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Factual Errors in Reviews, Books, etc

Started by Satchmo Distel, August 24, 2018, 02:36:58 PM

Previous topic - Next topic
Stuart Maconie in 1998:

QuoteJONI MITCHELL, Let's see: born 1943, christened Roberta Joan Anderson, equine grande dame of American song, always enjoyed a glowing establishment consensus, and so forth. Well, actually not so. In 1975, Rolling Stone, in a fit of blather that makes Richard Littlejohn seem shrewd, denounced The Hissing of Summer Lawns, now routinely rated a classic, as worst record of the year.

http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=248

Er, no, they denounced the album's title as the worst of the year



magval

A guy called Albert Mudrian wrote a book about death metal and stated that Deicide only had four albums.

One of the absolute biggest death metal bands of the 1990s. Hardly an easy mistake to make.

There were other wee things in it that were wrong but that one really should have been caught by someone.

kalowski

Oh, one other thing, in the Sherlock Holmes last week Tommy Cooper told a joke about a charter flight, omitting to point out that one must be a member of any organization that charters a plane for at least six months beforehand, before being able to take advantage of it. Did rather spoil the joke for me, I'm afraid. (phone ring) Yes, ah yes - yes. (puts phone down) My wife just reminded me that on a recent 'High Chaparral' Kathy Kirby was singing glibly about 'Fly me to the Stas' when of course there are no scheduled flights of this kind, or even chartered, available to the general public at the present moment, although of course, when they are BALPA will be in the vanguard.

wosl

Not so much a factual error as one most likely arsing from a manuscript slip and/or transcription flub, but decades ago remember seeing in an indie rock encyclopaedia Joy Division's guitarist being listed as 'Norris Albrecht' - clearly an arse-about mish-mash of bits of 'Stephen Morris' and 'Bernard Albrecht', which nevertheless knocks the name 'Bernard Sumner' into a cocked Stahlhelm.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Satchmo Distel on August 24, 2018, 02:36:58 PM
Stuart Maconie in 1998:

http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=248

Er, no, they denounced the album's title as the worst of the year

When actually the album title, Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy by Elton John clearly should take that accolade.

popcorn

I regularly notice errors in music reviews relating to the music itself. For example, journalists often seem to have a crack at identifying non-standard time signatures but fail miserably, misidentifying 7/8 as 5/4 and that kind of thing. Or they think a distorted bass is a guitar, or whatever.

I don't believe you need to have much (or any) understanding of music theory to write well about music, but I do think, if you're going to make a claim about the universe, you ought to get it right. I suppose this is one area where I grudgingly have to give games journalists credit: for all their other abundant failings, they do tend to know their technical onions, and can talk convincingly/tediously about different kinds of lighting, for example.

Bingo Fury

I once had a book of rock mini-biographies which insisted that Zappa had studied at Darmstadt under Stockhausen, which was a bit of a reach.

Well, no-one's perfect.  Even Jesus didn't predict his coming wouldn't remove conflict, just factionalise it about different outgrowths of the original Christianity.

thraxx

Quote from: Bingo Fury on August 25, 2018, 12:39:01 PM
I once had a book of rock mini-biographies which insisted that Zappa had studied at Darmstadt under Stockhausen, which was a bit of a Reich.

Now factually correct.

Glyn

Forget which one but there was an early Manics biography that begun 'On February 1st 1995 Richard James, lead singer of the Manic Street Preachers, left the Embassy Hotel...'

Shit Good Nose

Pretty much everything written by Melody Maker journalist Chris Welch is riddled with errors.  For someone who claims to love Yes and Genesis, he gets a surprising amount wrong.

Maurice Yeatman

Music journos are notorious for errors, whether original bonce-quacks or regurgitated hackery.

Simon Price on Todd Rundgren: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/the-cure-move-festival-manchestertodd-rundgren-academy-bristol-756012.html
QuoteRundgren is the Zelig of rock, present at many momentous events in musical history (although, unlike Woody Allen's hapless hero, he was an active protagonist rather than an unwitting bystander). As well as making bittersweet psych-pop with his bands The Nazz and Utopia, and releasing the classic solo albums Something/Anything and A Wizard, A True Star, Rundgren produced Sparks's Kimono My House, the second New York Dolls album, albums by The Ramones...

Three* massive errors highlighted. Will this do? Invoice to follow.

* Four if you know it's Nazz not The Nazz, but almost everyone makes that mistake.

DrGreggles

Quote from: Maurice Yeatman on August 26, 2018, 02:38:22 AM
Music journos are notorious for errors

This is true.
Neil Kulkarni mentioned on an episode of Chart Music that one of his Limp Bizkit reviews had 5 stars next to it.

the ouch cube

A Maconie piece for the New Statesman about the surprise success of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' lumped Killdozer in with dour, doctrinaire '80s hardcore like Millions Of Dead Cops. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Killdozer knows that humourless they are most certainly not.

Just more "fucking Yanks, what do they know" grumping from the Wigan borehorse

Phil_A

Quote from: the ouch cube on August 26, 2018, 04:21:44 PM
A Maconie piece for the New Statesman about the surprise success of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' lumped Killdozer in with dour, doctrinaire '80s hardcore like Millions Of Dead Cops. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Killdozer knows that humourless they are most certainly not.

