[x] Trans Siberian Orchestra

I've always wondered why you guys have added Trans Siberian Orchestra as a band. In my opinion it's not a band but a concept. I don't immediately see a specific rule broken by TSO. However, when TSO is on tour, they actually visit the East Coast and West Coast of the US at the same time. There are two different TSO's on tour at the same time, playing the same set. TSO is just a bunch of (ex-)Savatage members anyway so you should be able to link every member through Savatage.
Any thoughts on this?

I didn't know a whole lot about TSO when I added it to the tree, but as you pointed out, it doesn't break any rules. One of our goals is to include in the tree as many "bands" as possible that can conform to the rules. As we branch out into jazz, classical music, art rock, and jam bands, things get a little tricky, but even if something makes it in due only to a technicality (e.g., Branca - [bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&BandId=1284 ), we'd like to include it.

For TSO, I picked the one album that would create the most shortcuts to band members that were already in the tree (there are more than just Savatage members), and I also went the extra mile, as I used to do with all submissions, of making sure that all the band members that created shortcuts had also performed/toured with TSO. It doesn't bother me that TSO tours in two "halves" as long as all the members listed in our tree are recognized as part of the collective whole.

-Mark

OK, seems fair :-)

Back to Savatage then; Handful Of Rain. While the line-up in the booklet is Stevens, Skolnick, Middleton and Wacholz, Wacholz wasn't in the band anymore at the time of release. The European version of the album even has band pictures of Jeff Plate instead of Wacholz. Now to complicate things, while Middleton was a band member during the time of recording (Wacholz probably as well) he didn't play bass on the record and Wacholz didn't play drums. All the instruments, except for the guitar solos, were recorded by Jon Oliva. So the recording line-up was in fact Oliva, Stevens and Skolnick. Even though Oliva left Savatage after Streets, he continued to write all the music and he re-joined to tour for Handful Of Rain.

I can look up the articles that back up the above story if you like. Are there any rules for this kind of situations?

The booklet of Gutter Ballet by Savatage has Chris Caffery in the line-up while he wasn't a band member at the time of recording; he wasn't even a guest musician because he didn't record a single note on that album. Yet his picture is all over the place and he plays in all the videos clips that were made for this album... so does he qualify as a band member for that particular album? Note that he left the band after the Gutter Ballet tour and didn't rejoin until Dead Winter Dead.

The way I look at it is that we're trying to link band lineups using officially released recordings as the "proof" or a sort of "snapshot" of a given lineup. Whether someone is or isn't in the band at the time of the album's release, what really matters is the people who recorded the album--specifically those people who were recognized by the band as "members" of the band.

For example, on Kiss's Unmasked album, we recognize Gene, Paul, and Ace, but not Peter (who appears in the artwork and the credits as the drummer) because Peter left the band the year before and didn't play on the album. We do not list Anton Fig (who actually played all the drums on the album) because everybody knows there was never a member of Kiss named Anton Fig.

So, the Chris Caffery situation you describe is an easy one. We wouldn't list him as a band member on Gutter Ballet because he wasn't in the band when the album was recorded, despite his appearances in the artwork and the supporting videos. We would take this approach even if Caffery had been a guest musician who played on every track and then later joined the band. Why? Because he wasn't "in the band" when he was on the album. (Feel free to jump in and ridicule us, PK.)

The situation you describe for Handful Of Rain is more complicated. I could go either way on what to do when people who are in the band don't actually play on the album. A literal interpretation of Rule 2 would require us to list the lineup for that one as Stevens and Skolnick, the only two people on the album who were actually band members when the album was recorded. I'd like to hear what Kevin thinks about that. My trick in a situation like this is to delete the messy album and pick a different one that provides the desired links to the rest of the tree. Do you know of one?

As for your post about Talisman, it's not the length of time that the person was associated with the band that matters, it's the intent of the band. If Bieler was recognized as "in the band" by the rest of the band members at the time of the recording, then by all means, let's get that shortcut in here.

-Mark

> Stevens and Skolnick, the only two people on the album who were actually band members when the album was recorded.

Mark and I are on the same page on this one. We try to use albums as "snapshots" of the band at any particular point in time and only those members who were a part of the band and recorded on a particular record appear on the "snapshot". It is hard to imagine a true member of a band not recording on a record and his membership could be called into question. To avoid these potentially troublesome situations we adhere to the snapshot ideal and record who played on the record as the true band line-up at the time.


Kevin

This page on the official web site ( [www.savatage.com] http://www.savatage.com/bandinfo/faq3.html ) explains just about everything except for the legal issues behind why Jon Oliva couldn't be listed as a band member on Handful Of Rain or the U.S. version of Dead Winter Dead. I updated the family tree accordingly and threw in some other albums to make sure all the shortcuts were intact.