Talk:Barenaked Ladies/Archive 2

Housemartins? =

Is there no discussion of their uncanny resemblance to The Housemartins? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.162.77.10 (talk) 19:47, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

WTF are the Housemartins? More importantly, is this a fact, or an opinion? To me, it seems like an opinion, and I don't care if all your friends agree with you, this would be purely opinion and therefore not suitable to be added to a WP page. Thesithwithashotgunshell (talk) 14:49, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

PUT BACK The Ballad of Gordon

Moving to bottom of page - see: Ballad of Gordon, above - TheHYPO 20:40, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Have to disagree with you there, TheHYPO. I used to adore The Ballad of Gordon (and, judging by the comments on YouTube, I'm not the only one). I never knew it had a title; I never knew it was by the Barenaked Ladies; and for those two reasons alone I think it should be noted. Whether or not it deserves an entire paragraph is up to whoever puts it in (I'm not gonna, since obviously someone is against it). But it was memorable, it was a catchy tune, and even after a decade of not thinking about it, I was able to work out the words in my head enough to look it up, so it's not like some minor pointless blip on the radar that no one would ever remember or care about. The concept, the lyrics, and the visuals work together very well to support the message and convey it to children ("I've never seen so many beings of so many colors"); it was and is art. Put the reference back, even if just in a sentence. Thank you. Kilyle 06:01, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll start of by saying that, at the time, I thought the song was already listed in the discography at the bottom of the page. I will add that now, and I believe that is the extent to which it needs to be mentioned (it has its own page btw). If you believe that is insufficient, please mention it and we can discuss it further.

That said, my reasons for my above opinion is that an entire three-sentance paragraph that basically said things that would belong in an article on TBOG, but not here (defining what it was, and saying it was never on an album). Whereas the video was not, as far as I can research, a milestone for BNL, I don't think it it necessary in the history section (it didn't change anything for them, wasn't their first anything, etc.) also unfortunately, as a PSA, it's notoreously difficult to research or find any sources on. I'm still not entirely clear on when the PSA was recorded or shown. It's hard to include subjects in the history without specific timeline of where to put them. One has to remember that with a 20 year history (next year), the band has done a load of stuff. Wikipedia should not be a catalogue of all a band has done (eg: people have twice added lately that BNL sang the anthem at the Grey Cup (Canadian football championship). It's true, but they have sang anthems at dozens if not hundreds of events. If this were mentioned before the game as a notice, perhaps it would be relevant, but now that it's over, it's hardly a noteworthy achievement. And I think, the older you go (20 years, vs. this year), the more significant an item has to be in shaping the band for it to require mention on wikipedia. TheHYPO 20:40, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Sweet, a whole page of its own. Anyway. Sorry for the delayed reply. As far as sources: You can find it on YouTube, and the original footage has the band's name at the beginning and/or end. Significance: Every child watching cartoons during the time it was on was exposed to it frequently, and it was so memorable that there are many who have kept it in their heads to this day - and it's not so much that, as the fact that they did so without making any connection to the Barenaked Ladies. I certainly made no such connection until I went looking for it, just prior to finding the Wikipedia page the first time. So I think it's not so much "catalog all of their minor appearances" as "Even if you know nothing about this band, you may have already internalized a song you never realized was theirs." Kinda like, say, how Ringo Starr narrated Thomas the Tank Engine, it's just a surprising connection from your childhood. And yeah, if this had played like once or twice, or as a month's promotion for something, probably it wouldn't be more than a blip, but this thing played like forever. More than enough to get into the heads of the kiddies, who are now adults. So, that would be my rationale for having a mention of it in the article, as opposed to merely the footnotes. I mean, the knowledge that I thoroughly enjoyed and basically memorized a song of theirs, that was enough to get me checking out their band when nothing to that point had ever made me care. Kilyle (talk) 05:01, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Replacing the main image

If TheHYPO can find a better group photo in his collection, what would you guys think about replacing the image that's there now? I think the image is really insulting to Steven Page, it makes him look like a goof. Writer1400 (talk) 23:13, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you familiar with Steven Page ;-) JPG-GR (talk) 08:43, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

That's what I tried to tell him. I didn't know showing him miming golf could be seen as an insult. I hope noone ever photographs me miming golf!