Just more "fucking Yanks, what do they know" grumping from the Wigan borehorse

I have a memory of Maconie being on a guest on The Graveyard Shift sometime in the mid-nineties, Radcliffe played a Presidents Of The USA track which led to Maconie having a moan about US bands jumping on the punk-rock bandwagon, "We did that last term, America," etc. As if there had never been any American punk bands prior to the nineties. What the fuck was he on about?

Pauline Walnuts

I could never stand him for that Jailbreak 'observation', what the matter can't cope with the concept of a metaphor? Young men breaking down the walls of social confinement, which could break out anywhere, or something?

the

Quote from: OnlyRegisteredSoICanRead on August 26, 2018, 06:59:13 PMI could never stand him for that Jailbreak 'observation', what the matter can't cope with the concept of a metaphor? Young men breaking down the walls of social confinement, which could break out anywhere, or something?

I don't know from when that's meant to be attributed to him, but FYI Nick Hancock makes the observation about the lyric (in a humourous way) on the radio version of Room 101 in January 1992 (guest Danny Baker). Clip

Maconie's plagiarized it then (consciously or unconsciously) because it's been used on Radmac a few times. Hancock (or his writers) could also have nicked it, of course.

Funcrusher

Quote from: Phil_A on August 26, 2018, 04:43:32 PM
I have a memory of Maconie being on a guest on The Graveyard Shift sometime in the mid-nineties, Radcliffe played a Presidents Of The USA track which led to Maconie having a moan about US bands jumping on the punk-rock bandwagon, "We did that last term, America," etc. As if there had never been any American punk bands prior to the nineties. What the fuck was he on about?

Without The Ramones, The New York Dolls, The Stooges and Nuggets/US garage, does British punk even exist?

Brundle-Fly

Just now Maconie was explaining to the 6Music listeners that skinheads used to like Trojan reggae in the 1960s as if this was some kind of revelation. It's not like the average age of their audience is sixteen . They once had Bob and Marcia (Young, Gifted and Black) on the show and also made the same observation to them and asked Bob what he thought about 'the skinheads'. Bob was quite curt with Radcliffe saying he didn't know what he was talking about and changed the subject. It was rather odd.

It possibly came across as cultural appropriation and Radmac being insensitive as to why a Rastafarian like Bob would feel sensitive about his records being dumbed down by distributors and DJs, even with good intentions.

OTOH Jamaican music was commercial music with a black and white overseas market and all the artists were locked into that game, even those with devout beliefs. I just feel that Maconie especially dumbs down everything he touches while trying to come across as a pop guru.

Fisher Goes Berserk

Read an academic book about race in British music since WW2 a couple of years ago in which the author stated that Terry Hall was black. A clumsy error that undermined the authority of the whole book, to be honest.

Funcrusher

Doesn't the skinhead look of boots and braces and rolled up jeans come from Jamaica along with the music?

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Funcrusher on August 27, 2018, 09:27:30 PM
Doesn't the skinhead look of boots and braces and rolled up jeans come from Jamaica along with the music?

Yes. Crombie coats and porkpie hats too.

Mr Banlon

Quote from: the on August 26, 2018, 08:06:12 PM
I don't know from when that's meant to be attributed to him, but FYI Nick Hancock makes the observation about the lyric (in a humourous way) on the radio version of Room 101 in January 1992 (guest Danny Baker). Clip
There were  prisons in three different locations in Dublin in 1975.

jobotic

Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak
In one of three locations in this town

Jockice

My two favourite music biographies are Julian Cope's Head On and Boy George's Take It Like A Man.

In the former Cope describes Ian McCulloch wearing thick glasses the first time they met in Erics but then a few pages later says that when he went round to Pete Wylie's house for the first Crucial Three rehearsal it was the first (and maybe only) time he saw McCulloch wearing specs.

And in the Boy George one he describes his first meeting with Marilyn, but in his follow-up book, Straight, he says that the first time he met Marilyn was on a different occasion when, according to the first book, they were already well acquainted.

Very minor cock-ups in brilliant books, but they've annoyed me for years. Thanks for letting me tell you about them.

Mark Steels Stockbroker

My opinion of Simon Reynolds was pretty low even before I opened one of his books at random and spotted a mistake straight off. It wasn't even about something obscure. It was about an album released in 1992.

holyzombiejesus

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on August 24, 2018, 08:24:05 PM
When actually the album title, Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy by Elton John clearly should take that accolade.

I don't think there is any 'Worst.....' accolade that doesn't rightfully belong to The Stereophonics.

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on August 27, 2018, 02:56:12 PM
Just now Maconie was explaining to the 6Music listeners that skinheads used to like Trojan reggae in the 1960s as if this was some kind of revelation. It's not like the average age of their audience is sixteen . They once had Bob and Marcia (Young, Gifted and Black) on the show and also made the same observation to them and asked Bob what he thought about 'the skinheads'. Bob was quite curt with Radcliffe saying he didn't know what he was talking about and changed the subject. It was rather odd.

Fucking hell, just listening to that now. Maconie didn't even know that Ken Boothe had a No.1 with 'Everything I Own', not 'If'. Just Google it, ffs.