[x] stage names/aliases

I'm having a hard time figuring out what the policy is on listing band members who are known only by aliases.

For example, I'm willing to wager that at least one of the band members listed on the album "Los Angeles" by X isn't using their given name (unless they all legally changed their names, I suppose).

On the other hand, both Groovie Ghoulies albums in the system only have two band members listed and exclude those who are known only by their aliases.

Am I missing something? Is there another reason the other members of the Groovie Ghoulies aren't listed?

Also, this is more of a feature/format request, when you *have* sleuthed out someone's real name it'd be nice if the listing included both the real name and the alias. I.e., if I compare the Groovie Ghoulies "Travels with My Amp" insert to its BandtoBand listing, I can't currently tell that Chris Barnard = B-Face. Including the alias in parentheses or something would be super-nifty.

---Bill

I'm having trouble with that too, for example Nasty Suicide from Hanoi Rocks is listed under his real name of Jan Stenfors, but people might not know what his real name is. Whereas Bam from the Dogs D'amour is listed as Maurice Bam Ross and Lemmy from Motorhead as Lemmy Kilmister so at least you can find them, but it's a tad inconsistent I think.

Kate

Our general approach is that we use real full names whenever we can find them. We're pretty flexible with first names though, especially those that are "common" nicknames or names that are widely recognized as the person's nickname (like Lemmy). In the case of X, we just haven't been able to find the real names. There are plenty of others that we have failed to track down.

If we can't find a real name and we need the band member to provide a link from one band to another, we'll go ahead and use the stage name. On the other hand, if we can't find the person's real name but we don't need that person to link to another band in the tree, we'll often just drop the person from the database (which was the fate of Googe from Masters Of Reality and most of the members of the Dwarves).

As Kate points out, there are some cases in which I used the person's stage name as a middle name, which is inconsistent from our usual policy of using only real names. I did that before we were able to use the database to document our research--at the time, I needed it to help myself keep track of who was who.

We recognize that many real names are completely unknown to the casual fan. But there are going to be unfamiliar names any time a band-to-band chain includes bands that you don't know well. For us, using real names makes it a lot easier to pin down a band member, especially in genres of music in which band members change their stage names whenever they join new bands. And when performers themselves are inconsistent with how they use their stage names (e.g., Steve Parsons went by Snips, Mr. Snips, or Steve Parsons) on different albums, it's nice to have a simple system for choosing which name to use. Looking further down the road, we envision bandtoband.com as a research tool and we think that having the real names of band members is a benefit.

There are obvious drawbacks to this approach. Aside from the confusion issue, there's the limitation of using only the 26 letters of the English language, which necessarily precludes us from properly representing the names, real or fictitious, of potentially millions of band members.

I think someone (Kate or PK) once suggest to me over email that we list band members by both their real and stage names on a given album. Under that approach, our entry for the Sex Pistols would include both Johnny Rotten and John Lydon, Sid Vicious and John Ritchie, and so on. That would make the album entries too crowded, I think, but I agree that it would be helpful to the user to be able to see the connection between an uncommon real name and a well-known stage name.

I'd be interested in finding out how other people would envision this occurring under our current display system.

How about putting a symbol next to a musician's name to indicate there's an alias for that musician. If you click on the symbol, you could see the alias(es).

Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister
or John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon

It would mean extra sophistication to your program in that the nickname would be band- or album-dependent whereas the "real" name would be used as the keyID for that person.

So John Lydon would appear as John Lydon for his PIL appearances but as John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon on the NMTB album.

Lemmy would of course appear as Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister throughout.

On the occasion where the real name of an artist is (as yet) unknown (e.g. "Mox" in Toe Fat, not given in the band listing) then it would be an open research topic for someone to provide his/her real name. This would keep the options open for the research tool (blinding idea btw) as the band memberships would then be as complete as possible and possible missed connections through nicknames not being propagated through the system would be less likely to happen.