I have taken the liberty of adding a description to the tag on the file (once clicked) that explains the context, just in case anyone is utterly confused. TheHYPO (talk) 09:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I am familiar with Steven Page so I already know he's just joking around in the picture but what about people who come to this article who aren't familar with the band. It's just best to have a photo of all of them acting normal AS LONG as we actually have a photo.

But JPG-GR, your not answering the question, if TheHYPO had another good group photo that could be used, would you mind if the image that's there now is replaced? Writer1400 (talk) 12:29, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

To be perfectly honest, I'd prefer to limit the number of images I have taken that I donate to free use public domain. There is nothing wrong with the image. I picked it specifically, so I must have felt at the time that it was the best image to illustrate the band. I don't plan to go back to look for a better one, because I don't see any evidence (in the years its been up) of anyone thinking it's inappropriate. The standard used should be "does anyone think it's inappropriate when they see it"... not can you CONVINCE anyone it's inappropriate once you ask them to judge if he looks like an idiot. If you tell people that, they are going to look at it again through the eyes of trying to see him as an idiot, and might be able to - but the point is that they didn't see it that way when they looked at it. Only once you planted the suggestion.

If you think unfamiliar readers won't understand what he's doing, you have a simple solution: change the caption to "the band joking around on stage" or something of that nature, and everyone will know it's the band joking around. That's what they do. The picture illustrates what they do onstage. It's not taking a picture of George W. Bush and photoshopping him into a thong or something... It's a real picture of a real band doing what they really do in the public setting for which they are best known. What's the problem? TheHYPO (talk) 19:27, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

PS: I'm still completely amiss as to how this makes him seem idiotic, wherein I don't see what he could be interepreted as doing that would make him seem idiotic. TheHYPO (talk) 20:12, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Your taking this too seriously. All i'm saying is that if you have a better photo, why not put it up? The article is supposed to be an enclyclopedia, why not have the best free photos you can get. If this WAS the ONLY group photo there is, then definitely keep it up but you said before(it's in the archives now) that you HAVE at least one other group photo and the fact that your not even willing(after your exams) to look for it and upload it so we can at least SEE which image would be the best is just plain selfish on your part. Your not techincally wrong at all but your morally wrong here. On top of that, it's the main image in the article and hence, the most important image, the first image that a reader sees when looking at the article.

And it does not look like he's playing mime golf at all, I would never gave guessed that at all. On first look, it clearly looks like Steve is trying to stick his ass in Ed's face and the picture shows Ed staring right at it with a huge smile on his face. That's what I see. Writer1400 (talk) 20:47, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

It is my photo, and my property. If I upload it, it becomes public property. I decided that for the benefit of this article I would upload one of my images which best showed the whole band, and basically gave away the picture for anyone to use. I don't necessarily want to do that with more photos than is necessary. So yes, I'm selfish in that I don't want to give away my rights to additional images. Guilty. I'm also checking the archive now and I don't see anything about my saying I had or would find a new group image... I'm not calling you a liar, but I can't find it, and don't remember why I would have brought that up.

Would I prefer to use something like this? Sure... But we don't have the right to use the band's press images. I picked the best image I had at the time when I uploaded it and I simply see no reason to revisit that now just because you don't like that Steve is sticking his ass in ed's face (they are 5 feet away from each other, and there is no way his ass could even reach high enough to stick in someone's face who is standing... You are just looking for problems where none exist, like you were looking for problems with citations just because YOU didn't have copies of them). Even if someone came here and thought Steve was putting his ass in Ed's face, which is quite a stretch. At most I can see "I don't know what he's doing there" - that does not jump to the conclusion that he must be sticking his ass in Ed's face. That jumps to the conclusion that "I guess I don't get the joke". Clearly the band is amused, and not offended, so even if someone saw him doing that, they would know that he's just being playful, which is what he is doing, which is what the band does on stage, ipso facto... I still don't see a problem with the image.

