Talk:Helmet (band)

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Contents 1 Born Annoying/Discography 2 According to Stanier himself... 3 According to Mengede's ... ? 4 Album sales figures 5 Not enough talk about genre listing 6 Born Annoying in the discography

[edit] Born Annoying/Discography

Everything in the discography is a full-length album except "Born Annoying." Since there were several singles and an EP released with that title, it belongs in a (currently nonexistent) singles/EPs section of the discog, not in with the LPs. El Mariachi 02:37, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Also the albums in the discography should be listed in chronological order (ie. starting with the oldest and ending with the most recent, and not the reverse). --IronChris 17:05, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] According to Stanier himself...

The general impression I've gotten from reading/hearing interviews with John Stanier is that he really, really doesn't like talking about Helmet's breakup or anything concerning Page Hamilton since that time (if you can't say anything nice, ... ). I've never seen any interview of any sort with Bogdan, so it's hard to know what he thinks. Hamilton, on the other hand, has been pretty open about his perspective of how the shit has gone down. What I've gleamed from Hamilton is that Bogdan has absolutely no musical interest in doing anything Helmet-related ever again. Whether he has any personal issues with Hamilton or if he approves of Helmet existing in his absence, I don't know. Stanier obviously does have personal issues with Hamilton. Page claims John has totally snubbed him. So it seems that the "truth" is probably somewhere in the middle—if Stanier had any interest in knowing what was going on with Helmet reforming, it wouldn't have been difficult for him to find out. I don't think he gives much of a damn what Page does, so while it might be true that Helmet was reformed without his knowledge or "permission", it seems kind of irrelevant and misleading. With that in mind, I'm going to delete that parenthetical statement from the article and change the wording such that it's a little more clear that, rather than a clear offer and refusal to reform, the members simply didn't communicate out of spite. Which pretty much ruled out any chance for a reformation with the original members, anyway.—Lazytiger 19:20, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] According to Mengede's ... ?

The line in the "early years" section about whether it was Peter Mengede's wife/girlfriend/sister who suggested the name Helmet is up in the air. I read initially on bornannoying.com that it was his wife, so I put that in the article but then someone later changed it to sister. Then I saw the YouTube video on myspace.com/helmetny where Page is being interviewed and he mentioned it. The words "sister" and "girlfriend" were uttered, but not "wife". Maybe it was a then-girlfriend, but later-wife. I dunno. Now someone changed it back to wife. I'm leaving it alone because I simply don't know. If anyone does know for sure who it is, leave a message here with your source/reasoning. Thanks.—Lazytiger 04:35, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

This is from a 1991 interview with Page Hamilton in Flipside #79:

Interviewer: I think it's a really powerful name without being too corny at the same time. That's kinda rare these days.

Hamilton: It's a little more indicative of what we do, more so than Poly Orchids. We were just sitting there eating, Peter's sister was here from Australia. We were sitting with another friend of ours... Our friend said "You should call the band 'Helmut'!"

After watching the YouTube video, now I understand. Page and Mengede were at lunch with both Mengede's sister and his girlfriend, and Mengede's girlfriend is the one who suggested Helmut. They might have later gotten married, but if she was his girlfriend at the time, then I suppose it should say "girlfriend" in the article.

By the way, according to that same interview, it wasn't specifically after Helmut Kohl, that was just a connection Page made because he'd gone to school in Germany when Kohl was Chancellor. Druff 18:12, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks for clearing that up. Another thing—the next sentence says that Hamilton didn't care for the idea. What's the basis for that statement? It sounds like he thought the idea was just fine. Is this perhaps just referring to the spelling? If so, that could be made more clear. Maybe: "While Hamilton didn't care for the Germanic spelling, the Anglicized "Helmet" was quickly embraced." Or something like that.—Lazytiger 19:09, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I guess we're seeing one situation in two different ways. Since Page didn't name the band Helmut, in my view that in and of itself means that he didn't like the idea of naming the band Helmut. Whereas apparently in your view, Page naming the band Helmet means that he did like the idea of Helmut. To me it's a difference between a noun and a proper noun, to you it's a difference between a U and E. Druff 23:37, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, yeah, I never even thought of it that way. And of course, I don't know how Page thought of it. Either way, one led to the other. As long as that's made clear, I'm not going to make a fuss about the details. You can fine-tune the blurb if you want.—Lazytiger 00:43, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Album sales figures

Could whoever added the sales figures for Betty and Aftertaste please cite their source(s)? Thanks.—Lazytiger 14:21, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not enough talk about genre listing

I've heard Helmet listed as everything from nu-metal, to groove metal, to funk metal, to pop-punk. I personally find the idea that they could be categorized as metal slightly laughable, since what I have heard from them generally doesn't include any sort of technicallity. I personally would class them as pop-punk, even though they generally have dirty heavier songs, because their style is remeniscent of sum 41 and some of their songs do sound an awful lot like a nice pop-punk tune. Also, from what I've heard there is a lot of power chord usage going on here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 208.191.85.153 (talk) 16:40, 23 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Born Annoying in the discography

Thank you for your contributions, Chris77xyz. I don't mean to be adversarial, but Born Annoying has been added and removed previously from the list. As explained below the list, Helmet has many oddity releases, most of which are out-of-print (including Born Annoying), and none of which really deserve more attention than the others. So, it's all or nothing as far as oddities go. Trying to create a comprehensive list of these releases in the Wikipedia article is redundant since more than one fan website already has such lists. They are mentioned in the links section. The fact that Born Annoying has an article I think warrants its mention, but it still shouldn't be in the list of "real" still available releases.—Lazytiger 23:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)