Ultimately it's the inconsistency that bothers me the most, I guess. This bit from Mark's post is the sticking point for me:

"...if we can't find the person's real name but we don't need that person to link to another band in the tree, we'll often just drop the person from the database..."

Seems like you should either *always* drop the person, or *always* include the person. I could live with either way, but I think the latter is preferable, especially if one is thinking of BandtoBand as serving as a research tool.

Including Billy Zoom as a band member of X doesn't add to the network at all, but it gives a more accurate representation of what the band consisted of at the time "Los Angeles" was recorded. Not including Roach as a member of the Groovie Ghoulies doesn't limit the network in any way, but in my mind it leads to a misrepresentation of what the band was when "Travels with My Amp" was recorded.

Clearly the ideal is to use an artist's real name when available, but when it's not available including a stage name a) gives a clearer "snapshot" of the band at a given point in time and b) is an indication that there's an opportunity for further research to be done. If Googe was included in the system, but it was clearly indicated that his(?) real name was currently unknown, some enterprising person with time on his or her hands could go on a Googe hunt. Leaving Googe out of the system condemns him to a sorry fate, indeed.

As for how to best list both an artist's real name and stage name in an album listing, I'm afraid I've no bright ideas. I'll ask my wife who's a UI/Information Designer what she thinks, and after she stops making fun of me, hopefully she'll offer some advice.

---Bill

I agree with Bill here that we are failing to present an accurate representation of a band at the time of a recording and that is a weak point in the system however including a stage name when a real name is not available opens the door to having some stage names on the site and the question of why John Lydon doesn't get his stage name and Marilyn Manson does for example. Obviously it is a question of preference as to which option is better, leaving people out or using stage names, and we chose leaving people out (although we always make a concerted effort to resolve the stage name). Whether the lack of full representation is worth the trade-off is obviously open to debate but we made a decision and have been trying to stick with it as best as possible.

On a different note, I do think Matt / Python's suggestion of adding an additional alias field is a good one. The stage name could be tapped into so that a search for Johnny Rotten would pull up John Lydon and while the true band line-up would consist of the real name with a note towards the alias would exist such as:

John Lydon - "Johnny Rotten"

I'll also look into Matt's suggestion of leaving unresolved names as part of the album information, separate from the official line-up, as open for further research so we could still have all members listed on the album page somewhere. I'm going to write this stuff down on my To Do list and see where I can get. Good suggestions although I'm still not sure if a "blinding idea" is a good or bad thing...


Kevin

I would prefer it if you didn't leave stage names out for this reason - say I found a band that I was trying to link in, and one of the members happened to be someone who was "left out" because you didn't know their real name, I might not realise (having done a search and found nothing) that this person was already in a band on the site and therefore easy to link the other band in, and I could waste *hours* researching a way to get them in, when it was technically there already.

Kate

My original suggestion to Kevin via email was along the lines of the ideas that are getting traction here, basically, that members with known stage/real names have both listed, something like "John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten)" and that searching for either one will pull up the member. I also think that if there's an obvious way to just show both names with a color/icon/something that shows which is which, then bands should ALWAYS have all available info listed, even if that means only displaying stage names for cases where real names are unknown. Many black metal bands' members are either only ever known by their stage names (including in private), or they legally change their name (which, since you can do that just by using the new name consistently everywhere, is really the same thing). I am NOT a fan of the current system of not showing stage names, and I especially agree that their treatment should be consistent, i.e. you should never decide whether to drop a member from a listing based on whether you need the connection to another group. (Because IMO you should never decide to drop a member.)

Keith Richard, who changed his name mid-career to Keith Richards? And so on.

With Keith Richards and others like them we take the newer name and for compatibility back port it to earlier records to show the connectivity. This also happenes in the system with Alice Cooper and with marriage's last name change. I'll probably write up a Rule / FAQ about that...


Kevin

You may already be aware of this site, but in case you're not: this site lists a whole bunch of stage names and the corresponding real names
[www.amiright.com] http://www.amiright.com/names/pseudo.shtml