe Project


And while we're talking logo's. You could say that the band is called "Kotzen/Howe" and their names also appear on the front but cleaverly integrated on the cover so you can read the name of the band from left to right and the names of the band members from top to bottom.

It's not that I absolutely want that Howe guy in the database; that's really how I see it.

I can see your point, especially because the "/" is only as tall as the last names and doesn't extend to the first names listed above it. On the other hand, the text of the very same page (which happens to be the official site of one of the guys) uses the full names of both people.

But on the other-other hand; this album: [www.guitar9.com] http://www.guitar9.com/extraction.html has a similar way of describing the members involved and is referred to as "Howe/Wooten/Chambers".

We may have to adjust some of the rules a bit, but it looks like we're going to handle true collaborations the way that PK suggested in the "Rule 8c" thread:

'If A & B collaborate (a true collaboration, not a "new artist") to make an album, then put it in as an album that's by A and B: it's by two artists, who maintain their separate identities but worked together on the album.'

--

That rule would apply to collaborations between multiple solo artists (e.g., Paul Gilbert & Jimi Kidd), regardless of whether they've previously released material, and to collaborations between existing bands like Anthrax & Public Enemy.

Bands/collaborations of the form Cherie and Marie Currie or Gerry & Simon Laffy probably will be treated as collaborations between two solo artists (and handled the way described above) despite the current language of 4d and 6.

There's obviously some re-wording that has to be done, but that's the most likely approach. Thoughts?

The reason I like that is because not only does it map well to reality, but it also eliminates the (sometimes confusing) rules about whether artists have "previously established" themselves when determining whether they can get into the database. The only downside is that there's some added ambiguity about linking: if a collaborative album is treated as joining two artists the same way a band's album joins two members:

Metallica -(Dave Mustaine)- Megadeth -(Marty Friedman)- Cacophony
vs.
Racer X -(Paul Gilbert)- Paul Gilbert & Jimi Kidd -(Jimi Kidd)- [...some band Jimi Kidd is in...]

...then effectively it does imply that they're "in a band together" at least as much as other bands do, for linking purposes. There's no other good way to do this -- you can't set up collaborations as "doubles" (linking the album to itself with one artist coming in one side and the other going out the other) because there's no "common artist" to serve as the middle link between the two artists collaborating.

On the other hand, if you DON'T allow links like this, and treat the collaboration more like a split album, then a collaboration doesn't appear to unite the members any more closely than a split release, and that's obviously bogus.

I think I lean toward the first option (allow such links) because it strikes me that two artists collaborating generally work as closely together in making a release as members of a band do. In that sense I think collaborations should be valid junctions in links. But then I'm not sure how to distinguish "collaboration" from "band". Should they show up in a band list? If we add "Paul Gilbert" as a Solo Artist [band] and you search for results for Paul Gilbert the Solo Artist [band], should you get all the Paul Gilbert and all the Paul Gilbert & Jimi Kidd releases? I don't know.

Followup thought:
I suppose since my original complaint was that the idea of a collaboration as a "band" was silly, then the logical extension is that having only "bands" and "artists" in the View Data section or as database concepts is also too limiting. Perhaps a new entry type, "Collaborations", should appear and be used to represent collaborations between bands/artists? Or maybe it's unnecessary to list all these separately, and simply the database needs to change behind-the-scenes to say an album is by a "collaboration" instead of a band.

Also I did think of a way to show links. Perhaps a collaborative album SHOULD show up as a double that links the collaborating artists, with "[Collaboration]" as the joining member instead of an actual member. This way it's clear the artists aren't members of a single band, but collaborations aren't totally ignored by links the way split albums are.

So how do you plan on handling collaborations between a band in the db and a band that's not in the db (and not likely ever will be). If you would add Jimi Kidd to the database as someone who has collaborated with Paul Gilbert the whole system would fall apart when you try to link Jimi Kidd to anyone in the database since he's not directly connected to anyone in the tree.

Using my method, he'd be connected through his collaboration with Paul Gilbert.

Kevin and I discussed the issue of collaborations at length tonight for the zillionth time tonight.

PK, your idea on how to handle collaborations is very clever and also, depending on how you view recordings, very intuitive. Nevertheless, we've decided to treat collaborations similar to the way we treat split releases and other compilations: the album will be attributed to all artists that appear on the collaboration, but there will be no sharing of lineups. Our rationale is that band lineups should be kept separate as long as there is no merging of the bands.

Python, for a collaboration between A (already in the tree) and B (not yet in the tree), we'll attribute the release to A but not B, in keeping with how we deal with split releases and other compilations.

This approach may be a little counter-intuitive and it disregards the obvious fact that the collaborating bands worked closely together, but it's how we're going to do things for now. However, we will be storing additional data in the database to flag collaborations, just in case we want to treat collaborations differently later on. (We're doing something similar with solo artists as well.)

I can live with that. Of course I liked my other idea better, but I think this way is perhaps preferable to the idea of creating a "new band" out of every collaboration. They each have their strengths and weaknesses; that way tends to create fake artists, while this way fails to find links that I suspect most people would consider to exist.

As long as you're storing database info about things to facilitate a change of heart later, not all hope is lost :D