Finally, The fact that you have the arrogance to declare my actions morally wrong is the last straw and I'm done talking to you... I have every right NOT to share my images. If I hadn't posted this image, the article would probably have to settle for something of similar quality to this, and you have the nerve to imply that I OWE you to upload another photo? If I'm morally wrong, I guess Copyright is a completely amoral area of law. seriously. Done. TheHYPO (talk) 21:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow! Reading that was really, really funny. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.155.83.175 (talk) 03:59, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Genre

I believe we need to have an "official" discussion on the band's genre to list, and put an HTML warning tag there once we do saying "if you want to change this, please discuss it first". It gets changed once every few days and it's really annoying and unnecessary. If noone can decide on an type of rock, just list Rock. If noone can decide on a kind of pop, just list Pop. I'd like to hear opinions on what they should ultimately read (I think it should be limited to 2, or at most 3 genres). Since I think the whole concept of Genre for some artists just doesn't apply (they do rap, they do hip hop, they do country, they do folk, they do comedy rock, etc.) Opinions? TheHYPO (talk) 09:05, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Should we just remove any references to "Genre" in the whole page? I also feel that they shouldn't be limited to anything like "Pop/Rock". Despite the fact that I refer to them as an "Alternative Rock band", I know that's not all they are. However, if we can't remove all references to "Genre" in the whole page (or simply don't want to), we should just list "Rock/Pop" and make sure the page has additional details on what exactly they are. Thesithwithashotgunshell (talk) 14:37, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup

I want to try and get this article nomiated and brought up to "Good Article Status" so I fixed alot of stuff.

As all of you can see, I did a mass cleanup on the whole article. I added a new source that's used throughout the article, since it's obviously fine to use tv documentaries as sources, I used a canadian tv doucmentary from Much More Music called Much More Music Bio, it aired in 2001 and then it was updated and redone and the new version aired again in 2003.

The "Return to Independence" section was a complete diaster, alot of things were not in order and it was very confusing to read. I took all the stuff about the environment and the copyright stuff and put into a new section called "Outside of music".

I re-orgainzed the paragraphs for "the first albums" and "breakthrough in the united states", so now there's a paragraph for each album. There were too many paragraphs before, it looks alot cleaner now. And of course, I moved Tyler's picture, it now has a better purpose in the article overall.

Also, I said this before and TheHYPO still put them back in, you can NOT use words like "unfortunately" in an article. It has to be neutral. They may seem small but they make a big deal when you want an article brought up to GA status.

I still plan to do ALOT of work to this article, it's going to be great when it's finished.

TheHYPO, I hope you don't go and revert everything just because your "mad at me" and "won't talk to me ever again", put aside your silly(and petty) problems with me and think about the good of the article, that's what's important here. Writer1400 (talk) 15:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, we discussed this, and I believe the only word unfortunately was used when saying that the tour did not do well, and that it was quite clear that this was unfortunate from the perspective of the band and that noone would consider a tour doing badly as fortunate. We had this discussion before. Don't be a giant Dick and act like I've ever mass reverted your changes, because I haven't. I have only reverted those changes which have been poorly executed, or wrong.

I like the outside-of-music section. It's a good split; I'm not sure about the pragraph crunching. It makes reading the article harder, and bunches together thoughts that ought to be separate in some cases. I don't care enough to revert line breaking though. It doesn't affect the information presented. TheHYPO (talk) 18:24, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Ps: As a suggestion for future reference, I believe the preferred location for references is after any punctuation without a space, ie (Gordon, released in 1992,[1] was great) rather than (Gordon, released in 1992, [1] was great) or (Gordon, released in 1992[1], was great), but I'm not entirely sure; Either way, it will match the rest of the article which is done that way, which is probably the best goal.

