Easterhouse

Park West Amphitheater

I replied to you inquiry. — Zaui (talk) 21:06, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Joy Division

Hi, thanks for the new citations in Joy Division. There's just a few issues I wanted to raise:

1. Make sure the refs you insert match the referencing style used in the article. For example, citation templates are not used when citing books or magazine articles. When citing a magazine article, cite it thusly in the prose: Savage, Jon. "From safety to where?" Melody Maker. 14 June 1980; don't worry about page numbers for articles. The only article listed in the "References" section is the 1994 Savage article from Nojo, because it forms such a massive bulk of reference material. If you are only citing an article once, just include the full citation information in the prose.

This is not correct: you can use Template:Cite journal for citing magazine articles, regardless of the number of citations. Radiopathy •talk• 12:02, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Er, no, you don't use Template:Cite journal in this specific article, because that's the established citation style for the page. WesleyDodds (talk) 11:20, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

2. I'm curious about the older Joy Division bios that you are citing. Do they cite references, rely on interviews with participants, etc? I'm particularly curious since much of what it known about Joy Division only really came to light starting in the 1990s, when the the people in and close to the band began opening up more, which is why later works like Touching from a Distance and so forth are relied on more. There were a also lot of assumptions and falsehoods floating around about the band before the explosion in reference material in the last two decades. Given the books are out of print, can you give me an idea of how thorough in their sourcing the Johnson and West books are?

3. I'm curious about the sentence "The band received national exposure following reviews of the gig in the NME by Paul Morley and in Sounds by Ian Wood". Do the pages cited say the band "received national exposure following said reviews of the gig", or are they simply verifying that those reviews exist? Because if it's the latter, the prose does not match what is cited, and thus should be removed.

Thanks. WesleyDodds (talk) 07:12, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments/questions on my talk page:

1. I tried my best to match what had already been done. I can assure you it won't happen again.

2. I’ll start by saying that I don’t agree with your assertions that “much of what is known about Joy Division only really came to light starting in the 1990s” and “later works like Touching from a Distance and so forth are relied on more”. Although Deborah Curtis does indeed provide some details about Ian, I think it’s quite safe to say that there isn’t anything about the band in this article that I didn’t already know 25 years ago.

Johnson thanks “fans from Britain, The United States, and Europe who have, over the past six years, saved every scrap of information they could find about Joy Division” and a long list of “music professionals in Manchester and London” including only a few names I recognize: “Steve Brotherdale of The Earwigs”, “Dave Pils”, “Alan Wise”, “Malcolm Whitehead at IKON FCL”, “Richard Boon at New Hormones”, “Martin Hannett and Susanna [sic] O’Hara; Tony Wilson and Leslie at Factory Communications Ltd; those of the band and their management who assisted with corrections and suggestions”. I don’t know how West went about his work, but he is a music biographer having written books about OMD, Iggy Pop, Siouxisie and the Banshees, The Velvet Underground & Lou Reed, Duran Duran, The Smiths, Queen, etc. I got Johnson and West for around $10 each, but I thought I saw that you can still pick them up on-line in the neighborhood of $15 to $20 (used). As they say, you can lead a horse to water…

3. In a run-on sentence after mentioning that “Pete Shelly of the Buzzcocks was interested enough in the band’s cause to suggest they use one of his pet band names ‘Stiff Kittens’”, West writes: “…and the band even found themselves getting entirely unexpected national press exposure in Paul Morley’s New Musical Express review of the gig...” After mentioning Morley’s review in NME, Middles writes: “…Warsaw would achieve two national reviews, Ian Wood’s slightly less enthusiastic appraisal appearing in Sounds.” Johnson: “If Morley was surprisingly prophetic and pleased by Warsaw, others (who probably made up most of the audience) went away less than enchanted. An example of this consensus opinion of Warsaw’s debut came with Ian Wood’s review in Sounds... (Wood’s review is then quoted and he clearly was not impressed.)

I have noticed that you, like the other primary author of the article, have shrugged off the differing opinions of Morley and Wood as merely “unnecessary detail”. The existence of contrasting reviews give the reader some indication of how good (or bad) Warsaw/early Joy Division was, particularly when one sees that they were the shit 18 months later. As is, this article does a disservice to those who wish to know more about the band in that it completely fails to elaborate on how they started essentially as a group of kids without any musical knowledge or training then grew to become one of the most influential bands in rock history.

As you have already done, remove what you want. The article is certainly adequate for the newcomer or Internet-era fan who has long missed this train and can never experience them in context of the times. The intricacies are likely lost on them anyway. Cheers! Easterhouse (talk) 22:11, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm short on time at the moment, so I'll get to addressing the rest of your points soon. I will say that if West does not attribute sources or does not rely on interviews he conducted himself, his book should not be used as a source. Thanks for clearing up about the Johnson book. WesleyDodds (talk) 00:38, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

If you would like to disregard a professional music biographer as a questionable source, then be my guest. As such, West is perfectly entitled to offer commentary as any writer for NME or Melody Maker (which, in turn, we are entitled to quote), and the facts he mentions and the quotations he provides match up with what has been noted and quoted much later in other sources. The inside cover states: “written and compiled by Mike West”. Of course we can only speculate as to what “compiled” exactly means, but my guess is that it is similar to how Gimarc compiled the information for his books. Easterhouse (talk) 04:11, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I've been meaning to get back to this. Firstly, if West acknowledges his specific sources in the prose, that's fine. Even if someone writes for reputable sources, that doesn't carry over if they decide to write a book and don't acknowledge sources, which was the concern. As for the "national exposure", given the excerpts from the books you gave me, is it fair to say that the sentence "The band received national exposure following reviews of the gig in the NME by Paul Morley and in Sounds by Ian Wood." can be attribute to either of the individuals cited? I ask because only one reference is needed to verify a fact, and if two sources verify it, we only need one of those citations and don't need excess. WesleyDodds (talk) 11:28, 25 September 2010 (UTC)