Edit - after linking from policy to policy for a while, I found the appropriate policy which notes that both pre and post punctuation is appropriate, but indeed, the goal is to harmonize throughout the article. - no spaces after punctuation though. TheHYPO (talk) 19:10, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I merged the "written biography" section into the "outside of music" section, there's no reason why it should have it's own section. Writer1400 (talk) 19:22, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, wherein it was written by someone other than the band, it doesn't quite fit into a section about the band's non-musical activities. A subheading under that section, however, is appropriate. It also allows readers to find info on the bio easier if they were looking for that info. (it's a secondary source authorized by the band, so it's something worth pointing out to anyone reading the article as interested in information TheHYPO (talk) 19:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Not true, the band WERE involved in the writing. They told the stories and the guy wrote it out. I added the source. It was you who said tv shows can be used as sources so that's exactly what I'm doing. Writer1400 (talk) 19:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

They were involved (presumably via interviews), but they didn't write it. So it's not a band activity. Ultimately, I think the subsection better isolates this fact, but I'd like to hear opinions of other editors. Also, seriously. Stop being an f-n wp:dick and throwing things back in my face as if I've disputed them. I never complained about your using TV shows as sources, so stop acting like saying that is "sticking it to me" in some way.

I also have a good faith request in your editing. When you go through the entire article and restructure it by moving things around (moving paragraphs or sections), could you please note in the summary if you made any typographical changes (rewrites) or just moved the info as-is. This is because the fact that the info has moved in the article (even removing the space between paragraphs) renders the wikipedia feature that lets you compare the pre- and post-edit useless, as it will show the paragraph as deleted and a new paragraph typed and often not show if any rewriting was done; this makes it hard to find any typos that may have been introduced. I noticd this mainly when you did all that paragraph merging before; I believe you just deleted spaces and didn't rewrite anything there, but in order to find out I'd either have to re-read the entire article again, or edit the article, copy the old paragraphs over the new ones (in their new places) and use the "show changes" preview, which is a hassle when there are a large number of edits throughout the entire article. Just a note of any copy editing done during large moves in the edit summar would be appreciated; TheHYPO (talk) 19:37, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Box set

This is reference text removed from the article until such time as the box set once again becomes an announced reality, instead of an abandonned project as it appears to be:

The band has also indicated that preliminary work on a boxed set is under way, for release from Rhino Entertainment, tentatively targeted for Christmas 2007. Rhino is a division of Warner Music, which would allow the band to release material from past album sessions and other sources currently owned by Warner.

TheHYPO (talk) 21:09, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Big Bang Theory

It's not mentioned that they wrote and performed the theme music for sitcom The Big Bang Theory, and that they also released a full version of it [http://www.amazon.com/Big-Bang-Theory-Theme/dp/B000XKMQZY/ (shown here at Amazon)] ! JaffaCakeLover (talk) 10:47, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Correct. Not every song they've ever recorded is mentioned in this article. It is listed in the discography. At this point, the theme song has not affected the band's career in any way, and thus doesn't really rate as notable in their 20 year career. TheHYPO (talk) 18:55, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

The Bathroom Sessions

There has to be something added about these brilliant versions. Chris (クリス • フィッチ) (talk) 15:40, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Youtube videos are not particularly notable in the grand scheme of a 20 year career (even if it happens to be recorded in a bathroom). Lots of bands do youtube videos. Besides, it's not really a band thing; it's an Ed Robertson thing. TheHYPO (talk) 18:52, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Origin

Are you sure the'yre not from Richmond Hill?129.100.98.58 (talk) 02:56, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

As sure as sure can be TheHYPO (talk) 04:36, 5 December 2008 (UTC)